CENTER GIVES DRUG ADDICTS REASON FOR HOPE

"When I came to the Hope Center, somebody told me: 'You're at the last
house on the block 360 West Loudon.'

"I thought: '360, like the degrees in a circle. Maybe I can go full circle
here and make it the first house on the block for me."'

David Kavanaugh, 47, recovering addict.

A chilly wind was blowing outside on Loudon Avenue, a street named for a
19th-century replica of a Scottish castle that stands in Castlewood Park.

A few blocks west of the park, David Kavanaugh was revisiting his former
dormitory at the Hope Center for homeless and at-risk men.

"Look, there's my old home," he said. "Bunk No. 24."

It was no castle. But for the first Thanksgiving Day in 30 years, Kavanaugh
is clean and sober.

In early December 1999, he borrowed $20 from a friend in Louisville to buy
a $17 bus ticket to Lexington.

"I showed up here at the center with the $3 and the clothes on my back," he
said. "And that was all.

"I thought: 'I'll con somebody. I'll find me a woman and trick some money
out of her.' It turned out God had a different plan."

Kavanaugh went through the health clinic and 12-step recovery program at
the center, from detox to daily employment. He ended up working at the
center, first as an assistant teaching the program to others, and now as a
part-time security guard.

Part-time was all he needed. He's got a full-time job, and he just bought a
car. From 7 p.m. to midnight, Monday through Friday, he's a disc jockey at
WJMM-99.3 FM in Woodford County.

"I always wanted to be the voice coming out of the box," Kavanaugh said,
"from when I was a kid in Louisville listening to Coyote Calhoun, a famous
DJ there."

He was a big kid with size-12 shoes and thick glasses. His father was an
alcoholic who left the family. Kavanaugh hated him so much that he wouldn't
use his father's last name for many years. They reconciled when his father
was dying from cirrhosis.

His mother taught school and raised the five children. One of them, a
daughter, was murdered.

Kavanaugh started getting into trouble at school. "If you had your gang
with you, I'd run. But if I catch you around the side of a building by
yourself, I'd throw a brick at your head."

When Kavanaugh was 15, he wanted to sing with a local band. "I smoked weed
to show them I was cool. When they filled up syringes with heroin, I said,
'Where's mine?'

"I started to live for intravenous drugs. It didn't matter what I ate, what
I wore, the police knocking at the door -- nothing counted but the needle."

He had a criminal record and was in and out of 38 treatment programs. He
admitted he wasn't really trying to change from wilfulness to
accountability. "I was just looking for places to stay awhile."

Kavanaugh is in transition now, gradually moving from the Hope Center back
into society.

He said he had a lot to give thanks for this year.

Walter May, a lawyer who does public relations for the center, said that 60
percent of the men who complete the program are clean and sober a year later.

"That's pretty good," he said. "We get the hardest of the hardcore."