FIGHTING 'THE MONSTER'

Former Crack Addict Forms Group In Petersburg To Help Those Still Addicted

PETERSBURG -- At the end of the day, Becky Wyatt exited a small corner
building and strode toward her white Toyota Avalon.

As Wyatt, 53, popped open the trunk and sorted through some boxes, the
white in her coordinated blouse and flats shone in the dimly lit parking
lot. Her bracelet and necklace sparkled as she flung her long black hair to
one side.

It was after 9 p.m., and Wyatt was headed home. Hours earlier, she had left
her job as an area supervisor for six L.A. Weight Loss centers and driven
to the corner building at 4 S. Market St.

She whipped into a room where a meeting had started without her.

Her navy blue blazer flapped open as she dropped her bag on a table and sat
down.

She waited her turn.

"Hi, my name is Becky, and I'm an addict."

"Hi, Becky," responded eight others who, like Wyatt, are recovering from
addiction to alcohol, cigarettes and drugs -- mostly crack cocaine.

Wyatt leaned forward.

"How ready are you?" she asked the group of participants in the Friends
Against Crack program, her voice escalating. "Are you entirely ready to
recover and willing to do what you need to do?"

Wyatt, the daughter of an Army paratrooper, had lived in exotic countries
before her family settled on a 137-acre farm in Dinwiddie County when she
was 12.

She speaks authoritatively and articulately. Educated at places such as
Virginia State University in Ettrick and the John Marshall School of Law in
Atlanta, Wyatt has held many jobs -- in mostly sales and banking -- and
once had her own fitness business.

But in 1994, the attractive and once goal-oriented Wyatt abandoned her
career and a husband who was a Navy flight surgeon, making it her seventh
failed marriage. She turned away from a $50,000-a-year salary, a closet of
crocodile shoes and a BMW.

Crack cocaine -- Wyatt called it "the monster" -- had taken total control
of her life.

Wyatt, also a former songwriter and model, had started drinking when she
was 22 to cope with the death of her father. Years later, she graduated to
crack. At first, she used it only recreationally, she said. Eventually, she
became addicted, left home and wandered around Atlanta for two years
without so much as a toothbrush.

At the age of 43, after "walking off the face of the earth for two years,"
she called her family in Petersburg and they welcomed her home. Her eyes
were sunken and she had lost so much weight that she had to wear her
11-year-old niece's clothing.

Despite her parents' help, she foundered. She would stroll to the street
corner looking to buy her next fix. Her regular run was down Washington
Street, right onto Sycamore Street and another right onto Shore Street,
looking for "the monster."

During a routine traffic stop in Petersburg in 1997, police found an empty
crack pipe in her possession.

She was sent to a 91-day treatment program in Richmond and says she has
been clean ever since. She has now established a home for addicts on one of
those corners.

Wyatt created the Friends Against Crack program in Petersburg seven years
ago to help those seeking recovery and to dispel myths about the drug.

It's not just poor people who fall prey to cocaine, she says. Addicts can
come from two-parent homes. Recovery is not shameful.

The group meets every Sunday and Tuesday in a building adjoined to a
car-repair shop and surrounded by large, plate-glass windows. Written in
bold red letters, the legend "Friends Against Crack" is stretched across
the outside on white paper.

"We're not meeting in secret," she told the group. "Don't you want the
world to know that you are recovered? How many addicts walk this route
every day? They need to know we're here. There's no anonymity in recovery."

Rhonda Smith is in her second month of recovery. She almost lost custody of
her newborn child after the child tested positive for cocaine.

An older son, now 2, drags a yellow and red wagon through the middle of the
group, which sits in a circle on purple-cushioned chairs.

The tot, who was born addicted to cocaine, is not a distraction. To the
group, he's a sign of hope.

Wyatt tells Rhonda that the child is fortunate to have a mother who cares
enough to make him part of her recovery. Rhonda listens, her short, crinkly
hair scattered about her head and a yellow stain on her T-shirt.

"I came out looking like this. I could have been somewhere else," Rhonda,
34, said between sobs in her second session with the group. "But I'm here.
I need to make a decision. I have to do this for my children."

Petersburg, a city of roughly 34,000, has battled a crack epidemic for many
years. Several organizations have been in the trenches fighting the
problem, but few as openly and visibly as Wyatt's.

Her nonprofit organization has received recognition from the Virginia
Department of Corrections, the New York Urban League, churches, Virginia
State University and community organizations.

It has received funding through donations from places as diverse as the
Colonial Heights Rotary Club and L.A. Weight Loss.

L.A. Weight Loss has donated $20,000 to Friends Against Crack, she said.

"Petersburg has its fair share of drug problems," said Dave Merritt, former
president of the Colonial Heights Rotary Club, which donated $700 and a
computer to the group. "[Wyatt] is reaching out there at the grass-roots
level, trying to help."

Merritt, assistant governor for the Rotary district that includes central
Virginia, Southside Virginia and Hampton Roads, said he realized the
program's effectiveness after hearing testimonies from participants.

Wyatt recently published an autobiography, believing that if she could
change, others could too.

"Who would have thought the beer and wine sipped as we sat on the front
campus of Virginia State University under the magnificent magnolias in 1971
would become a phenomenal craving for crack cocaine by 1994?," she writes
in "From Wilderness to Witness, the Riches to Rags to Riches Again."

It has been years since she sipped alcohol, puffed on a cigarette or smoked
crack. But she's still struggling, she said. The monster still calls.

Reuben Nicholas, a 57-year-old alcoholic and addict, used to feel like a
hostage. He's now realizing that he has to be responsible for himself.

It's not good to have a physical craving that makes you forget to pay your
rent and forget how to take care of your personal hygiene, Nicholas said as
he sat behind a table at the meeting.

"That was insanity. It kept me in bondage for years. It feels good just to
come here," Nicholas, a carpenter, told the group at the recovery meeting.

Wyatt smiled as two more addicts walked in off the street. Young and old,
black and white, the group shouted words of encouragement as each addict
told his story.

Frank Williams, a recovering addict who had opened the meeting with a
reading of the Lord's Prayer, told the group he was grateful his daughter
came back to Petersburg to go to college and be near him.

"There was a time when I didn't care about that," he said quietly. "I'm
real proud of her.

When Wyatt looks at Smith, Nicholas and Williams, she sees where she could
be. She doesn't want to go back there.

Now in her eighth marriage, Wyatt might occasionally see a bottle of
schnapps on the counter.

Her reliance on alcohol and drugs created self-centeredness and character
defects that eventually ended her marriages, she said.

She married her current husband at her father's gravesite in Petersburg.
She was clean and sober and ready to finally grieve, she said.

Wyatt's husband takes an occasional drink, and Wyatt finds herself in the
company of social drinkers at various events.

So the temptation is there, Wyatt says. She sees, but she never craves. She
knows that if she touches it, she loses. The monster won't win, she says.

She credits "the God of my understanding" for her reconnection to her
spiritual core. "God's amazing grace is the sustaining power of my recovery."

After the session and the hugs, the group stands in a circle holding hands
and begins to pray.

"For that addict walking in that crack house for the first time," intones
Wyatt's sister, the Rev. Jeannie Ward, who leads the prayer.

"For that addicted alcoholic that will die today not knowing this meeting
was here."

Rhonda's son leaves his wagon and links a hand with his mother's in prayer.

"For those that didn't know that there was a better way."