SOME ADDICTS TAKE PATH OF GOD TO RECOVERY

DURHAM -- About nine months ago, Jesus told Sherman Steele to put down the
crack pipe.

It was a Saturday morning and Steele was "high as a Georgia Pine." He was
sitting on the end of his bed flipping channels, trying to escape the
paranoia that accompanies the crack.

"Some [users] hide in closets. ... I flipped channels," said Steele, 55.
Steele's wife was in the hospital recovering from surgery for ovarian cancer.

The channel landed on a rebroadcast of a Sunday service from the Greater
Joy Baptist Church.

"I got ready to take a hit of crack and the words came up on the screen to
call this number at this church and we will help you," Steele said.

Bishop James Daniel was at the point in the service where he asks former
drug addicts in his congregation to stand.

Alone in his bedroom, Steele stood.

From the 27-inch color TV, Bishop Daniel told Steele he wouldn't be
shunned at this church.

"Some of these folks are ashamed," Daniel said.

Stand.

It isn't about what other people think or about your past mistakes, Daniel
said.

"For this moment alone, say:

'I'm free...'"

Praise the Lord I'm free,

No longer bound,

There's no chains holding me

My soul is rested, it's just my blessing,

Praise the Lord, Hallelujah, I'm free.

"Something hit me spiritually, because every time I would come into the
living room where I have that Jesus picture hanging, it looked like he was
looking at me," Steele said.

Steele started smoking marijuana about 25 years ago. He tried acid,
quaaludes and sniffing cocaine. It was when he learned how to cook cocaine
that he got hooked, he said.

Steele, who lives on a disability check, paid about $300 a month for crack.

When he was short, he would pawn his TV, VCR and stereo. He would do $1,000
worth of labor for $50. He helped carry a friend's mother's $4,000 bedroom
set to a dealer, who paid $50 for it. He let drug dealers from New York use
his house as a base of operation. And when he used all the money they gave
him, he fed their dogs.

Sometimes, when he bought phony cocaine, he would go back and rob dealers
who wouldn't think twice about shooting a crack addict, he said. While he
was high, he would sit in his apartment and be paranoid. He once cut open
the couch because he thought someone was hiding in it.

Old Satan, he had me chained and bound

I couldn't do nothing,

He was always pulling me down,

but my soul is resting, it's just my blessing

Praise the Lord, Hallelujah, I'm free.

Steele picked up the phone and called the number. He told the person who
answered that he was addicted to crack and he wanted to die.

The voice on the phone asked him if he had any crack right now.

He still had the rest of a $50 gram. The voice told him to flush it down
the commode. Steele looked in the bathroom and said he wasn't sure that was
a very good idea. The voice said they would send somebody. An hour later
Charlie Barnette knocked on the door.

Barnette said he had been clean nine years. Steele said he had tried AA and
the Durham County Jail's STARR treatment program.

Steele said Barnette told him, "'The next step was Jesus Christ,' and if I
wanted him to, he would come get me Sunday morning and go to church."

Steele hasn't used since.

It hasn't been easy, he said. He's gained a belly from eating honey buns
when he gets a craving. He's lost his network of friends and has alienated
himself from his old world.

His apartment, which used to be regularly full with friends, is usually
empty now. He cleaned the fish tank so much the fish died.

But now he talks to his mother a lot and goes to church every Friday and
Sunday. And on Sunday morning he wakes up and has a big breakfast with
eggs, toast and grits.

"This is a drug dealer's meal," Steele tells his wife.

I was out there

lost in that old world of sin,

I couldn't find no comfort, there was no peace within.

Then, Jesus touched me,

Now I feel like myself again.

Praise the Lord, Hallelujah, I'm free.

Recent scientific research shows that drug abuse can have long-term effects
on brain activity. Over time, what was once a choice turns into a chronic,
relapsing illness.

Just as each addict has his own drug and his unique "triggers," each addict
needs to tailor his recovery treatment to individual needs.

Some try to overcome their addictions through Jesus, some through
court-ordered programs, some with methadone and some through nonprofit
services offered by groups such as Triangle Residential Options for
Substance Abusers, 12-step programs such as Narcotics Anonymous, or the
Christian-centered tough love of the Durham Rescue Mission.

Addiction and mental illness need a holistic approach, says Kevin McDonald,
founder and director of TROSA. Social services and addiction services need
to work together.

TROSA is a two-year program that helps substance abusers get clean and
become self-sufficient through businesses that serve as vocational schools.
The businesses include brickwork, moving, landscaping, construction, a
frame shop and an auto body shop.

One problem is that addiction services aren't the kind of thing the public
wants to spend tax money on, he said.

"Politically, addiction services are a dead end," he said. "It is easier to
work with the status quo," he said.

TROSA has 275 clients, 55 of whom are women. The program doesn't admit
people who are charged with violent crimes.

"Life is going to bring calamities to you," said Jesse Battle, director of
TROSA programs. "But you don't drown by falling into the water. You drown
by staying in there."

TROSA teaches people to face everyday life in an environment that doesn't
allow a retreat to drugs, Battle said. He came through the program himself
in 1995.

"I think Durham has done a good job supporting TROSA and that type of
program is the way out of addiction and poverty," said Patrick Byker,
chairman of the Friends of Durham, a moderate to conservative political
action group in Durham.

"It is the best option people in Durham have for overcoming substance abuse
and poverty," he said.

When poor people are limited by transportation to treatment, unstable work,
a jail or prison record and inability to afford to move away from the
environment where they used drugs, recovery is a much more daunting task,
said James Finch, medical director for Durham County Addiction Medical
Services.

"Poverty does make it harder to recover, but it is important not to lose
sight of the fact that people do recover, no matter how poor they are," he
said. "I have seen people with all the resources in the world go down the
tube. I see people who will recover with next to nothing."

Being poor raises the bar of difficulty, he said, because it is more
difficult to get access to treatment and tools that will help solidify
recovery - such as job skills, transportation and the ability to move out
of a high-risk area.

On Sunday, Bishop Daniel hugs everyone who enters the Greater Joy Baptist
Church in North-East Central Durham.

"God bless you," he says warmly, welcoming each.

Daniel, a former Duke Medical Center hospital administrator and assistant
to the chief executive officer in 1987, started the church in 1989 with 18
members. He was related to 11 of them. Now the church has 1,200 members.

Helping addicts is a regular part of his ministry.

"It's a problem. It is here. So we have to deal with it," he said.

Greater Joy is a place where the Word of God isn't something you hear, but
feel.

"Can I get a witness?" Daniel calls out.

The choir's song is a doorway to movement.

A young woman in a green print dress with a matching scarf shouts "praise
Jesus" at the top of her lungs. Elderly women in pressed white suits throw
their arms in the air, stomp their feet and kick their heels in a rhythmic
frenzy of spirit.

Steele, who has attended every Sunday for nine months, puts his palms out,
dips his head back, and lets the tears flow.