Ex-Addicts, Alcoholics Prove Selves at Al-Impics : Recovery: A festival of sports and games in Santa Clarita allows competitors to overcome past defeats.

Even though John Moncrief had competed in track at Inglewood High School only five years ago, he said he was amazed he could run Saturday afternoon.

Using cocaine while a student at Cal State Los Angeles had sapped his spirit, his cash and 60 pounds from his muscle-bound, 210-pound frame.

“It didn’t take long to realize I had a problem,” said Moncrief, while warming up for the men’s 50-yard dash at the 21st annual International Al-Impics at College of the Canyons.

“My life was going down, and I didn’t care about anything else,” he said.

Moncrief and nearly 7,000 other runners, weightlifters, horseshoe tossers and chess kings shared the thrill of having a good time while being sober at the Al-Impics, a festival of sports and games for recovering alcoholics and drug abusers.

The competitors and about 3,000 spectators braved the heat to cheer their friends on, picnic and celebrate their collective victory.

“I’m so proud of us,” said Melodey Thompson, a recovering crack addict. Thompson and her six friends from the Tarzana Treatment Center had just won a drill team competition. “This meant everything to us. We are really accomplishing things without being high.”

Groups of recovering drug and alcohol users from nearly 100 facilities from as far away as San Jose and Alberta, Canada, blanketed the college campus, wearing colored T-shirts with their agency’s name, or slogans that read “Really Free in 93,” “People in Progress” and “Courage.”

Moncrief heard about the Al-Impics in March after checking into the Warm Springs Rehabilitation Center, a facility for recovering drug and alcohol abusers located in Angeles National Forest between Castaic and Lake Hughes.

The former high school athlete soon began training. “I haven’t been in this good a shape since high school, which is a miracle in itself,” he said.

Inside the gym, a basketball tournament was being played, with men and women from various rehabilitation centers competing with each other. In the student center, contestants in the pinochle tournament were happily turning over their playing cards, while a rock bank made up of recovering alcoholics performed a tribute to the Rolling Stones.

“I thought this was just gonna be a little dud thing, something to just get you out of the bed,” laughed Aaron Starks, a resident of the Veterans Administration rehabilitation facility in West Los Angeles. He said he was pleasantly surprised.

While most of the fun seekers at the Al-Impics were just that, many of the sprinters and bodybuilders and hoop crashers looked like world-class athletes.

“A lot of athletes get caught up in drugs and alcohol,” said Kurt Freeman, founder and director of Antelope Valley Rehabilitation Centers, which sponsored the event.

“That is why this is so great,” Freeman said. “It reintroduces people to social activity and athletic competition, and success.”

When he began the event in 1972, Freeman said he thought of naming it the “Alcoholic Olympics,” but the name had a negative connotation. “People thought it was a drinking contest,” he said.

Over the years, the Al-Impics have attracted international attention.

John Dumont, an administrator of a national drug prevention agency in Argentina, said this was the second year a representative from his country attended the Al-Impics.

“We want to do something like this in Argentina,” Dumont said. “When you see all these thousands of people enjoying themselves, you see this is a tremendous success.”

By the end of the day, John Moncrief had placed third in the relay and long jump. But that didn’t matter.

“Being here competing, for me, is breaking this cycle,” he said. “When you’re an addict, you are afraid of success.

“Now I’m ready to go back and compete in life.”