Future Moms Working to Become Free of Drugs

Deneen was tired of sleeping at bus stops. She was tired of using crack but didn’t know how to stop. Even after getting pregnant, she kept cruising El Cajon Boulevard as a $125-a-night prostitute. One night, a paying customer broke her arm. She kept working, kept turning tricks, kept feeling hopeless and kept using crack (a type of cocaine).

Deneen’s life was like a never-ending blues song until she realized “I have a baby inside me.” She likes to think the baby saved her life--got her to stop using drugs and made her admit herself to Born Free, a drug rehabilitation home here for pregnant women.

The women at Born Free have lived life on the edge. Several have worked as prostitutes or turned to other crimes to pay for drug habits. Several have sampled drugs as heavy as heroin, as psychologically crippling as cocaine. All are either pregnant or have just had babies. Several have had children, some of whom live at Born Free.

Opened in June

Born Free is “the baby” of Jeanne McAlister, 55, who owns the McAlister Institute, which also runs KIVA, a 9-year-old program for drug-addicted women with children. Born Free, which opened in June in a sprawling house on a hilly country road, grew out of a need within KIVA to serve women who are pregnant but still battling addiction.

At the moment, KIVA houses 22 women and 6 children and receives most of the $500,000 a year that the county gives to the McAlister Institute, under which 13 programs are administered. Born Free, operated entirely with private funds, houses two 4-year-olds, one 2-year-old, one 6-month-old (Deneen’s son) and six women between the ages of 20 and 30. Four of those women are pregnant.

No one admitted to Born Free is still physically dependent on drugs. All enter a hospital detoxification program before being admitted. Those suffering from heroin addiction usually stay in the program 21 days before entering Born Free. Once they arrive in Spring Valley, the focus is on getting well emotionally through the 12-step program pioneered by Alcoholics Anonymous.

The Born Free staff numbers three: Linda Batista, a recovering addict who says she took heroin for 17 years, through two pregnancies of her own; Eva Moody, a “grandmotherly” type who lives at the house and has the distinction of being neither an alcoholic nor a drug addict, and Tori Foster (like Batista, a KIVA graduate), who “lives in” on weekends.

Work Regimen

The resident women get up by 7 every morning, and each has a list of household chores to complete every day. They are not allowed to leave, even for weekends, unless the staff is assured that the person taking them away is “safe”--meaning he or she does not use drugs and will not expose them to anyone who does. The arrangement isn’t foolproof--it’s based entirely on trust--but Batista said it has worked well.

The work regimen is more difficult than the women were used to and is potentially confining, but the women talk openly of loving Born Free, if only for its safety and sense of security. And, they say, for the feeling that they’re finally making progress--that they finally have hope.

Born Free leaders say other programs around the country have contained similar elements but that Born Free is unique in these respects: It’s a residential program that provides a drug-free environment during and after pregnancy; it offers extensive courses and counseling, and it provides a support network of other women who have faced the same trauma.

“It’s wonderful here,” said Deneen, the first client of Born Free, who asked that her last name not be published. “I have a bed to sleep in. No bus stops anymore. I have plenty to eat, and so does my baby. I have a place to take baths. I haven’t had that for so long.

“Nobody’s ever taken care of me the way these women do. I have real friends here. These women have done the same things I have, and here we are, just all taking care of each other.”

After first entering Born Free, Deneen said, she used to have nightmares, vivid ones, about “the pipe,” the instrument used to freebase crack. (Freebasing involves smoking or inhaling the drug in a liquefied form, which supposedly increases its intensity.) She said she sees the pipe as “an instrument of death, one that came mighty close to killing me.” She would wake up screaming at 5 a.m. but said, “Somebody was always there to comfort me. It just ain’t that way at the bus stop.”

She feels life is better now, but, she said, she is far from well. She first used drugs as a New Jersey street kid growing up in the ghetto. Crack was part of her life. Deneen’s use of crack accelerated after “my man just didn’t love me the way I wanted him to--and then he left me.” Crack “took away the pain” and helped assuage the feeling of hopelessness.

Born Free uses outside therapists if the staff deems it to be necessary. Batista and MacAlister said such programs are never 100% successful, that some women leave, unable able to take the regimen, unready to stop using drugs. Batista said that, since the center opened in June, four women have left. (A total of 12 have been admitted. Most are referred by social agencies or by word of mouth.)

Jessica, 20, one of Deneen’s roommates, used drugs for seven years before admitting herself to Born Free. She said she couldn’t take the routine at KIVA, which she said is more demanding and involves a higher population.

She comes from an alcoholic family, in which she was physically and sexually abused by both parents. She said her parents have reacted with hostility to the news of her efforts to get drug-free.

She had one baby at 17. That son is now 2 and lives at Born Free. He was spending most of a recent afternoon playing with two other boys in the front yard, while a big dog and a clowder of calico cats scampered among them.

‘Learn to Live Clean’

“Here you learn how to depend on yourself,” Jessica said. “You learn to live clean--you learn that you can live clean. You make your bed, you cook your meals. These are skills a lot of us just never mastered before. You learn a lot of good parenting skills.

“I’ve had 74 days clean, and it feels like a miracle. God gave me something special.

“I believe I got pregnant to save my life. I want to get well for this baby’s sake, and for mine. The difference is, now I really think I can.

“I look back on my life and can’t believe I did some of those things. The way I hated myself, it was like a slow suicide. Every time you do a drug, you’re killing yourself. It takes so long to realize it and so much longer to finally do something to stop.”

Celeste, 24, is a bright, articulate woman who once dreamed of an acting career. She developed a two-year addiction to freebasing cocaine, which she did even when she had a child. She is now several months pregnant with her second child and credits her mother’s influence--and her mother’s spirituality--with getting her to Born Free.

“I’m one of the newest ones, so I’m not out of the woods yet,” she said. “But being clean feels so good. The worst thing about drugs is not being in control at all. I, too, feel kind of like the baby saved me. If I hadn’t gotten pregnant, I probably wouldn’t have gotten clean. It sounds crazy, but getting pregnant is one of the best things that could have happened.”

McAlister said it does sound sound crazy to a lot of people, but the women are serious when they say that. It often takes something like pregnancy, she said, to bring a drug-addicted person back to reality.

McAlister has worked in the profession 15 years. She’s a strong, earthy woman with a loud laugh and a proclivity for using obscenities. In her office are photographs of her with her German shepherds. She has a giant birdcage that houses a brightly colored cockateel.

“I love all living creatures,” she said.

McAlister is proud of being “clean” 31 years and of the work she has done. She has recently won recognition that she calls long overdue. She made a recent appearance on television’s “Sally Jessy Raphael Show” and has seen Born Free highlighted on the Cable News Network and other networks.

Strong Motivation

She says motivation for getting people clean isn’t hard to come by. She says there’s no worse sight in the world than a drug-addicted baby writhing and throwing up, trying to shake a heroin habit that he didn’t ask for--he just got it from his mama.

She said heroin and methadone addictions are the hardest for anyone to kick--babies, mothers or anyone else. She said hospitals are admitting more and more drug-addicted mothers and babies, and the numbers alone, McAlister said, make the Born Free agencies of the world worth keeping.

She said funding is increasingly difficult to come by, “even with the need rising so dramatically.” Because of the need, and the delicacy of the problem, she intends to keep all women who enter Born Free for at least 18 months.

McAlister has turned over most of the work to her staff, to women like Batista. But she occasionally pokes her head in to make sure things are working OK.

Her style seems like the real thing to the women of Born Free, who have resentment radar for any kind of stuffy, by-the-book nonsense. McAlister, they say, is their kind of person.

“I want those girls at least 18 months,” McAlister said. “I have to get my fat little hands on ‘em for at least that long. I yells at ‘em, but I love ‘em too. And , I’m gonna get ‘em well.”

Batista, who spends more time with the women and realizes how newborn their own sense of wellness really is, said the hardest part “is getting these women to take a good hard look at themselves. It’s real, real difficult.”

“These women have spent a lifetime making excuses for themselves, like I used to do,” she said. “But you have to believe they will stay clean. Still, it’s so much more complicated than just saying no.

“You know the best thing they have goin’ for ‘em? They’ve got babies that deserve a chance. We’ll do everything we can to make sure they get it.”