WOMAN DRAWS ON EXPERIENCE TO CARRY MESSAGE OF RECOVERY

Addiction left Ronni Katz's personal life in a shambles, even as she
achieved professional success as a musician, a counselor and
Nashville's youth program coordinator.

Her apartment was a wreck, her car a clunker and she was incapable of
sustaining a relationship.

She worked to convince young people that staying clean was key to a
meaningful life. Eventually, she listened to her own message,
joining Narcotics Anonymous in 1997.

Now Katz oversees Portland's Overdose Prevention Project, hoping to
keep drug users alive so they at least have a chance to change course.

"We weren't going to get everybody into recovery, but we had to
figure out how they can protect themselves and stay healthy even if
they were still using drugs," Katz said during a recent interview.

Katz's experience of drug use and recovery, along with her
professional qualifications, led the city's Health and Human Services
Department to choose her in 2003 to lead its fledgling effort to
reduce the number of accidental drug deaths in Portland. The program
was created after 28 people died of overdose deaths in 2002, almost
twice the number the year before.

Rather than burying her past, Katz draws on it to give credibility
and passion to her efforts.

"I've never met anybody more dedicated to helping others," said
Portland police Sgt. Scott Pelletier, who supervises the Maine Drug
Enforcement Agency in southern Maine. "She's very forthright about
her past with addiction and truly committed about sending the message
that you can recover. . . . It's not easy and oftentimes it's a
lifelong endeavor to get better, and she's living proof of that."

Pelletier says Katz also has succeeded in bridging some of the
perceived antipathy between social service providers and police.

"She's broken down all those barriers," he said, and the Overdose
Prevention Project serves as a role model for collaboration that
other states should mimic.

The program has used outreach workers and volunteers to teach drug
users to recognize overdoses in their friends and to call rescue
workers if they do. The education campaign appeared to work, and
complemented other city initiatives such as equipping all fire
engines and ambulances with naloxone, a drug that can reverse the
effects of opiates like heroin. Drug deaths in Portland dropped
sharply, and fell somewhat in the rest of the state, as the problem
gained attention.

Now, the number of overdose deaths appears to be climbing again
across Maine, though less so in Portland. Portland's Overdose
Prevention Program is renewing efforts to educate drug users about
the dangers of strong heroin, of misused pharmaceuticals and of
diverted methadone, trying to keep drug users alive until they can
help themselves.

Teenager In The 60S

Katz started using drugs as a teenager in the 1960s, beset with all
the typical insecurities and alienation of that age as well as a
nasty divorce brewing at home in suburban Queens, where the family
had moved from a housing project in New York City.

She started with marijuana and alcohol and the common perception that
neither was dangerous. In time, she experimented with harder drugs.

Katz was protesting the war in Vietnam and playing guitar, and by the
time she was 18 she was performing professionally with an all-female
country-rock band. It was a lifestyle of late-night parties,
drinking and drugs.

After graduating from Queensborough Community College, she became an
English teacher, though she eventually abandoned teaching to
concentrate on her music career full time.

Over the years, the people she was spending time with, partying with, changed.

"I saw so many of my friends just grow out of that stage and I saw my
circle of friends getting narrower and younger," Katz said. And she
found that she was typically alone at weddings and special
occasions. She was often jovial, but also prone to bouts of anger and rage.

"You get to a point where it's no longer about the substance. It was
about the addiction and filling that hole," she said. "It's very
easy to blame it on everybody else. Denial is like a protective shield."

Ironically, she became a high school substance abuse and prevention
counselor, and found she could help young people make better
choices. It was while working with kids that she first realized she
needed to change her own life. Those teenagers also showed her the
power and potential of making life changes.

"I still hear from some of those kids that everyone had given up
on. One graduated from Cornell, another is graduating from the
University of Arizona, another is in law school."

Clean Since 1997

It was while she was working with high school students, that
hypocrisy, that led her to change.

She did change scenery, leaving New York for Nashville and what she
described as her dream job. She was director of the city's
after-school programs, which she helped grow from a handful of sites
to a dozen serving hundreds of youngsters.

Still, she took no vacations and bought no new clothes and stayed in
the same run-down apartment for years. She used drugs less, but drank more.

One night, she found herself in an on-line chat room with another
woman in recovery, and realized she needed help. She joined
Narcotics Anonymous and has been alcohol and drug free since 1997.

"They say when you get sick and tired of being sick and tired, is
when you get help," she said.

Katz knows many of the people targeted by the Overdose Prevention
Project often are in more dire straits than she endured, but they
weren't always.

"There's a large population of functional addicts out there like I
was. That doesn't mean they'll stay that way," she said. Breaking
the grip of addiction is often a matter of life or death.

"It's not easy, but it winds up being a much better and easier life
over time," she said.

Now 53, Katz has a stable relationship, a house filled with three
cats and three dogs, and a mission to promote survival, hope and recovery.

"I need to carry that message. A lot of people keep it quiet. It's
become part of my work," said Katz, whose tight silver curls frame a
frequent smile, despite the somber aspects of her job.

Staying clean and sober has made her life better, but she also hopes
it has helped improve other lives, as well.

"I know what I've got inside, no one can take away," Katz said. "I
also know I can help other people more."