FAITH-BASED PROGRAM OFFERS NEW BEGINNINGS

It was early January 2006. Cory Smith had his last smoke outside a Tim
Hortons in London, then drove with his dad to the farm where he'd live for
the next 12 months. He was nervous, he said, as they turned off a country
road lined with a pretty, white picket fence, then up a long driveway, past
a sign that alerts visitors, "This property is under surveillance" and
another that declares, "Teen Challenge -- character is who you are when you
are alone."

Smith, 20, walked into the nicely appointed office, paid his $700 entry fee
and never looked back.

"I knew I had nowhere else to go," he said in early April.

Smith's father, of Aylmer, had been encouraging him for months to go to
Teen Challenge Farm, a faith-based alcohol and drug rehabilitation program
for men 18 and older. Started in 1973 in a Hamilton coffee house, the
Ontario centre has its roots in Brooklyn, N.Y., where a young preacher
named David Wilkerson answered a call from God and reached out to youth
gang members in 1958. Today there are Teen Challenge programs for men and
women all over the world.

A manual tells new residents, "You will encounter the power of God
dynamically as your life is changed. Over the 50-year life of Teen
Challenge worldwide, we have learned some principles that may appear tough
at first. Our prayer is that God will do a miraculous work in your life
while you are here."

Smith first toured the farm, a collection of grey and white buildings
sitting in a field, at the urging of his father in August 2005. "I didn't
know exactly what to think," he said. Five months later, he signed on to a
regimen that maps out his every move.

"I was pretty much at the end of my rope," he said.

Smith recounted his childhood and teenage years in Aylmer and Tillsonburg.

His dad left his mother when he was three, he said. He first tried
marijuana at the age of 12 while a student at Davenport Public School.

He graduated and entered East Elgin Secondary School, where, he said, there
were "a lot of drugs. Weed was all over." The police were at the campus
with the canine unit every other week, he said. He left Grade 9 two weeks
into the school year. "I'd go to school, get my buddies and smoke drugs all
day," he said. At 15, he tried ecstasy, a stimulant, and special K, a
hallucinogen.

By now, he and his brother were living with his mother in Tillsonburg. He
got into pills, he said, by stealing them from his mom who'd been
prescribed the pain killer percocets. "When you're looking for percocets,
that's when you run into the drug dealers," he said. He ran into a lot of
dealers at the Imperial Hotel. "When you're selling it, you can buy coke
cheap," he said. For two months, he lived with his brother in a house that
had no hydro. His mother, he said, had taken off with her boyfriend. The
boys cooked their meals over a candle.

When he was 16, Smith tried cocaine and stayed hooked for three years. He
then moved on to crack cocaine, a drug he described as far more potent. "It
ruined my life," he said. He supported his habit in his early teens by
dealing marijuana. Later, he stole things so that he could sell them and
get money to buy drugs. He got caught and did time in an open custody
facility in London.

In late 2005, Smith stopped doing hard drugs while living at his father's
house in Aylmer. He had "cold sweats and the shakes" as he went through
withdrawal. His first two weeks at the farm were tough, he said, as his
body withdrew from all drugs including alcohol and cigarettes. "For the
first three days I stared out the window," he said. He was happy to meet
his room-mate, a Simcoe man his own age who'd completed the first phase of
the program and would act as his buddy.

The schedule is tough, said Teen Challenge Farm general manager Jim Park.
Men who have done what they want when they want find it very structured, he
said. Residents wake up at 6:45 a.m. They have five minutes to get out of
bed and 30 minutes to make their bed, shower and dress before attending
morning devotions - a time for prayer and Bible reading. The rest of the
day is broken up into meal time, chores and work detail, chapel time, study
time, free time, more devotions, dorm time and quiet time. Students go to
bed at 10:30 p.m.

Teen Challenge calls itself the proven cure for the drug epidemic. Park
attributes the program's success to its faith-based approach.

"It's a life change, not just a behaviour change," he said. "Lots of men
come to the centre who don't have previous exposure to spirit."

Weighing 20 pounds more than the day he arrived, Smith said he likes
feeling healthy. "I believe it was God's calling for me to come here."

Quick facts:

Dennis James, deputy clinical director of addictions programs at the Centre
for Addictions and Mental Health, said 10 to 15 per cent of people who use
drugs and alcohol will go on to have a problem.

The 2005 Ontario Student Drug Use Survey, the longest running survey in
Canada of alcohol and drug use by young people, said one-third of students
surveyed reported that someone had tried to sell them drugs.

Resources: Call Teen Challenge Farm at 519-652-0777 or 1-888-417-7777. For
more information on the vehicle donation program, go online to tcfarm.org.

Read the Ontario Student Drug Use Survey online at
camh.net/Research/osdus.html.

Cutlines:

1-Cory Smith, 20, entered Teen Challenge Farm, a faith-based drug and
alcohol rehab centre near London, in January 2006. He started doing drugs
when he was 12.

2-Teen Challenge Farm, on Sharon Road in Lambeth, is one of five Teen
Challenge programs in Canada. Funds are being raised to start a women's
program in southwest Ontario.

3-A sign on the driveway leading to Teen Challenge Farm in Lambeth lets
visitors know the property is under surveillance.

4-Teen Challenge Farm, a faith-based drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre
in Lambeth, has 50 residents and a two-month waiting list.

5-Teen Challenge Farm general manager Jim Park said most of the centre's
residents come from southwest Ontario. They range in age from 18 to 60.

6-Teen Challenge Farm receives no government funding. Some of the money it
needs to run comes from the sale of used vehicles that people donate. Here,
employee Paul Klemmer unloads a 1993 Lumina. Residents will repair it
before it's auctioned off.