ADDICTS TOUGH IT OUT TO TURN LIVES AROUND

Pomona

American Recovery Center, Which Counts Rodney King Among Its
Patients, Offers Guidance On The Long And Difficult Road Of
Rehabilitation.

POMONA -- Rodney King's recent problems began at a motel, and with
any luck, they'll end at one.

King, 36, was sentenced Oct. 26 to spend a year at Pomona's American
Recovery Center for treatment of his addiction to PCP. Police found
him under the influence of drugs three times in two months.

Claremont police found him at a Howard Johnson motel on Aug. 28,
after he reported his car stolen. King later remembered that he had
loaned the car to his girlfriend, but police noticed he seemed
confused and he flunked a sobriety test. Pomona police picked him up
twice more, once after he exposed himself in Ganesha Park and boasted
to people that he was Rodney King.

After entering a no-contest plea on King's behalf, Pomona attorney
Antonio Bestard said his client was relieved to be getting treatment
rather than jail time.

"He recognizes the problem and he's going to take care of it," Bestard said.

The same day, he was taken to American Recovery Center, where he
occupies bed 517A.

The enormous facility is a last resort for alcoholics and drug
addicts who may have tried less-intensive halfway houses and failed,
or whose only alternative to treatment is a stint in county jail.

The center gets the addicts no one else wants and turns them around
with an 80% two-year success rate -- far above national standards.

"A lot of the people are pretty sick," says Jim Elliott, the center's
top administrator. "The fog's not even clear until the second half of
the program."

The center has one of the state's largest detox facilities, with a
full battery of doctors and nurses who tend to sweating and
incontinent heroin addicts as they work through withdrawal.

The 5-acre, 173-bed center was founded in 1986 on the grounds of the
abandoned Kellogg Valley Inn. A two-story artificial waterfall in the
hotel lobby is dry, and the whole place has a cold and institutional
atmosphere, despite efforts to cheer it up with fresh pastels.

Money is tight.

The community-based nonprofit takes donations, but 99% of its funding
comes from contracts with Los Angeles County.

"Our addicts and alcoholics don't sell that well," Elliott said. "We
don't have $10,000-a-plate dinners. ... We're at the bottom of the
food chain."

With a long-term decline in available mental health care and an
increase in drug potency, California's rehabilitation facilities have
grown increasingly strained in the past decade.

"Stimulants have gotten stronger, and what's most notable is that
folks are sicker and a little crazier than they were 10 years ago,"
Elliott said. "The rest of our system is not doing the job they used
to do."

A group of six patients that gathered at the center recently
expressed gratitude for the rigid, round-the-clock pace of the
program and conveyed an insider's eager obsession with the details of
addiction and recovery.

Cheryl Cameron, 34, of Los Angeles gave birth to her youngest child
in jail. The mother of three admits she took drugs while pregnant and
is grateful to be in a program that allows her to care for her child.
Many facilities allow single mothers to care for their children while
they get treatment, but ARC is the only one in the state that also
takes single fathers.

"This is a better place for me," Cameron said. "They're teaching me
about my behaviors. I was an addict and I didn't know that."

She is due to complete the program Saturday.

"I had my bad days," Cameron said. "A bad day is me trying to run my
own life. ... A good day is being able to fellowship with my peers."

No one pretends that rehab is easy. They're up at 6:30 a.m. and in
bed by 10:20 p.m., and their days are rigorously scheduled. They pull
weeds, deliver supplies, clean their rooms and take part in mandatory
Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings.

Patients are free to leave, and often do, though counselors urge them
not to. Some patients would prefer to be in jail.

"Every day here is difficult," supervisor Barbara Green said. "But I
strongly believe people can be helped if they want."

Tristan Tibbs, 38, of Los Angeles is on his fourth stint in rehab.
This time, the 13-year drug addict is there voluntarily, driven by
fears that his addiction would kill him. Tibbs, who is HIV-positive,
spent four days in detox seeing double and fearing seizures caused by
a lesion in his brain.

Even after getting clean and starting counseling, he still had days
when he felt so lonely he wanted to leave.

"My counselor talked to me and made me realize that I just wanted to
get high," Tibbs said. He stayed.

A judge sentenced Susie Gonzales, 47, of East Los Angeles to
treatment after she was caught under the influence of PCP.

She says she was walking home when police stopped her.

"They already knew me," she said.

In May, her son came to see her in jail. He told her she looked
terrible and reminded her, "You got a family to attend to." The words
made her break down and seek help.

"I just liked the high," she said, on her 17th day of rehab. "I took
a taste of it, I liked it, and I needed it. It gets into your bones."

New patients like Gonzales look to old-timers such as Reuben Parada,
40, of Pomona for support. He has been in the program for five months
and was elected to lead the patients' assembly.

"The structure of this program is like no other one," Parada said.
"It helps you with a solid foundation; it's all there for the taking.
... It's been a long road, and not an easy one."

He once had a professional technical job before drugs made that
impossible. Now he's happy to have lined up a job at Wal-Mart in
Upland when he gets out.

"My life has turned around," he says. "It's been a long road, and not
an easy one."