Recovery walk offers support for addicts

There are all kinds of disasters in this world, and all manner of recovery. From the intensely personal to the global, what they have in common is a small kernel of hope – an unlikely survivor of tragedy that takes tentative root and is nurtured over time into bloom.

I’ll be in Louisiana as you read this, seeking out some of the fine people from Maine who have disrupted their own lives to support the massive, disjointed recovery effort along the Gulf Coast in the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I am truly grateful for the opportunity and I hope to send back reports that will bring my readers closer to the action and the emotion of this historic drama.

While I’m away, I’ll be missing out on another remarkable recovery scene, smaller in scale but much closer to home. I hope readers of this column will report back to me about the first Maine Walks for Recovery celebration, to be held at 10 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 25, in Capitol Park in Augusta.

The event, which will include music, refreshments, poster-making and a proclamation read by Gov. John Baldacci, is an opportunity for all Mainers affected by substance abuse – their own or someone else’s – to show their support for the promise of recovery.

While bad news and anecdotes abound regarding the abuse of drugs and alcohol, the real and tangible hope of recovery gets little publicity. People who are struggling to regain control of their lives are reluctant to go public with their stories for a number of reasons. Some may fear jinxing their progress by proclaiming it too loudly. Some are bound by participation in 12-step programs that ask even their most successful and longest-term members to maintain absolute anonymity. Others fear the social stigma of being identified as a former substance abuser, even when – or especially when – they’ve worked hard to rebuild meaningful careers and personal lives.

These considerations didn’t keep Kevin Young of Trenton from stepping forward when he read the first Finding A Fix column back in August. “I want to be part of this discussion,” he told us firmly, and drove up to Bangor to prove it.

Young, now 50, told us he was on the straight and narrow until the beginning of his third year in college, when he moved out of his parents’ comfortable home in a Boston suburb and into a dorm at Northeastern University.

“My roommate sold drugs,” he recalled. “There were people knocking on the door of our room at all hours. I wasn’t there three or four days before I was using, and within six months I had tried everything there was – amphetamines, barbiturates, PCP, morphine, heroin.” Before long, he was dealing drugs himself to support his growing habit.

After graduating and working briefly in the field of health care administration, Young fell in love with an Ellsworth woman and moved north to be with her. He found work as a carpenter and settled into a new life, but he continued using drugs heavily.

“Marijuana, cocaine, alcohol – anything I could find in small-town Maine back then. It didn’t really matter what it was, as long as it was a drug,” he said. “When you’re bad, you need something just to get out of bed in the morning.”

But Young’s girlfriend was not a drinker or a drug user, and threatened to leave him if he didn’t get his act together. Enlisting the help of a social worker friend, she persuaded

him to attend a local meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. Young agreed to go, but he didn’t really think he had a problem – “I just wanted to them off my back,” he said.

As it has for so many people, AA proved the turning point for Kevin Young. Though he made some false starts, he found a compelling contrast between his increasingly unmanageable life and the friendly, welcoming support of the meetings.

“When you walk into those rooms [at AA], there’s laughter and love and joy. And I wanted some of that in my life. So I stuck it out, and it rubbed off on me,” he said. For several months, he went every day to AA – “It quickly became a safe place for me and replaced my other social life,” he said. “I had to learn to act right, and eventually I learned to think right.”

Seventeen years later, Young’s still a regular at AA meetings. He acts as a sponsor for newer members, helping them stay clean and sober and encouraging them to get back on track if they relapse.

“As an addict, I didn’t want to believe I needed help. I wasn’t going to ask some other user to help me. I wanted to think I was all-powerful and could do it by myself,” he said. “Being a sponsor keeps it fresh in my mind how hard it is at the beginning.”

Young has been happily married for 13 years now, to that same pesky sweetheart who pushed him into his first AA meeting back in 1988. He has good friends, a home he’s proud of and a boat-building job he finds interesting and rewarding.

And, he said, he’ll be among the many who gather at Capitol Park this weekend to put a hopeful face on addiction recovery. Despite AA’s tradition of preserving anonymity, Young said some groups are becoming more lenient about allowing individual members to identify themselves publicly.

“They know the message needs to be out there,” he said. “Recovery works, and it’s worth it.”

So do me a favor, won’t you? If your life has been touched by substance abuse, or if someone you know is in recovery, make the trip to Augusta this Sunday. Walk the walk and talk the talk, have a snack and enjoy the music. If you see Kevin Young, tell him I said hey. And send me an e-mail afterward to tell me how it all went. I’ll be thinking of you.

For information on Maine Walks for Recovery, call the Maine Alliance for Addiction Recovery at 458-4366. Send comments about “Finding a Fix” by calling 990-8291 or e-mailing findingafix@bangordailynews.net.