Center offers "boot camp" for drug recovery

LOUISVILLE -- They live together, cook and clean together, and regularly sit down to talk. They've seen each other sick and they've seen each other fail.

But the men and women of the Healing Place also keep each other going, pushing one another to sobriety as part of a program that boasts a 65-percent recovery rate.

"Out there, I thought I had friends," said Cammy Fields, a recovering meth and crack cocaine addict. "They were only friends when I had dope or money."

Fields said the people at the Healing Place love her for who she is, and despite what she's done in the past.

The peer- and abstinence-based drug and alcohol recovery program started in Louisville more than 15 years ago, and since has been replicated in cities throughout the country. Huntington residents have been working for more than 18 months to recreate the program locally.

Huntington City Council and the Cabell County Commission recently approved resolutions supporting the establishment of the Healing Place in Huntington.

Both Huntington and West Virginia as a whole need more treatment facilities, official say. Delegate Don Perdue, D-Wayne, said recently that there are more than 40,000 addicted substance abusers in West Virginia who need treatment, but there are only about 275 beds in the whole state for long-term substance abuse treatment.

Fields, from Lincoln County, Ky., has been at the Healing Place in Louisville for more than six months and recently started her eighth step of the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. The Healing Place requires clients complete the 12 steps to finish the program.

"The Healing Place has changed my way of thinking, changed my outlook on life," Fields said. "It has made be a want to be a better person, to help people."

Fields is now at a stage in the process where her 14-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son may visit her at the Healing Place on weekends. The Women's Community allows overnight visits when the women are ready, and children may eventually move in and live with the mother on campus.

The Healing Place serves approximately 300 men and 150 women in separate facilities near downtown Louisville. The program is led by recovered addicts, and is recognized by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as a "model that works."

When addicts first come to the Healing Place, they undergo a brief medical exam and are admitted into a detox unit for a few days if needed. They begin recovery in "off-the-street" shelters. In small rooms, four people share two metal bunk beds. Residents attend classes during the day to determine how motivated they are to get better.

Residents of the Healing Place must also follow five rules, or be kicked out. These are: No substance abuse, no violence or threats of violence, no sexually acting out, no racism and no stealing.

As residents progress through the recovery process, they gain more privileges and their living space increases.

"It's not the Betty Ford Clinic, but part of the reason the Healing Place is successful is because it brings you down to a humility that you need," said Skip Ewing, a recovered alcoholic who now works as a peer mentor. "It's like the boot camp of recovery, but with love."

The next step in the recovery process is called Phase. Residents begin job assignments such as cleaning bathrooms, doing laundry and cooking, and take life- and social-skills classes. The entire community meets three times a week to discuss personal issues such as inappropriate behavior or being late for class or a job. Residents with the most issues are often given a long list of assignments from their peers to correct their actions, from writing 1,000 words on "I'm Worth This Process" to assisting in the detox unit.

Clyde Harper, a training coordinator at the Healing Place and a recovered heroin addict, describes the center's model as a hierarchy that has been turned upside down. There are no addiction specialists with master's degrees teaching classes or evaluating residents. Addicts teach addicts.

That builds trust and accountability that can't be found in traditional recovery programs, Harper said.

"As you go through the program, you begin to view the help you are getting as a gift," Harper said. "You protect it with tenacity. That translates into holding yourself accountable and others accountable for their actions."

Jay Davidson, the Healing Place's president and chief executive officer, agrees, and says that it also why the program is so easily replicated.

"The model is transferable anywhere across the United States because the people are in the neighborhood," Davidson said. "The men and women teaching the classes have instant credibility."

As the residents move through the recovery process, they get to the point where they can help others as peer mentors, a role that 19-year-old Vanessa Roth of Union, Ky., now fills. She has been at the Healing Place for more than 10 months.

"I was a heroin addict and God intervened," she said.

Roth was 15 when she started drinking and using heroin. She said the Healing Place has helped her more than words can say, boosting her self-esteem and teaching her accountability.

"It taught me a lot of valuable lessons," she said.

Roth recently left the Louisville center to help start a Healing Place program in Harlan, Ky. She was looking forward to the move before she left.

"I'm really excited. I've never had a real job before," she said. "I'm excited to have a chance to help young people."

Bennett Elmore, a slender, clean-cut 29-year-old, traveled from Tuscaloosa, Ala., 10 months ago to get help for his drug and alcohol addiction. He tried eight different substance abuse recovery centers before coming to the Healing Place.

Elmore began drinking at age 10 and used marijuana, prescription painkillers and LSD frequently as a teenager. He was sentenced to a year in jail after breaking into a pharmacy. Shortly after his release, he started smoking crack cocaine.

"That's what really landed me at the Healing Place," he said.

On paper, he said, the recovery program seems improbable.

"How can someone who just came out of substance abuse recovery be expected to help someone coming into recovery? But that's the basis of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's one addict helping another," Elmore said.

The program costs $25 per person per day, but many clients don't pay.

Approximately one-third of the Louisville program's $2.6 million budget comes from government sources, and the rest comes from private donations and grants. The Healing Place receives no insurance co-pays, no Medicare and no Medicaid.

Huntington area officials estimate they would need $3 million to open a facility in Huntington, and about $500,000 a year to run the program. It would initially have 50 to 100 beds for men, according to Kim Miller, a part-time planner for the Healing Place and manager of women's addiction services for Prestera Center for Mental Health Services.

The West Virginia Legislature gave the Healing Place of Huntington $100,000 in fiscal year 2007 and will do so again in 2008, Miller said.

She said the Healing Place will compete for funds from the West Virginia OxyContin lawsuit settlement involving Purdue Pharma, as $3 million of that $44 million is supposed to fund treatment and recovery services in the state.

Miller said the Healing Place also will continue to look for help from the federal government and business and individual donations.

She said a site for the facility has not been chosen, but local officials have looked at the old Regency Park senior center on Madison Avenue, a church in Fairfield West, the old Ames building on W.Va. 152 and a steelworkers union hall on Buffington Avenue in Guyandotte.

"It's definitely a worthwhile project and I think that Huntington is ready for it because of all the things that are going on in our community," Miller said. "We are suffering. Part of the solution to the violence and the drug problem in Huntington is to offer more paths to recovery."

The public is invited to attend Healing Place planning meetings at 6 p.m. on the second Thursday of each month at Christ Temple Church, located off of Johnstown Road.

Reporter Bryan Chambers contributed to this report.