He laughed and said, "Everything you've got, you deserve." Then he hung up.

The themes of abandonment, denial and neglect ( by self and others ) converged into a deeply moving account of the young woman's descent into the hell of crystal meth addiction.

She recounted her story in a recent presentation to instructor Kim Richter's organizational behaviour class at Kwantlen University College's Langley campus.

At 16, Beaudoin would likely have been the envy of her peers. Pretty and talented, she was the president of her school's student council. An A student, she sailed, she loved ballet.

Her parents, who had no other children, had no trouble paying for her dance classes. Ballet was her passion. She was surrounded by friends.

She was 16 when she made the fateful decision to try crystal meth. She explained to the students how the drug, a potent cocktail that contains iodine, ether, acetone and drain cleaner among other chemicals, derailed her life.

Meth also contains pseudoephedrine which is extracted from decongestants. This itself can have serious side effects, such as nervousness, shaking and hallucinations.

Uncontrollable body movements are a characteristic of meth users, and a video accompanying Beaudoin's talk graphically illustrated how the poisons in the drug affect the body.

The video was explicit not only in how it graphically detailed the body's decline from meth, but in its warnings, from addicts, not to touch it.

"It's like a little box you're trapped in. Once you're in it, you can't get out," one says.

"I ended up where I had no soul," says another.

A woman's decline was so severe that it was impossible to guess her age. Her teeth eaten away by the drug, her cheeks sunken, her eyes flat, she had become addicted at the age of eight.

Although her nervousness is apparent, Beaudoin is lucky and she knows it. She tells the class how happy she is to be able to talk to them. But they are where she wants to be.

The drug has all but wiped out her dreams of becoming a doctor. She tells the students that meth killed so many brain cells she has trouble speaking in public.

"If I had known what it would do to me physically and mentally, I would never have touched it," she says.

Meth, created in labs that in themselves pose a hazard, can be smoked, inhaled, eaten or injected. How did she do the drug? someone asks.

"Every other way but injections," Beaudoin replies.

For Beaudoin, the drug helped her run away from her problems, one of which was her perception that she was fat. She experimented and was hooked the third time. She spent most of the summer between Grade 11 and 12 doing the drug. Days merged, one into another, until her weekends became six days long.

Sometimes, she confesses, "I did drugs all day long at school."

And yet, she says, there was not a single call from the school to her parents.

Eventually, meth and the alcoves of Hastings Street were all she had. Gone were her girlfriends, boyfriends, her parents and dancing.

She sought medical help. "The doctor said, 'Great, next it will be heroin and then prostitution. Get out of my office'," she recalled. It was not, Beaudoin said in an understatement, the way to help someone.

"Of all the things I regret, if I could change it, I would not quit school. I would be in college now and would be going to medical school."

She looks at the students. "You guys are really lucky."