HOPE AND A WAY TO THE FUTURE

More Than ,000 Addicts Have Sought Hope In A Long-Term Treatment
Program That Offers Professional And Life Skills For The Years Ahead

RIMINI, Italy --Where dark sunken bloodshot circles used to announce
years of self-inflicted abuse, Vito Telesca now has two bright and
vibrant brown eyes. His body -- the one that just five years ago had
suffered so many injections it could no longer stand -- has morphed
from a stench-filled rack of pasty flesh into an athletic frame that,
on this day, gently tugs at the shoulder seams of a crisp white dress shirt.

"For the first time in my life I feel like I'm doing something," a
confident Telesca said in an interview last month, sitting in a
bird-filled vista on the grounds of San Patrignano, Europe's largest
drug addiction therapeutic community near the city of Rimini on the Adriatic.

"This place really saved my life. It saved my life," he said,
eventually revealing a raw history that brought rare credence to that
oft-cited hyperbole.

In its almost 30 years, San Patrignano has treated more than 20,000
people like Telesca, helping many drug addicts journey from
desperation into stable productive lives and, most importantly, into
people who no longer see drugs as the ultimate solution. What's more,
it has done this without a cent of government funding.

The community's success -- one university study found that 72 per
cent of a given sample remained drug free after at least two years in
the San Patrignano program -- has attracted attention from around the
world, including B.C., where politicians and community workers have
for years been actively wondering if the Italian model could help
address Canadian problems.

Lack of funding, or ideological divides in B.C., have meant many such
efforts have sputtered -- including a recent one before the GVRD --
although this week MLA Lorne Mayencourt declared he is ready to make
what he hopes will be the final push. While travelling around the
province to promote his ideas on San Patrignano, Mayencourt declared
he will do whatever it takes to bring the Italian model to B.C.

"I just feel very confident and very passionate about it," Mayencourt
said in an interview with The Vancouver Sun, explaining he has found
a site near Prince George and, with the help of a group of Queen's
and Cornell MBA students, hopes to have a viable business plan in
place by September.

"Sometimes you are just supposed to do things," he said, explaining
he is willing to make dramatic changes in his own life, and to go
ahead without any government funding, if that is what's necessary.

Mayencourt's determination for this new project comes from having
visited the Italian facility last January and from seeing the changes
it has been able to influence.

"We've forgotten to include hope in what we're offering to people,"
he said, suggesting hope is exactly the currency of the Italian program.

"I think that is the most important thing, the ability for
[recovering addicts] to understand they have great potential," he added.

At San Patrignano last month, that hope was abundant in both the
face, and the newfound ambitions, of 35-year-old Telesca.

Five years ago, the former addict was living in a small town outside
Manchester, England, stealing cars, gas and anything else he could
find to get enough money for his next fix.

"When you are really desperate you'll do anything," he said,
recalling having to burn his ex-girlfriend's shoes to keep warm
because he couldn't afford firewood. Snow and rain was coming through
the windows in his house, he said, because the windows and doors were
broken from an earlier police raid.

As the spiral continued, Telesca sold his house for a pittance and
blew even that on drugs, spending with impunity until he ended with
literally nothing. "There wasn't a penny left in my pocket. I spent
it all on drugs," he said. "I thought I was going to die."

At that point Telesca appealed to his father in Rome -- his only
living relative and a man he had not seen in 16 years -- and
eventually found his way to San Patrignano.

Close to 3,000 people apply each year to get into San Patrignano,
although only about 600 can be admitted. In total, there are about
1,600 guests at the facility at any given time, all of whom stay for
an average of about three to four years.

A select few are sent to the community through the court system,
although the overwhelming majority come voluntarily and only after a
rigorous round of applications. Upon arrival, guests are assigned a
group of recovering addicts to live with as well as at least one
direct mentor. The idea is to get them into a social network, and to
force them to deal with the kind of social conflicts and situations
they will encounter in the real world so they cannot sink into
individual avoidance.

While in the program no one can use drugs and everyone is required to
eventually take on a full-time job within the community.

In Telesca's case, his first 20 days were punctuated by sleepless
nights as he struggled to tear himself from his physical dependence.
While his 14 roommates slept soundly, Telesca sweated, clenched and
churned -- all the time enduring the excruciating pain of cold turkey.

Eventually, Telesca said, he started being able to sleep, to eat and
even to contemplate a more normal existence. Eventually, he said, he
had beaten his physical addiction.

In some programs this would be the marker of success. At San
Patrignano, this was just the beginning. "The drugs you use, that is
not the problem you have here," explained Andrea Muccioli, son of San
Patrignano's founder and the current program director.

"The reason you take drugs is because you decided to escape, from
life, from family from yourself and so on -- it is the reason that
led you here," he said, explaining those underlying problems are the
ones the program seeks to address.

Expanding on this idea, Muccioli took aim at the harm reduction
strategies such as supervised injection and methadone.

"After 10 or 12 years [on such programs addicts] are much weaker.
They are less able, not more able, to take the final decision to stop
taking drugs and grow up and change and so on," he said, adding he
thinks the underlying assumption in those programs is that the
addicts are unrecoverable.

"We do not see a drug addict as an unrecoverable addict, as an addict
that will have to bear this burden for the rest of his life," he said.

"We lived with 22,000 of these unrecoverable human beings and as a
matter of fact at least 10,000 of them are now out there, they are
employers or entrepreneurs, they are lawyers, they are physicians,
they are psychologists, they are journalists."

Muccioli said that for people to be accepted in the program they have
to meet two criteria: They have to want to change, and they have to
acknowledge that their drug use is not the main problem, but a
manifestation of other, more fundamental, issues. Accordingly, the
program seeks to help those in its care to readjust to a normal
living environment.

Through an intricate and evolving system of mentoring, the program
keeps people tightly controlled for an average of three to four years
and seeks to help each guest confront his or her insecurities and fears.

"You come here and you realize that you know nothing, that you really
have to start from new again, working hard to have a life with
dignity, to have a life where you have to learn to be responsible,"
said Nicole Glausen, who was heavily addicted to heroin before
applying to San Patrignano.

While at San Patrignano, each guest is streamed into one of dozens of
work specialties where they contribute to the community's
productivity while also learning a skill.

Across the sprawling 250 hectare grounds, there is a horse breeding
stable, a cheese factory, a wood shop, a winery and dozens of other
specialized workplaces.

Throughout those areas, the community seeks to meet the highest
quality for each discipline and sells many of these items into the
general public, earning a reported half of the $35 million it takes
each year to operate the community. The work also helps people to
gain stability and a normal routine, something many lack when they arrive.

As perhaps the most telling test of the efficacy of the overall
program, Glausen recently returned home to Zurich after her four and
a half years at San Patrignano.

"After four days I got back into normal life," she said, explaining
the trip was a short-term chance to see if she was ready to deal with
the pressures of the outside world. "I got more secure about how I
was feeling, also with my parents," she said.

"The thing that really filled me up and made me feel good about
myself is I had chats with my parents and my brother for hours that
we never had," she explained. "That was so nice."

While the trip was an opportunity to reconnect with family, however,
it was also a chance to see what more work she needed to do before
she was ready to leave San Patrignano for good.

"It was strange. I felt like a martian. I felt it was a world that
wasn't mine anymore," she explained of her short time away.

Glausen said she learned an immense amount on the trip, but also was
confronted with some of the old scenes and people from her drug past
- --things that once would have drawn her back.

"The thing that really felt very strongly is that I never ever want
to be part of that world anymore," she said. "I have so many things I
want to do. So many things I feel inside now that I don't want to
lose the way I feel," she added.

What's more, she said, she has learned to recognize the signs of
trouble and is optimistic she can find her way without drugs.

Despite success stories like Glausen's and Telesca's, however, San
Patrignano is not without its critics, and indeed its rough spots.

In the 1980s police found residents at the community who had been
chained to stop them from running away.

Vincenzo Muccioli, the founder and then director of the community who
started the program by taking a few troubled young people into his
family vacation house, was sentenced to 20 months in jail as a
result, although the conviction was overturned on appeal. In an
interview while he was still alive, Vincenzo defended the practice,
and said he would do the same again, if it came to it.

In 1989, Vincenzo encountered other problems as well.

According to an essay by Dr. Giancarlo Arnao who was, before his
death, president of the the International Anti-Prohibitionist League,
Muccioli was tried for murder after the body of a San Patrignano
guest was found in a garbage bin about 600 kilometres away in Naples.

Vincenzo was acquitted of a murder charge, though Arnao's account of
the trial suggests a few skeletons were unearthed along the way.

"During the trial many San Patrignano inmates or former inmates
testified that the community was ruled with a high level of
violence," he wrote, adding that Vincenzo was found guilty on a
lesser charge of complicity in hiding the corpse and given a
suspended sentence of eight months in jail.

Though San Patrignano's few skeletons can be seen as a cautionary
warning, those who have witnessed the repeated successes feel the
model has too many positive attributes to ignore.

As such, Mayencourt said he will continue to press for a program of
its kind to be built at the site just outside Prince George where
addicts can go through traditional treatments and then have the
option for a longer-term residential program.

For Prince George Mayor Colin Kinsley, the idea is a welcome relief.

"I think it would be a great opportunity," he said, adding he thinks
the majority people of Prince George will give it their full support.

"I can see this being great."

The Growth Of A Community: San Patrignano Timeline

1978: San Patrignano founder Vincenzo Muccioli welcomes first group
of youth into a weekend home owned by his family on the hills over Rimini.

1982: San Patrignano community reaches 200 people.

1985: San Patrignano Foundation established to collect contributions
to help the community.

1993: San Patrignano community reaches 1,600 people.

1994: The San Patrignano Medical Centre is inaugurated. The medical
centre is equipped to treat infectious diseases like HIV and to deal
with medical issues encountered by people in the community.

1995: Community founder Vincenzo Muccioli dies. The community
continues under the guidance of Vincenzo's son, Andrea Muccioli.

1997: San Patrignano accredited as an NGO in Special Consultative
status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations.

1999: San Patrignano community reaches 1,800 people.

2002: Centre for young children suffering from drug addiction is
inaugurated. It can house up to 100 children.

San Patrignano Facts

1,800 -- Current number of people at San Patrignano

3,000 -- Admission requests in 2005

565 -- Number of people admitted in that year

565 -- Number of people who completed the program and left the
community in 2005:

75 -- Number of people who dropped out in that year

MORE THAN 20,000 -- Total number of people hosted at the community
since its inception

ABOUT $16,700 -- Yearly cost per community member