A STRUGGLE TO STAY CLEAN, TO SAVE SOULS

The men bake sweet flan for the soul. They sell the caramel custard after
Sunday church services and go door to door in Orlando neighborhoods where
the name Hogar CREA is as common as San Juan or Bayamon.

They wash cars on weekends, cook and deliver meals around town, clean up
trash after street festivals. They do all of it in search of a way out of
the darkness of their addictions, to build character, change destructive
ways and get to the core of what led them astray.

It's not a quick fix to replace the old fix of dope up the vein or snow up
the nose. The men know it's a lifelong struggle to stay clean, to save
their very souls.

"Treatment's not easy," Edwin Moran, 26, told me while sitting in the
sparse dining room of one of Hogar CREA's residential treatment centers.
Just one block from Colonial Drive near downtown Orlando, the home has
enough bunk beds in three tidy bedrooms for 15 men. "Not everyone can adapt
to this. They don't want to understand that they bring bad habits that
aren't conducive to recovery, and they have to face up to that."

Facing up begins with a 2 1/2-year residential program that's built on the
recovering addicts' sweat labor and contributions from people who put their
faith in God's grace to help others. Surely, Hogar CREA is what President
Bush means when he stumps for his faith-based initiative.

For now, the Orlando program doesn't get a dime from government, even
though the work the Christian-based program is doing to keep people out of
prison saves taxpayers loads.

CREA's Spanish acronymn stands for Community for the Re-Education of
Addicts. Started by Juan Jose Garcia Rios, who battled his own addiction
demons in Puerto Rico, the program has grown to treat more than 51,000
addicts over 31 years, with 28,000 successfully completing the program.
That's pretty good odds, considering that kicking a habit like
cancer-causing cigarettes can take several tries over many years.

Garcia's son, Javier, who oversees the Orlando operations, says the
community support has been terrific. No one pays a fee to get treatment.
It's a strict, tiered program in which those who have been there, in the
depths of despair, help lead the others up. Many started drinking, smoking
pot as young as 12 or 13 and bottomed out using heroin and cocaine.

With programs in several states, Latin America and now three homes for 48
men in Orlando, Hogar CREA is opening a women's residential facility here
next year. It welcomes anyone willing to travel the hard road of recovery,
regardless of race or ethnicity. Doctors, psychologists and others donate
their time, and volunteer boards at each home ensure that average expenses
of $5,000 -- for rents, utilities, and all the rest -- are covered each month.

The men start each day at 6:30 a.m with prayer and therapy sessions after
breakfast. Their daily critiques of each other's weaknesses, the midday
hour-long prayer and meditation, the weekly family therapy -- all of it is
designed to empower with humility.

Samuel Nieves knows how hard it can be. He is on his third trip back to
Hogar CREA, having first kicked heroin in 1980. The 40-something,
recovering addict talks about his obligation to his wife and children, the
pain he caused them during his last fall from grace. Now he sees them on
family nights when they visit the Orlando home he oversees, serving as a
father figure to the younger men.

"We work on everything, from helping them change their swagger in their
walk, to the way they drive, everything that requires discipline," Nieves
said. "In many cases we're dealing with men who are boys at an emotional
level. They never matured."

During the Christmas season, it can be particularly tough for recovery.
That's why Maritza Sanz, who runs the non-profit Latino Leadership Inc.,
has started collecting donations so that, come Christmas Day, the men
without families in the Orlando area will know that this community cares
and values their determination to lead productive lives. The men need
toiletries, bed linens, comforters, shaving kits -- the basics that many of
us take for granted. If you want to help, call Sanz at 407-384-2929.

These young men just need to know that this community is routing for them,
because too often in their lives they've felt they deserve nothing but the
agony of addiction disguised as a good time to nowhere.