SPIRITUAL GROWTH SUPPORTS MAN'S DRUG RECOVERY

The forgiveness and grace that Harold Shannon has found in his
recovery from methamphetamine addiction redeem a lifetime of abuse,
betrayal and bad decisions.

Now 48, Shannon blames no one for his painful past. It just makes his
five-year path to healing seem all the more miraculous.

"It's just awesome to know I have a chance," Shannon said, a look of
wonder on his face. "Even after all the things I've been and done, I
can still be forgiven."

Shannon is burly with blue eyes, a drooping mustache and close-cropped
hair that looks like it used to be red. He has found some peace now, a
peace maintained only through daily living his recovery and his faith.
Church, he said, "is recovery for sinners."

He remembers being as young as 8 years old when his grandmother, a
God-fearing pillar in a church in Oklahoma where they all lived, would
beat him with a switch. He was one of 10 siblings.

When Shannon was 12, he'd go with his father to open the filling
station he owned. Young Shannon would man the pumps, wash windshields
and take money while his drunken father slept in the office.

Shannon's father also drove a truck and used speed to stay awake for
cross-country hauls. Shannon's mother popped pills to stay up with
him. When Shannon was 13, his mother turned her son on to
"cross-toppers," too.

"She wanted me to stay up with her," Shannon recalled. She would stay
up for three days cleaning house. "She was either up all night or on
the couch."

When he got into trouble with the law at age 14, Shannon's mother
scraped up enough money for a bus ticket to Flagstaff. Fleeing both
the law and a family legacy of lies and painful secrets, the boy
panhandled enough to make it to his hometown in Ventura County, Calif.
His grandparents there refused him.

So Shannon found a friend who let him sleep in the family's barn.

He never finished eighth grade.

But after first being labeled as retarded, Shannon had caught the eye
of a sixth-grade teacher who had taught him to read, and he continued
to read voraciously. Shannon began working in Ventura County movie
theaters as a projectionist by day and tried to study at night.

Nearby, Hollywood advanced technologically. Ventura County was a
"try-out" market. Shannon, by now 18 and the head projectionist at
important Ventura theaters, went from running the old carbon-arc
cameras to installing the nation's first Sensurround system in 1975.

"I guess I could have had a good career," Shannon said, shaking his
head at the memories. But he had begun dabbling with marijuana,
cocaine and LSD.

Over the next decade, Shannon married and repeated the old patterns.
Drug abuse, instability and betrayal again marred his life.

Shannon took his young daughter and moved to Nevada County, where he
had a sister.

"My daughter anchored me," Shannon said. But with no job prospects, he
soon turned to dealing methamphetamine.

"It paid the rent," Shannon said.

When more painful turns of fate sent his daughter back to her mother,
Shannon was left without that anchor. Within three years, at age 31,
Shannon went to prison for the first time.

About five years ago, Shannon was headed back, on a drug charge, for
the umpteenth time.

"They don't let you have any reading materials, but they can't keep
you from your religion, so I asked for a Bible," Shannon said.

He read and read. In Tracy, he wound up bunking with a Catholic.

"He'd pray. I'd hear him. He'd ask me to pray with him," Shannon said.
"I didn't want to pray. I mean, I'm a convict. It felt foolish."

He had been in prison about three weeks when it was their turn to go
to church. On a whim, Shannon went.

Something in the service touched him.

"I looked up at the ceiling and got this feeling in my chest," Shannon
said. "I don't know if I was praying or just thinking to God in my
head. I said, 'God, if you're really there, then I need help.
Everything I've done leads me right back to prison."

The next morning, a guard called out Shannon to see the prison
counselor - a highly unusual event.

"I thought, 'This is it. I'm going down,'" Shannon recalled.

Instead, he wound up on a bus back to Nevada County. Shannon became
the first person in the state paroled into a rehabilitation facility under
Proposition 36. The measure, approved by voters in 2000, diverts non-violent
drug offenders into rehab instead of prison.

Shannon had 48 hours to check in to the precursor of today's Progress
House. "I got high," he said.

He made it through the three-month, in-patient program despite several
tough moments.

"While I was in there, a friend of mine said he had 6 ounces of
crystal meth."

That much drug could have fetched about $18,000 in
sales.

"I said, 'Save it for me, man.' But when I finished those three
months, I didn't want it," he said. "I honestly think it was God's
intervention."

Shannon struggled to stay clean after being released from the
treatment house. Then, a couple at a mobile home park in North San
Juan offered him a trailer rent-free for a while if he would fix it up
and do work around the place.

"They're like parents to me," Shannon said. "If God hadn't put them in
my life, giving me a chance to live clean and rent-free for five
months .." Shannon shook his head.

While in the rehab house, Shannon had started going to Twin Cities
Church, on Rough and Ready Highway, and Nevada City Christian
Fellowship, on Sutton Way in Grass Valley. He liked both of them, each
for different reasons, and continues to attend both.

Now, Shannon also leads 12-Step programs at the churches, at the
county jail and in North San Juan.

He stays busy as a handyman, doing electrical, plumbing, remodeling
and other construction-related jobs for a local contractor and on his
own.

After many years of having no contact with his two children, Shannon
now talks to his daughter. She's 24 and doing well. "I have two
grandbabies," he said with a smile.

But his son, who a few years ago was sixth in the nation in wrestling
and had a shot at the U.S. Olympic team, now sits in prison on a drug
charge.

"I know exactly where he's at," Shannon said, his eyes on the ground,
thinking back. "I was there and I didn't want to talk to anyone who
was into recovery because I thought I was having too much fun."

Twelve-Step meetings, work and people who believe in him help him stay
clean. His faith eases the guilt of his past.

"Guilt is one of the things that keeps dragging us back. You end up
using again to get behind the emotions," Shannon said. So he prays.

"I pray and I wake up the next morning and things just seem better. I
don't know how, but they do," Shannon said. "It doesn't take away the
stuff that goes on in life. I just have that extra shoulder to lean
on."

WHAT: Walk for Recovery

WHEN: 10 a.m. today

WHERE: From the Nevada County Courthouse steps on Church Street to
Pioneer Park in Nevada City

WHY: The Recovery Alumni Association and others are walking to let
people see and experience what drug and alcohol rehabilitation can do
for them. At the park, there will be refreshments, speakers,
testimonials and a raffle.

INFORMATION: Shelley at 273-9541 to help sponsor or get more
information.

This is the finale of a three-part series. Click here to see the
second installment in this series, which appeared in Friday's edition:
http://www.theunion.com/article/20060616/NEWS/106160151.

Click here to see the first installment in this series, which appeared
in Thursday's edition: www.theunion.com/article/20060615/NEWS/106150192.