DRUG REHAB CENTRE AT A CROSSROAD

Set Up By A Passionate MLA, It Has Helped Former Addicts Regain Their
Lives Piece By Piece, But Success Brought New Challenges

It's not clear exactly when Jeremy Ward hit bottom. It could have been
last October when the 20-year-old cocaine addict crammed a handful of
pills down his throat, hoping the massive combination of
anti-psychotics and Valium would ease the pain of being dumped.

Or, it might have been after getting out of hospital after the
overdose, as he knelt on the corner of Granville and Helmcken begging
his pregnant, crack-addicted girlfriend to take him back.

One thing was certain: Ward needed help.

And after about eight years mixing cocaine, marijuana and alcohol --
and with a baby boy on the way -- the veteran addict needed more than
just a trip to detox to slow the speeding train of his addiction.

He needed a paradigm shift.

Today, as he celebrates his 150th consecutive day of sobriety, Ward is
a changed man.

Trading his crack pipe for a paint roller, the lanky redhead has
assumed a drug-free workaday existence at a new recovery community
just outside Prince George.

Started in December by Liberal MLA Lorne Mayencourt, the Baldy Hughes
Therapeutic Community represents a new approach to
rehabilitation.

The idea involves a long-term live-in program where addicts use peer
support, a lack of easy access to drugs and a highly structured
lifestyle to help them slowly tighten their grips on sobriety.

Clients at the site -- there are 14 now, though Mayencourt plans to
eventually increase that to 500 -- are currently working on a rigorous
daily schedule to restore and renovate the Cold-War era Baldy Hughes
military base where the community is set up. After that is done, the
clients will do a variety of jobs ranging from growing food to
producing products that can be sold to help finance the program.

The model is fashioned in the image of Italy's San Patrignano, an
almost 30-year-old recovery community where more than 20,000 addicts
have used peer support, skills training and a highly structured work
schedule to move from desperation to stability.

Though some feel San Patrignano, and its unwavering focus on
abstinence, is the wrong approach, a university study that tracked a
group of clients from the Italian facility found it to have a
72-per-cent success rate.

That was enough to catch Mayencourt's eye.

After going through detox and a standard therapy program, addicts at
his Baldy Hughes facility each commit to live in the community for
three years completely drug free, and will eventually have access to a
range of services that include high school classes, recreation
facilities and trades training.

"We're looking for people who are very motivated, but are failing,"
Mayencourt said last week while walking among the facility's mix of
military buildings that were once used as a radar station to scan for
incoming missiles from the Soviet Union.

"If you've got someone who has done six times in detox and six times
in treatment you've got a very motivated person with no supports --
nothing that holds them together," he explained, adding his new
facility is meant to offer the support that gives recovering addicts
the tools they need to firmly install a stable drug-free existence.

For the 14 clients currently at the facility, the approach is already
paying dividends.

Facing challenges

"I think a lot of people realize they have been through treatment
centre after treatment centre and that when they walk out the door
they don't have a good solid plan," said Scot Durward, a former addict
and the program coordinator. "This offers a long-term solution to that.

"There are 14 people here that are residents and at the end of the day
everyone is going to bed clean and sober. That's huge."

Being in the business of managing career addicts, the Baldy Hughes
Therapeutic Community has not found that success without an equal
share of challenge.

In the almost four months the community has been running, about 12 of
the 30 clients brought into the program have had to leave.

One of those left over the tight restrictions the community imposes on
smoking -- clients are limited to seven cigarettes a day, a number
that will decrease as time passes.

Another was asked to leave over revelations that his criminal history
broke a community rule banning anyone convicted of a sex offence,
arson or any violent crimes such as manslaughter or murder.

Five have had to go because they slipped and used drugs while in the
program, Mayencourt said, and the others over a variety of other
separate issues.

For Mayencourt, many of these stories can be chalked up to the
realities of dealing with a vulnerable and unstable population.

"Virtually everybody we get here is a crapshoot," he said. "They want
to use. That's how they've survived."

But one really hits home. It was the client who took the keys to the
program's pickup truck so he could sneak into Prince George in the
middle of the night for a crack binge.

"I should have known," Mayencourt said, burying his head in an
apparent belief that, though the facility has a system in place to
secure all keys, he could have foreseen the incident.

Mayencourt, who was in Vancouver at the time the incident happened,
said he felt so overwhelmed that he threw up for an entire morning.

"I just would think of it and heave," he said. "I was so sick. I just
didn't know what to do."

He said the incident caused him to momentarily question his exuberance
at trying a new approach without dwelling over more planning and
consultation. "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread," he said,
wondering aloud whether the cautionary idiom applies.

"You feel a little stupid, like how did I not know that?" he
said.

But Mayencourt says he has learned a great deal, and that the program
needed a kick start to show people what was possible.

He said now he is looking to hire about five staff members to run the
program, including an executive director, a life skills counsellor and
other professionals who can help the clients improve various elements
of their lives.

He has also partnered with the College of New Caledonia for a trades
training program, the Prince George school district for a high school
program and is reaching out to a variety of other organizations to get
everything from dental care for the clients to training for those who
want to work as volunteer firefighters at the firehall that came with
the facility.

Until those people and programs are in place, however, Mayencourt is
running the program virtually on his own.

When he is on site -- he is there most of the time the legislature is
not sitting -- Mayencourt does everything from organizing the daily
routine to dealing with the interpersonal issues that inevitably arise
between members of the group. The only people there to help are
Durward, who assists in most of the day-to-day tasks, and a collection
of volunteers who run a variety of counselling and support programs.

Interspersed with his on-site duties, Mayencourt takes regular calls
on his cellphone from addicts across the province wanting to come to
his program, and meets with business owners and philanthropists to
help raise the money needed to run the facility.

Currently, the program receives a living allowance for each client of
$610 per month from the ministry of employment and income assistance,
but beyond that the money is coming from private donations.

The next step

Mayencourt says he needs about $35,000 to $40,000 per month in
operating funds, plus about $500,000 in capital money to renovate a
dormitory and other infrastructure to support the 100 clients he wants
by the end of this year.

A self-confessed workaholic, Mayencourt often works 15 hour days while
at the facility, even at times donning a pair of coveralls so he can
personally help with the renovations.

Throughout it all, Mayencourt has gained immense respect from the
clients -- some credit him and his program with saving their lives --
as well as from the people volunteering to help with the program.

"Lorne has given me everything," said Bryan Supernault, 45, a
recovering heroin and cocaine addict from Chetwynd. "This is an
intense place where miracles happen.

"Lorne is an incredible person. He's got the biggest
heart."

Brian Fehr, a member of the program's board of directors,
agreed.

"I've never met a more caring person in my life," he said, adding
Mayencourt is a rare example of someone who has never been an addict
who still commands respect from those attempting to recover.

Despite these accolades, however, many feel Mayencourt and his program
are at a crossroads, where he will need to choose the right staff and
solidify the right vision for the program.

"The cart is kind of before the horse here. It needs to be pulled back
and there needs to be structure put in so that [the clients] have that
type of guidance, that type of role modeling," said Brenda Dube, who
volunteers with the program and has been working in the field of
mental health and addictions since 1991.

"You need skilled staff that can adapt to what is going on in the
community."

She explained that even the most successful programs struggle for the
first year or two before they find the best approach.

"It's going to take an executive director and counsellors who are very
skilled, because it is not one specific field you are dealing with,"
she added. "If you are going to be successful you need to deal with
the person as a whole."

While staff is important, Dube also put a strong emphasis on ensuring
the program finds its proper values and beliefs. "If you do a lot of
research on addictions and what has been successful for people in the
long run, it is looking at values and beliefs -- where they are going
to fit into a society," she explained.

"You have a lot of people coming from different backgrounds. It's
looking at where do those overlap. How can you build on those and make
positive values here?"

Mayencourt said he agrees with the need to build a strong community
philosophy, adding the group is living that process every day by
deciding what rules and policies are most important.

Last week, the question was put before the group about how to handle a
fellow client who had been caught using for a second time at the community.

The clients decided it was best to send her back to a 28-day treatment
program, and then to decide after that if she could return.

Amid that discussion, the clients had to face and decide key issues
about how they wanted to operate. Most wanted to ensure rules were
constant for all and that discipline was unwavering, though there was
also a very strong desire for compassion.

"The strength of our community is measured in how we treat our most
vulnerable members," Durward said during the meeting. "I think we
[need to] handle the situation with care and compassion."

After the meeting, Mayencourt said he is learning from every triumph
and every hiccup, and that he continues to believe his exuberance was
the only way the program would ever get off the ground.

"If I didn't start it, I wouldn't have started it," he
said.

He added that doing so has led to breakthroughs for many of the
clients.

As an example, he pointed to Ward, who's added a healthy-looking 32
pounds since arriving in the first group of addicts in December and,
according to Mayencourt, is gaining a hard-earned respect from others
in the program.

"Jeremy was 20 years old going on seven [when he arrived]. He was a
compulsive liar. He stole everything he could get his hands on,"
Mayencourt. "The group hated him, but he's earned their respect and
he's gaining weight. He's thinking about becoming a dad. All the
things he's got to do, he's doing it."

Ward agrees.

"When I got too deep into rock, I had no work ethic. I had no
self-respect," he said last week, while meticulously preparing a wall
in the facility's main building to be painted.

"I've got too much to live for and too many things I've got to do and
grow up for," he added, explaining why he is so determined to stay
clean.

Following a vision

Others have made equally big gains as well.

"This place has changed my life, big time," said Darren Sidwell, 37,
who started using crack when he was 19.

"I hadn't talked to my daughter in five months. Now I talk to her
every night."

He explained that after only about a month at the program he is
starting to get his family back.

"I've realized what life is all about. I had no life. My life was
using and finding ways to find more," he said. "I've seen a lot of
scary things that I don't ever want to see again.

"People overdose. People just about die. And I don't want to see that
any more.

"My life now is getting up in the morning and staying to my
schedule."

Mayencourt said this is common across the group, with many having made
both physical and emotional gains.

"Now they have great pride in themselves. I really notice their
physical well being changing and then slowly their emotional [well
being]," he said.

"[They're] still very volatile, still very much on a hair trigger, but
most of the time confident enough to not have to freak out."

He added he hopes to have the program up to about 100 people by the
end of the year, and then eventually grow it to 500.

To get it there, he said, he knows he has to hire the right staff, and
ensure the proper programming -- all of which he said is already in
the works.

Above all, however, he said the most crucial factor will be staying
true to the vision and the mission that drove him to start the Baldy
Hughes Therapeutic Community in the first place.

"I think the most important thing here is tenacity," he
said.

"Just hang on. Don't ever let it go. Keep reminding yourself of what
it's going to be."