ON THE FRONT LINES: FROM THE DEPTHS OF ADDICTION

Four-year-old Tyler was upstairs watching TV when his dad inhaled a
mix of cocaine and heroin.

Marvin Declare wanted to try something new, and an acquaintance
introduced him to the concoction known as a "seven-up" or speedball.

Within 30 seconds, he was a zombie. His legs wouldn't
move.

He crawled across the room, up the stairs and over to Tyler. He laid
his head in the boy's lap.

"Daddy, what's wrong?" Tyler asked.

"Daddy's just going to go to sleep for awhile," Marvin said. He closed
his eyes, not expecting them to open again.

When they did, he was jubilant that he was still alive.

Then he went back downstairs for a hit of crack.

Marvin became an alcoholic at age 12. It ran in his
family.

His biological father - an alcoholic with a gambling addiction - left
him and his mom when Marvin was about four. His mother was an
alcoholic who would make him choose between a wooden spoon or a fly
swatter for his beatings.

He was also verbally and physically abused by his maternal
grandfather, who sometimes lived with them.

His mother remarried when Marvin was eight, and his stepfather was yet
another abusive figure.

Marvin started drinking at age 10, the day after a teenage male cousin
sexually abused him during a sleep-over. Two weeks later, the cousin's
older brother did the same thing.

Marvin was responsible for stocking the basement beer fridge, and
nobody noticed when he helped himself.

By age 12, he was drinking before and after school. In his teen years,
Marvin would carry beer to school in his Adidas bag. He immersed
himself in sports - hockey, soccer, baseball - and often played while
he was drunk.

During a playoff hockey game, he was hung over from the night before,
and vomited on the ice while tending goal. Still, he was named MVP of
the game.

Then came the drugs - pot, LSD, pills and cocaine.

Trouble with the law followed. His first stint in prison was for
impaired driving. Another conviction resulted when he and a buddy
jumped a postal carrier, stripped him of his clothing, and used his
keys to steal mail over the next six months.

From the ages of 23 to 25, Marvin lived on the streets. He didn't want
to be at home, wasn't working and couldn't afford a place on top of
his drug habit. He ate out of dumpsters.

In 1985, Marvin left Ontario and moved to B.C., where he met Shelley.
She could nurse a drink all night long and still leave her glass half
full.

They married in 1987. Shelley knew Marvin drank, but didn't know the
full extent of it or about his drug addiction.

He was unfaithful and abusive to her, and she left him about three
years later. But they reunited, and their son Tyler was born in
January 1992.

Marvin's cocaine addiction worsened to the point where he burned out
the membranes in his nose. He learned how to "cook" crack cocaine to
inhale it, and he began smoking heroin.

Shelley thought Marvin was only smoking pot. She was more concerned
about his alcohol abuse, but his drug addiction developed into a
$2,000-a-week habit that he could no longer hide.

When their church pastor asked her if everything was OK, she broke
down and told him about her partner.

An intervention followed, and Marvin agreed to go into treatment, but
he was angry. After Shelley and the pastor dropped him off, Marvin's
parting words to his wife were: "If you take Tyler out of my life, I
will find you and you will wear cement shoes."

Three months into treatment, he left the centre and spent a weekend
relapsing. He showed up at his home and pleaded with Shelley to talk
to him. She refused. Marvin could see his son peering through the
upstairs window.

He decided that his wife and son deserved better. He would end his
life.

Marvin had a truck that veered to the left if he let go of the
steering wheel. While driving down the road, he threw his head and
arms out the window and screamed, "If you want me, take me now!"

The truck ran straight.

That night, back at the treatment centre, he swallowed a handful of
pills. When he awakened the next morning, he was angry.

He spent the entire day crying in front of a cross.

It was Sept. 9, 1996, and Marvin hasn't touched drugs or alcohol
since.

Marvin had a knack for listening to people's problems and empathizing
with them. Some suggested he would make a good counsellor.

He graduated from a two-year program at the Counsellor Training
Institute in Vancouver. He was named the class valedictorian and was
presented with the award for Outstanding Student Contribution to the
Community for a project involving street people.

He was later hired as a counsellor by the Union Gospel Mission in the
Downtown Eastside and worked there for four years.

But Marvin had a vision of something that took a more holistic
approach to addiction issues. He believed that the key to long-term
sobriety was developing deep relationships, which could only come out
of openness and honesty.

Those who carry secrets cannot be free.

He learned this from having the courage to share - at a 12-step
meeting - the secret of the sexual abuse he suffered at age 10.

Marvin and Shelley opened the basement of their Abbotsford home to
help one person get off drugs. By 2002, they had three.

Now, they run a trio of supportive recovery homes - two for men and a
new one for women - that have served as models for others through the
not-for-profit Psalm 23 Transition Society. They go to the "front
lines" with people battling addiction.

"I've never looked at this like a job. It's a passion," he says.
"We're trying to invest in one life at a time."

Tyler, now almost 18, will graduate from high school this year, and
attend university in Indiana on an academic scholarship. He is a
gifted football player and is thinking about becoming a police officer.

But it's his other aspiration that has Marvin excited. He told his dad
that he might want to take over Psalm 23 one day.

Psalm 23 Transition Society relies primarily on donations to run its
three facilities. Financial support is particularly needed for the new
10-bed women's home, House of Angels. One way to do this is through
the "sponsor an angel" program.

For more information, visit the website psalm23society.com or call
604-870-5616.