VALUABLE ADDICTION PROGRAM BITES DUST

Day programs. Live-in programs. Who the heck has any idea which one works
best to treat addictions if they've never needed either of them?

But these people know. This group of healthy, happy husbands and wives and
sons and daughters gathered in a boardroom in Duncan know from hard
experience what it takes to save people from themselves once the drugs and
alcohol take hold. And they think the closing of the Island's only
subsidized live-in treatment centre is a terrible mistake.

This is the last day for the Victoria Life Enrichment Society, which was
given its walking papers by the Vancouver Island Health Authority soon
after the province offloaded addiction services. Addicted Islanders will
now have to come up with $10,000 to attend the privately run Edgewood
treatment centre in Nanaimo or line up for months to be treated at a centre
on the mainland.

The closure of VLES is mostly about money, although the health authority's
official position is that day programs are as effective as live-in
treatment anyway.

"Not a chance," says Kevin Barge, one of 10 Cowichan Valley graduates of
VLES who have come out on this night to praise the program.

"I can't imagine having to return back home at the time of day when you and
your addiction have always thrived, thinking that you're going to be able
to stay clean."

Live-in treatment is greater than the sum of its parts, the group
emphasizes. It's 28 days of not being in the same old rut, of not having
the same old fights with an exhausted and fed-up spouse.

All the familiar triggers that can tempt a desperate person back toward the
dark side are held in abeyance for one glorious month, and there's nothing
else to think about except getting clean and sober.

"My daughter was a year and a half old when I went in for treatment," says
Debbie Peterson. "If I'd been in a day program, there would have been no
way I could have done the work that needed to be done and go home at night
to the responsibilities of being a mother. I never would have made it."

The South Vancouver Island Assessment and Resource centre, whose boardroom
we're meeting in, had found the closest thing to a magic bullet for a while
there: Detox and a month at the Comox Valley Supportive Recovery Centre,
another month at VLES to get at the psychological reasons for a person's
addiction, and then a year of weekly "after care" back in Duncan. Not
everybody came out of it with the will to stay clean, but many did.

But VLES is gone, and there's now a two-month waiting list to get into any
of B.C.'s five other live-in centres. Comox's program is struggling as
well, having seen its per-diem subsidy -- barely adequate to begin with at
an unwavering $52.40 for the past 16 years -- cut to $40.

"Day programs are a knee-jerk, short-term quick fix, like cleaning up a
wound without getting down to the business of what created it," says Linda
Lendrum, senior counsellor at the assessment and resource centre. "We need
them, but we need residential treatment as well."

The people who Lendrum has gathered together on this night don't hesitate
when asked about the worth of VLES. It saved their lives, nothing less.
Their marriages were falling apart. Their children were strangers to them.
They were spending all day and every day screwing up their lives even more.
And then the misery was over.

"I finally got to spend some time understanding things about myself,
putting some tools in the toolbox," says Shawn Buttle. "Everybody
encourages education -- well, this is education for life."

Closing VLES will save about $505,000 a year, substantial enough when every
penny counts but hardly a bad deal given the incalculable costs of illness,
crime, family breakdown and financial catastrophe that addiction ultimately
spawns. That's the aspect of the closure that troubles Barge the most.

"I've gone from a person who spent every cent on my addiction and was
behind on every one of my bills, to someone who owns a home, has a stock
portfolio, is an active member of the economy," he says. "This program is a
long-term investment."

Jon Clint saw the worth of the investment in the faces of his family when
he could finally stand before them sober and ask for a second chance.

"Everybody we touch benefits from us getting treatment," he says. "And so
do we."