Editor’s Note: “Finding a Fix” editor Meg Haskell is away this week. The weekly column will resume next Thursday, May 11.

On this day, Elliott Haynes prayed and danced and pledged his love to a godly woman.

He studied the Bible. He clenched his fist in pride. He wept.

Haynes is a recovering crack addict. Two months ago, the 36-year-old man moved into the Victory Home, a Christian-based drug treatment center near the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, Texas.

The program is supported by private donations, daily fundraisers and a pair of nonprofit groups linked to Prestonwood Baptist Church of Plano, Texas, and King of Glory Lutheran Church in Dallas.

It is free, largely unregulated and medically unsupervised. Tylenol is the strongest pain medicine allowed.

Men withdraw from heroin in darkened rooms, sweating and shivering on bunk beds. Soft music or tape-recorded sermons play in the background. Massages help soothe aching limbs.

Victory Home is the treatment of last resort for many addicts, according to Anthony Anderson, a 40-year-old former crack dealer who runs the program. He said the strict regimen saved his life 13 years ago when he entered a sister program in Fort Worth.

“I knew when I went into the home, if I went back [to the streets] somebody was going to kill me or I was going to kill somebody and get sentenced to life in prison,” he said. “This is a front-line ministry. We’re like the Marines.”

It’s 5 a.m. Monday.

Fluorescent lights flicker to life as Anthony Hackett steps in the room.

Six men are cocooned in bunk beds.

“Good morning, homeboy,” the 35-year-old resident of the center says, shaking one leg after another.

There is a deep, bone-rattling cough. One man blinks against the light, another fumbles with laces on work boots.

Mark Wyatt, 44, sits on his bunk next to a Bible, a black folder and two Maalox tablets.

“A drug addiction,” he said, “will tear up your stomach.”

On this day, the men of Victory Home are greeted by the sweet smell of banana bread. Virgil Dimas, a 36-year-old cook and self-described trash-can junkie, stayed up all night baking 120 loaves, which the drug rehab ministry sells for $5 a pop.

Now he is pacing an uneven wood floor and praying.

“Father, I need you in my life,” he says, arms pumping, eyes squeezed tight. “Without you in my life there’s nothing right. It’s all wrong, all hard, all evil.”

Over the next 20 minutes, a dozen other addicts join him. One kneels in prayer; others stand facing the wall, petitioning God.

Music makes the floor vibrate, and Haynes comes alive in the lyrics.

“When hope is gone and the darkness has fallen

“I will still believe, I will still believe

“I will rise up, I will rise up

“I will rise up and call myself blessed.”

Outside, the music is faint against a wind-swept morning. The night sky retreats from the dawn. At Victory Home, a security light illuminates a message hung across a 12-foot wooden cross. It reads: “Expect a Miracle.”

It’s 6:14 a.m.

Mike Jones dips his finger in olive oil and traces a cross on the forehead of 14 men. He instructs the assembled addicts to walk around the complex seven times, praying for peace. On the last lap, they are to shout praise to the heavens.

“I’m pretty sure we’re going to wake up some folks,” the 40-year-old said. “But what we want to do is wake up the devil and run him up out of here.”

Minutes later, 52-year-old grandmother Joyce Autry watched the spectacle from a second-story balcony as men in gray sweat suits marched past a broken bottle of sangria. She pronounced the ritual “weird,” but the ministry’s street credibility contains an implicit message: “See us? We’ve been there. We made mistakes, but now we’re acting right. Follow us.”

Jones, a senior leader at Victory Home, said the church witnesses to the margins, not the mainstream.

“People out here are not going to go to T.D. Jakes, or all those dudes on TV,” he said. “We don’t drive a Cadillac or pastor a big huge church. We’re guys who love the Lord and live a normal life, and that’s attainable for these people.”

Drugs scramble an addict’s life. Victory Home imposes order on the chaos.

By rote, each man wakes, folds his blanket in a perfect square and lays it on a pile near the door. Men stand in single file to urinate. Daily chores rotate by printed schedule.

Deviations from the routine result in discipline, extra chores, restricted privileges.

“A drug addict’s mind is steady moving and going, scheming and conniving,” said Anderson, the home’s director. “That’s why we keep them busy and keep them in the word of God all day long.”