Road to Recovery Can Be Humbling for Addicts

When they arrive at the door of Impact Drug and Alcohol Treatment Center--some still drunk or high--they surrender their tattered lives to schedules and rules.

Beds must be made by 7:30 a.m. Daily showers are recorded on sign-up sheets. No more than six changes of clothing are allowed. Men and women are kept apart.

There’s plenty of talk therapy, much of it based on 12-step programs and individual counseling. And chores are a cornerstone of what Impact’s executive director calls his mini-society.

Haven’t cleaned a toilet in 20 years? You will now. Don’t know your way around the kitchen? Working there will be your first job. The routine is almost infantilizing. But then, said one clinical caseworker and former drug user, addicts are a lot like babies. For them, kicking drugs requires some growing up.

The staff at Impact in Pasadena believe their methods can restore--or create--a sense of responsibility among drug addicts who have neglected everything to pursue their high.

Executive Director James Stillwell said the cleaning jobs and rules at the center are designed to instill humility rather than to humiliate. The idea is to strip away the arrogance of addicts--especially the idea that they can control their drug use--as well as their talent for making excuses.

“I want to put you in an environment where you’re forced to ask questions: ‘I don’t know how to do this. Show me how to do that,’ ” he said. “You have to develop that same approach to staying clean.”

Stillwell’s clients arrive at the Pasadena facility through circumstance rather than virtue. “No one seeks treatment unless someone’s got a foot to their back,” said Stillwell, a recovering drug addict who has been clean for 27 years. It could be parents, spouses, employers or a judge.

But with the passage of Proposition 36, a lot more drug users will be pushed into treatment by the criminal justice system. Analysts estimate that under the new law, about 36,000 nonviolent drug users will be treated instead of sentenced to jail or prison. Those convicted of possessing heroin, cocaine or amphetamines for personal use--for either a first or second offense--will be eligible for treatment.

Where in the constellation of treatment programs they will land is unclear. That will depend on sentencing judges, probation officers and the severity of the drug addiction.

Few will get the intense and costly residential treatment offered at the 130-bed Impact facility. “We’re a black-belt program,” said Stillwell. Space is limited, but Impact has clients on county assistance. People pay on a sliding scale from zero dollars to $175 a day. There usually is a waiting list. The group also runs two outpatient facilities and two jail-based programs.

About half of Impact’s clients who stay at least 90 days are clean a year after they complete the program, Stillwell said.

Impact uses the type of behavior modification and counseling that experts say gives addicts the best way to change their lives.

Most of the staff are recovering addicts. Steve Gold, 42, arrived at Impact when he was 18 with a heroin habit and a record of driving cars off Mulholland Drive.

“I was a prime candidate for state prison--nice Jewish boy from the Valley,” said Gold, who has spent time in jail. His fifth stint as a client at Impact ended in his decision to join the staff. He is now Stillwell’s assistant. This month, he’s been clean and sober for two years. “That’s the longest I’ve been sober since I was 12,” he said.

Impact’s residential facility is a compound of bungalows and buildings in a modest neighborhood. Set up on a hill, the center of the facility is a courtyard with clipped grass, kept trim by clients. People read or chat in Adirondack chairs at tables with patio umbrellas. The courtyard looks like a humble version of West Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont.

Clients are evaluated, photographed and assigned a bed in one of the bungalows. They stay for 30 days or as long as six months. Short-timers usually have jobs. “For the average guy, it’s well over 30 days--usually 90 days to six months,” said Stillwell.

Reflecting the broad nature of drug addiction, Impact’s clients touch all income levels, ranging from office workers to students to rock musicians to real estate agents to the unemployed. Heidi Fleiss and James Caan went through Impact. So did his brother Ronald, who now works as a fund-raiser. He used to smoke crack. “I would have smoked your purse,” he said with a chuckle. He’s been clean for a year and a half.

In a fluorescent-lighted cafeteria, a group of women finish a lunch of hamburgers and macaroni salad. Men sit at tables on the other side of the room. “When you’re in treatment, the last thing you need is a relationship,” said Gold. “We want you to have a relationship with your problem.”

The women tell stories of their descent into harder drugs and more desecrated lives. Mariette, 24, smoked heroin, using her UCLA financial aid money. She said she thought she could handle biology classes and her drug habit. She ended up falling asleep in class and missing finals.

Sherry, 53, who works for an airline, drank her way to Impact on the trip from her home in Idaho. Bardene, 38, a real estate agent, used cocaine from age 16 to 23, then got clean by going to 12-step meetings. When she stopped attending, she started abusing Vicodin, a painkiller, and then heroin. “Once you’re a pickle, you can’t go back to being a cucumber,” Bardene said, describing the permanence of drug addiction.

These women have been at Impact for months--Mariette for seven. Bardene returns for counseling after graduating to a sober living house, which allows much greater freedom and is the next step after residential treatment.

In contrast to the tumult of their lives under addiction, Impact residents say they embrace the order of the house rules in recovery. When Sherry missed the 7:30 a.m. cutoff time for turning in dirty linen, she confessed to a senior counselor and received extra duty.

“They want to teach us to be honest,” said Sherry. “If you’re not honest, you can’t stay clean.”

After lunch, some clients return to chores and others go to group meetings. In one meeting of men, caseworker Alex Lopez has written “CHANGING” on a board. Beneath that word, he has written, Playmates, Playgrounds, Playthings. Lopez and another caseworker, Mark Goldie, ask each of the 15 men how they can change each of those elements in their lives.

“I can’t change my playground,” said Tommy, a man in his early 20s, who left Hawaii for a court-ordered stay at Impact. “I live on a small island. I’ve used from end to end.”

“Have you ever surfed loaded?” Lopez asked him. “No,” Tommy said.

Lopez, 48, clean of drugs for 27 years, has a way of watching and listening that makes him inscrutable. He communicates neither sympathy nor scorn. Instead, he seems to be waiting for people to tell the truth.

“ ‘No’ definitely or ‘no’ maybe?” he asked Tommy.

“If you’re using, when you hit the water, you sober up anyway,” Tommy said, in an inadvertent confession.

Jack, a musician and singer, sounds like he’s found religion. He ticks off what he will change in his life. “My room was my playground. I basically had to move out of my room because that’s where I used,” said Jack, his arms covered in sleeves of tattoos. “Women were a big trigger for me. I have to cut my girlfriend loose. She’s clean, but she reminds me of when I used to use.”

He wants someone to watch over him when he leaves Impact. “I’m thinking about having the label pay to have someone travel with me,” he said.

“How much are they paying?” asked Goldie, and people laughed.

Each man tells how drug habits have become woven into their friendships and their haunts. Lopez understands the torment each man faces. “You have to go through your grieving period of giving up your playmate, the drugs, the alcohol,” he said.

He offers practical advice. “Let’s talk about weddings,” he said. “You can go to a wedding but not go to the reception. As soon as you see the drugs and alcohol, you leave. We want to hang in there and see if we can handle it. There’s that ego again.”

Relapse is common among drug addicts. “The disease of addiction lies dormant like a volcano,” said Goldie, 35, who used cocaine, heroin and alcohol but has been clean for 12 years.

Under Proposition 36, offenders who twice violate probation--for example, by getting rearrested for drug possession or by testing positive for drug use--remain eligible for treatment.

Stillwell, who has several misgivings about the new law, doubts there are enough facilities to accommodate the number of people who will be referred to drug treatment.

Stillwell and other staffers who believe in the power of treatment also say there’s a place for jail in the addict’s life. Some people, they said, need that threat before they get serious about kicking their addiction.

“I hate jails. I’ve spent most of my life there,” said caseworker Alphonse Duran, 46, a former drug user. “But sometimes it’s what changes people.”