RECOVERING ADDICT EMBRACES FAITH TO REBUILD SHATTERED LIFE

The first time Lori Brink-Fecteau met God, she was pregnant, homeless and
heavily into drugs. She knelt by her Auburn motel bed, a Salvation Army
worker at her side, and clumsily followed her in prayer. Then she handed
over her contraband.

It was a false start. Brink-Fecteau and her husband went on using for seven
years, raised their two girls on welfare and moved 12 times in a single
year. Their son's birth in November only meant Brink-Fecteau could reclaim
her addiction full time.

And she did, not finding it odd that her daughter -- all of 7 -- was
tending to her baby brother, cooking and cleaning for the family. Then she
bottomed out. Two months ago, after her husband left home, she began the
torturous process of starting over.

While the Resurrection of Jesus Christ was commemorated, Brink-Fecteau, 28,
has been undergoing her own renewal. She's leaning on her nascent Christian
faith and a Bible-based treatment plan to stay off drugs and reunify her
family.

"Before I did the drugs, I was more or less a kid. Now I have to see myself
as an adult and a mother," she said. "I'm learning who I am now."

Michelle Avey, who knelt by her side seven years ago and has prayed for
Brink-Fecteau's recovery ever since, calls it, simply, a rebirth. "It is a
new person coming out," Avey said. "Definitely."

The Salvation Army -- a charity and a 453,000-member church -- is better
known for its Christmas kettles and thrift stores than its drug and alcohol
programs. The latter, which include live-in centers in Fresno and San
Francisco, run on both a belief and a mandate that a full physical and
mental revival can't occur without spiritual help.

Her dark eyes luminous and clear and her black hair thick and shiny,
Brink-Fecteau doesn't look like the "broken spirit" Avey describes from a
few months ago when her late-night phone call came for help. But from her
fragile perch, Brink-Fecteau says, the threat of a relapse loiters nearby.

In high school, she drank, smoked pot and took acid. After she followed her
parents to Colfax and met her future husband, Brink-Fecteau turned to
methamphetamine. For years, she couldn't string her words together fast
enough to keep up with her crank-fueled high. Now she struggles to express
the most basic thoughts.

One minute she hunches her shoulders and laments, "I'm trying to live a
normal life and I don't know how." The next, she counters defiantly, "You
can fight it."

Because authorities never intervened, legal custody of her children has not
been an issue. Still, Brink-Fecteau temporarily gave up the care of her
girls to her parents to enroll in a yearlong rehabilitation plan. As her
closest friends are still using drugs, her phone book went in the trash.
And though her husband is in touch, he is living the noxious lifestyle she
struggles to put past her.

"I'm afraid that he would pull me right back in. I can't have that right
now," she said.

Had her husband not walked, Brink-Fecteau says she probably wouldn't have
sought help. But two months after he left, her sanity was slipping. She
called Avey one Friday night. The caseworker and her husband picked up the
family and took them home.

"She was crying out for help," recalled Avey, a devout Christian whose own
troubled past was similar to her young charge's. " 'Dear God, please show
me the doors.' "

Avey helped Brink-Fecteau get into the Courage House in Auburn with
Salvation Army paying part of her rent. While the thrice-weekly Narcotics
Anonymous meetings are secular, she found an additional Christian support
group at Sunrise Church.

Every Sunday, Avey and her husband take Brink-Fecteau to their church in
Grass Valley. On tougher days, she's loathe to go, though she perks up in
church and at the gathering that follows back at the Avey home.

She believed in God after her motel-room appeal, but avoided church until
she went clean. "I didn't want to disrespect Him," she said.

Brink-Fecteau spent her first sober month numb. Now, she's coming to terms
with the chaos and neglect that drove her life. Her face breaks out. She
sometimes rocks uncontrollably.

She managed the first part of her 12-step program, giving up control to a
"higher power." But she is stalled on the fourth step, which calls for
self-evaluation. Some memories are unspeakable.

"That's where my faith has to kick in, knowing that God is greater than me.
I know I can't do it alone," she said.

Brink-Fecteau calls Avey her "angel." Her mentor, in turn, never lets up,
alternating blunt, tough-love reproaches with hugs and comforting
Scriptures. Avey helped the recovering addict make a "God box" for her
prayers, a carton sealed so its contents are known only to Brink-Fecteau
and her higher power.

In Avey's prayers, the two women will open the box some day, perhaps when
Brink-Fecteau is 10 years sober and counseling other needy women. "We're
hoping there's going to be a happy ending to this," Avey said.

"It's what I dream," Brink-Fecteau replied.

Copyright ) 1998 The Sacramento Bee