Success, One Addict At a Time
Drug Program Hailed For Recovery Efforts

By Hamil R. Harris
Washington Post Staff Writer

For nearly three decades, Canzada Edmonds sniffed teaspoons of heroin
to forget a rough childhood and the seven boys who stole her innocence
when she was 14.

There were the alcoholic parents, the rebellious childhood and the day
she skipped school for love and was gangraped instead. She worked
full time and stole to support a $500 daily drug habit. Now, after
endless hours of counseling, Edmonds is being hailed by District
officials as a success story in the battle against drug abuse.

She credits her staying sober to God and to Community Organized in
Prayer for Salvation, a program under the umbrella of the Addiction
Prevention and Recovery Administration that recruits church groups to
help people in recovery.

At the city's Third Annual Addiction Prevention Awareness Day
conference at Howard University last week, Mayor Marion Barry said
that the city is "making inroads" in the war against drugs cocaine
and PCP use among juveniles who are arrested is dropping but that
the battle is far from over.

District statistics show that 96 percent of youth arrested in the city
test positive for marijuana. Overall, 60,000 District residents use
cocaine, heroin or PCP, and 75,000 abuse alcohol.

Barry praised officials at the Addiction Prevention and Recovery
Administration for creating new programs during austere financial
times. In the last four years, the agency's budget has been reduced to
$19 million from $31 million, its staff to 100 people from 171 and its
client vacancies to 1,614 from 3,652.

The administration offers a range of services, and hundreds of people
are on waiting lists to get into the programs. The road to recovery
starts at 1300 First St. NE with an evaluation at Central Intake. From
there, people may be sent to a detoxification unit, a residential
program or outpatient services.

Allan S. Noonan, the new director of the Department of Health, said
more resources must be focused on prevention and targeting younger
residents. "Patterns begin early with children," he said. "Smoking,
drinking, drugs, they are all one and the same."

Steve Fitzhugh, a former Denver Broncos football player and keynote
speaker at last week's conference, asked the 100 or so elementary and
junior high students in attendance to stand. He then asked those who
had consumed alcohol or drugs to sit down, and about a dozen did,
underscoring Noonan's point.

Canzada Edmonds's descent into drugs began as a child. At 11, she
said, she started smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol. When she
was in junior high school, her attraction to a particular boy helped
lead her to more serious drugs.

"I really believed that this guy liked me for who I was. One Friday
morning he asked me to cut class and go to his house for lunch, and I
agreed. When I got there it was nothing, I mean nothing, like I
imagined. He had six other guys awaiting."

Edmonds was gangraped and impregnated. She gave birth to a son who
later died.

"Hatred, shame, guilt, bitterness, worthlessness and unforgiveness set
in, and I did not want to feel what I was feeling," Edmonds said. "At
that time, I was 14 years of age, the drinking decreased, and the PCP,
the acid and the heroin increased."

At 16, she was admitted to a mental institution for four months. She
managed to complete high school and entered the Army. Even though she
received an honorable discharge and then got a job, she continued to
use drugs.

"Drugs have no respect of person," said Edmonds, who, despite holding
down a job in a heart unit at a local hospital, continued to use drugs
and steal until she was arrested.

In 1994, Edmonds was convicted on theft and drug charges and sentenced
to a twoyear drug rehabilitation program at the Brooklyn (N.Y.) Teen
Challenge Center. When she completed the program, she returned to
Washington and joined a prayer group.

For years, Edmonds's days began with a cup of methadone a legal
drug given to people recovering from heroin addictions and ended
with prayers at Spiritual Faith Fellowship, a group of recovering drug
users.

"Without faith and trust in God, there is no telling where I might
be," Edmonds told group members, family and friends who gathered at
the Addiction Prevention and Recovery Administration last Friday to
say goodbye. She has been hired as a counselor in training at the
Brooklyn facility where she initially went for treatment.

"This is a victory celebration of how the government and the church
work together," APRA Deputy Administrator Catherine B. Bego told those
gathered. For 15 years, Bego has recruited church groups and counseled
recovering addicts in the Community Organized in Prayer for Salvation
program.

There are many success stories among COPS members: Lucretia Mooten,
who was a prostitute to support her heroin addiction, now owns
Anointed Touch Cleaning Services. Debra Wilson Beach, who used cocaine
for seven years, is a gospel singer with a CD in record stores.

Edmonds packed up a table full of new clothes, gifts and cards and,
after one last prayer, her friends sent her off to New York. "Father,
we release her to you," Minnie Williams prayed. "We know that Satan is
busy, but greater is He who is in me than he who is in the world."

As Williams prayed, a woman in the more tender stages of recovery
seemed to hold her body to keep from shaking. Outside on New York
Avenue, in the same block where prayers were being offered, men were
sipping whiskey and smoking cigarettes.

"We believe that you have to approach recovery holistically," said
APRA spokesman Phillippa Mezile. "You can't just heal the body and the
mind; you have to infuse the spirit."

(c)Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company