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At rock bottom, an addict’s choice is blunt and excruciating: keep using or stay alive.
More than two decades ago at the Portland Rescue Mission in Portland, Ore., Bill Rae made his choice.
Rae, 55, is now the executive director of Manna Ministries Inc., the faith-based nonprofit agency that nine months ago launched the Derek House, an extended-care substance abuse treatment facility. It was designed in part with his own recovery as a blueprint.
“My drug of choice was methamphetamine,” Rae said from an upstairs office with three colleagues at Manna’s headquarters in Bangor. “Speed. I cooked it, I sold it, I shot it.”
Rae healed his body in Oregon, but found that it was spiritual healing that would be paramount in his recuperation.
“I stopped doing drugs, but there still was that turmoil. Then God gave me that foundation,” he said. “They kept telling me that God loved me, and finally it set in. … Then there was freedom.”
Through the Derek House, Rae and a group of the program’s planners are integrating Bible study and spiritual therapy into traditional substance abuse therapy methods, in hopes that what worked for him and some of them will work for others.
In a few months, they will see the results as the program’s first residents graduate.
“From 1991, [Manna has] had the soup kitchen, day care, the food pantry,” Rae said. “But people would come to us and say, ‘What can you do for addiction? You’re sending me back into the street with no help.’
“Someone made a sizable donation” to Manna, Rae said, “and we flew by the seat of God’s pants. It just made sense to us.”
After the program was launched, one man was dropped off from jail at Derek House, which is part of the larger Manna building in Bangor. “It was either succeed here or go back there,” Rae said. Another woman came who had just given up her child so she could be a better mother.
“The only thing they have to change is everything,” said program director Gerri Plourde, “and that’s scary.”
Derek House is so named because “Derek” means “a new beginning” or “reversal of an old way” in Hebrew, according to Rae. It can house 12 residents and will jump to a capacity of 20 this summer.
The program also works with Protea Behavioral Health Services and the Charlotte White Center whenever their own resources are insufficient. Twelve aides and five counselors – all licensed through the state – work with both men and women, who live on separate floors. About four or five names are on the waiting list, Plourde said.
Residents are allowed to stay on any prescribed medications. They can expect to wake up at 6:15 in the morning, complete chores, attend Alcoholics Anonymous, Alcoholics Victorious or Narcotics Anonymous meetings, and participate in three or more group sessions each day.
Some sessions include Bible study – one group is studying “bad girls in the Bible” right now, Rae said – while others focus on life skills such as balancing a checkbook. “You know,” said Rae, “things that people who have been drinking or drugging for 15 years never learned how to do.”
“We do realize,” said Phil Perkins, clinical supervisor for the program, “you still need opportunities and tools to succeed long term in society.” So the program supplements the drug abuse therapy and spiritual therapy with everything from assistance in acquiring a GED to drivers’ education to help with finding housing.
Other activities – such as whitewater rafting – are designed to help them grow as people and enjoy life without using, Perkins said. “They say, ‘Man, I’ve never played pool without being drunk. This is great.'”
But key to the program is that residents are required to attend church every Sunday.
“We call it a God-shaped hole,” said Glen Weeks, a licensed counselor for Derek House. “We try to put other things in it, like drugs, but it doesn’t work.”
Residents can choose from an extensive list of churches, and they can meet with pastors to select the right church.
“Not all churches are right for the program,” Plourde said. “People who already feel bad have to hear it again from the pulpit,” and that isn’t the point she said.
“What we’re trying to do here,” said Plourde, “is bring people to a spiritual awakening. Typical facilities have failed that.”
Rae added: Residents “have nothing to hold onto in the middle of the night when they’re scared and alone. When you’re alone at 2 in the morning or 3 in the morning, people are scared,” and God can lead them through those nights, he said.
Rae said he has seen the effects on some of the residents, particularly those nearing graduation, one of whom was formerly agnostic. He said some residents also have dropped out.
“Self-control takes so much energy. … And some of them won’t make it. Some of them I’m going to read about in the obituaries.”
But Rae and the board stand behind the strengths of the rigorous schedule and are working to construct a program that can be adapted by other agencies who want to try Derek House’s methods of therapy.
About 80 percent of funding for the program comes from MaineCare reimbursements from the state, Rae said, and the other 20 percent comes from public donations.
“The goal is in three years to be 100 percent sponsored by the community,” Rae said.
“This whole thing has been an unbelievable labor of love. Am I giving back something that was given to me? No. I am doing this because it was a gift that God gave to me. This fulfills what God has for me today.
“These three men and women cannot change people’s lives,” Rae said, pointing to his colleagues. “But God can.”
BANGOR DAILY NEWS PHOTO BY JOHN CLARKE RUSS
Bill Rae of Manna Ministries fought his own battles as an addict. Now, he is a Christian and directs Manna Ministries and its newly launched Derek House substance abuse facility. It can house 12 residents and will jump to a capacity of 20 this summer.
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