'ADDICTS' ANGEL' FINDS HER CALLING IN COUNSELING

Some Hate Kat McClinton, Some Love Her. She Says She Doesn't Care.

FAIRLAWN - New Life Recovery Center Director Kat McClinton has a long,
long-range plan for her life: "I'm going to retire at 70 and volunteer here 30
more years. Then when I'm 100, I'm going on the 'Today' show, and when they ask
how I lived so long, I'll say, 'I love addicts and alcoholics - that's what
keeps me going,'" McClinton said.

McClinton, 56, has already retired once, after 25 years of teaching health,
physical education and drivers education in Montgomery County schools. But on a
field trip to a Roanoke substance-abuse treatment center in 1994, she realized
she had a new career waiting.

"Suddenly, I got the feeling in my gut that this is what I was meant to do,"
she said. "Those addicts were talking about what their lives had been like and
how the people helping them seemed to love them. It brought tears to my eyes.
To this day, I can't explain what happened, but I knew I had a mission."

Some hate her; some love her. Most of McClinton's clients in New River
Community Service's New Life Recovery Center react both ways to her tough-love,
hard-work stance.

"Hey, I don't care. It's not about me," she said. "I tell them, 'You used 24-7.
If you weren't using, you were scamming somebody to use, or having a hangover.
You must be as focused on your recovery as you were on your addiction, 24-7. No
excuses.' They have a love-hate relationship with me, but I'm their angel.
That's what I'm called around here, 'the Little Addicts' Angel.'"

"Hey, she's jumped all over me. I needed it," said Brian St. John, 22, who has
been clean of

drugs and alcohol since he went through the program with McClinton three years
ago. "We addicts deal with life by denial. She had to wake me up. Kat is one of
the most insightful people I've ever met. She has a true gift."

McClinton is tall and trim with a broom-straight bearing. She laughs easily but
is unrelenting in her commitment to sobriety for the alcoholics, oxycodone
addicts and other substance abusers who require treatment in the New Life
program. She starts her day at the center at 7:30 a.m. sticking needles into
residents' ear lobes (auricular acupuncture eases post-addiction depression and
cravings), posts a thought for addicts to meditate upon during acupuncture and
leads therapy groups.

In the evenings, she conducts a group for family members because "addiction is
a family problem," she says. Families who don't attend aren't allowed to visit
New Life.

McClinton wrote the policy and procedures for New Life Recovery Center, the New
River Valley's only residential substance-abuse treatment center, before it
opened in February 2000. Flinty rules: No one is allowed to smoke, on or off
the premises. Every resident must attend at least one Alcoholics Anonymous or
Narcotics Anonymous meeting each day. No one shirks chores. Everyone, even
homeless people court-ordered to New Life, must pay the $75 entry fee. No
excuses, no exemptions.

"My motto is: You pay the dope man to die; you pay me to live," McClinton said.
"You'd be surprised how these people who aren't supposed to have any money can
come up with some."

McClinton doesn't mince words about the outcome of untreated addiction. "They
die," she said. "They die of overdoses, car accidents, AIDS, cirrhosis,
hepatitis, exposure, suicide, withdrawal - they die a lot of ways. To me,
treatment is not about keeping them from stealing or doing something else; it's
about them living and not dying. And having a life - one that doesn't involve
looking over their shoulders and running from the police."

Addicts and alcoholics usually choose the 30-day stay in the New Life Center
only when it's offered as an alternative to going to jail, losing their
children or losing their jobs. They come with a bad attitude and a lot of crazy
behaviors.

"Everybody arrives externally motivated to be here," McClinton said. "Our job
here is to make them internally motivated ... to want to learn, to want to be
sober, to want to live. It's a standing joke that they have four days to be
crazy, and then I have 26 days to work a miracle."

The miracle often happens, she says, at least for the time they stay at New
Life.

On average, 64 percent of New Life's residents manage to stay clean and sober
for six to 12 months after treatment, the time when they receive follow-up
care. Only a handful of the 350 people who have completed treatment at New Life
have gotten their three-year chip for uninterrupted sobriety.

Overall, an estimated 16.6 million people - 7.3 percent of the population -
over the age of 12 abuse either alcohol or illicit drugs, according to a survey
done two years ago by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Administration. Of these, 3.2 million abused illicit drugs, 11 million abused
alcohol and 2.4 million abused both drugs and alcohol.

McClinton grew up face-to-face with the effects of addiction, although she
downplays its connection to her career. "My father was an alcoholic - he died
an alcoholic. I was married to an addict," she said. "But that had no bearing
on my decision." She planned to be a marriage and family counselor, but then
she started volunteering at Blue Ridge Community Services in Roanoke.

"What happened to me there was mystical," she said. "I found my mission."

She volunteered three nights a week, while teaching at Christiansburg Middle
School full time, taking graduate courses, running an after-school achievement
program and learning as much as she could about treating addicts.

When she received her master's degree from Radford University in 1995,
McClinton retired from teaching and started out-patient counseling with addicts
at New River Valley Community Services. When the New Life Center was built, she
became its first director.

McClinton has trained a staff of 15 at New Life. "Kat is totally dedicated to
helping addicts recover," said Bill Wharton, a service provider she trained.
"It drives her. When it comes to the welfare of the clients and sticking with
the procedures here, she accepts nothing less than perfection. At the same
time, she says there's nobody working here that never made a mistake. She
doesn't work here for the money. Nobody does. Some of us are in recovery
ourselves."

McClinton says not everyone can work with addicts. "They can be so
manipulative, so condescending, so resistant," she said. "It's hard to work
here if you have expectations for how they should do. You see more people that
don't make than do, too many relapses. It can make workers feel like they're
not accomplishing anything. ... I'm not so good I can save anybody. It's up to
them. I'm just a little tour guide. You can get on my bus ride to sobriety or
not. Your choice.

"Figures don't mean much to me," she said. "If one person is not dead, then the
program's working. My job is to help each person, one day at a time."