SHARING THE LESSONS OF SOBRIETY

When Joel Gunzburg was in high school, he spent two years caring for his
father, who had Alzheimer's disease. But after his father died, Gunzburg
meandered listlessly through the days.

"I had no responsibilities left. There was this immense gap. I felt like,
what do I do now?" he recalled.

While his mother worked long hours, Gunzburg filled the void by smoking
marijuana, taking LSD, snorting cocaine and drinking. After several failed
attempts at sobriety, he enrolled in the Phoenix School in Silver Spring, a
school for students with drug and alcohol addictions. Opened in 1979, it
was the first such public high school in the country.

He credits the school's close-knit community--it accepts only 20 to 30
students at a time--and daily counseling sessions with turning his life
around. He has been sober since 1994, the year he started at the school.

Last fall, Gunzburg, 23, of Silver Spring, returned to the Phoenix School
to help current students break the grip of drugs and alcohol. As a senior
majoring in social work at the University of Maryland's Baltimore campus,
he served as an intern, helping to lead group counseling sessions and a
class on the effects of drug and alcohol abuse.

He told students that taking high doses of niacin to thwart drug tests can
damage their livers. He said that marijuana circumvents all ambition. He
told them they would end up in jail or on the streets or even dead if they
kept using drugs.

"Joel has been where we've been, so it's easy to talk to him," said Jessica
Fox, 16, who lives in Potomac. "He doesn't just say, 'I know,' and nod like
some other people who have no idea what you're feeling. He tells you the
truth."

For Herman Gear, a 17-year-old 11th-grade student from Wheaton, Gunzburg's
patience has been important.

"Joel never gives up on you. I've messed up hundreds of thousands of times,
and he's always there to tell me to get serious, to get me back on track.
He's my support system," he said.

Herman's mother, Sharon Onyango, credits Phoenix, and Gunzburg in
particular, with turning her son around. At Wheaton High School, she said,
Herman would skip classes to smoke marijuana or sleep through them.

"Joel is a no-nonsense person. He can tell if someone's not telling you the
whole truth and can tell them what they need to hear in a way without
putting them down," Onyango said. "At a regular public high school, you
just get lost in the crowd. And there's a lot of temptation to get high or
drink. It's like having an alcoholic live next door to the bar."

The Phoenix School, for students in grades 9 through 12, includes daily
counseling sessions and a class on substance abuse and addiction in
addition to the traditional high school curriculum. Once students complete
a recovery program and are sober, they can return their high school. The
Phoenix II, a school for students with substance abuse problems in the
upper part of the county, is in Gaithersburg.

Along with the students, Gunzburg has been an inspiration for Phoenix's
principal, Brian Berthiaume, who is a social worker. "From my standpoint,
to have a down-and-out drug addict graduate from social work school and
come back and work with kids in the same boat is really special," he said.
"It's really a powerful feeling for me as a principal to see the
transformation in Joel and see how he can relate to the students' addictions."

When Gunzburg works with the students, he doesn't pull any punches.

"I thought I could come here and keep using. But Joel told me if I wasn't
serious, I should just leave," said Katie Reynolds, a 15-year-old
10th-grader from Olney. "He helped me realize that I could change, that it
was in my power."

Gunzburg said he had the same attitude when he transferred to Phoenix from
Sherwood High School during his senior year.

"I walked in here, and everyone looked so happy that I thought they were
all on drugs. I couldn't fathom how they could be happy without drugs," he
said.

But Phoenix's intensive focus on recovery kept Gunzburg sober. At the same
time, he started to consider a career in social work. The social worker who
had helped his family after his father's death served as an inspiration, he
said.

In the five years since he attended Phoenix, Gunzburg said, he has seen
changes that disturb him in both the students' attitudes and the drugs they
take.

"There's a lot more Ecstasy now, and the kids are saying the same thing we
said about marijuana five or 10 years ago, when we had this attitude that
it couldn't hurt you. There's also more use of crystal meth and cocaine,"
he said.

Although Gunzburg left Phoenix when school ended last week, he plans to
continue working with young people with addiction problems. He's now
considering job offers at group homes for young adults. In the future, he
would like to open his own treatment program.

On his last day, Gunzburg's students presented him with a hand-painted
shirt featuring an ascending phoenix bird. And the symbolism hasn't escaped
him.

"I wanted to give back some of what I got," he said. "I feel that a dream
of mine has started to come true."