AUGUSTA – Matthew Gibson will never forget the day his parents told him he had to quit drugs or get out of the house.

“They were crying, saying get help or get out the door,” Gibson, now 21, told a legislative hearing Tuesday. “They just couldn’t take it anymore.”

Gibson, of Machiasport, began drinking and using drugs at age 13. By 16, he was taking OxyContin, and, after graduating from high school, he had escalated to a $300-a-day heroin habit and been arrested for burglary.

Now Gibson is clean and sober, thanks to a long-term residential drug treatment center in New York, he told a joint meeting of the Legislature’s Appropriations and Health and Human Services committees.

The nonprofit group Maine Lighthouse Corp. wants to establish a similar treatment facility at the former Loring Air Force Base in Limestone.

The group wants the Legislature to put a $3 million bond issue before voters that, if approved, would pay for renovating buildings and training staff. The bond funds would be matched by private donations.

The bond request was submitted as LD 669, sponsored by Rep. Ted Koffman, D-Bar Harbor. The bond is not part of Gov. John Baldacci’s proposed $200 million bond package.

Gibson’s father, J.R. Gibson, testified that during his son’s struggles with drugs, he ran away from home and moved in with a dealer. The elder Gibson and his wife cried daily, he said, awaiting a phone call asking them to identify their son’s body.

It was during this nightmare that Gibson remembered the efforts in 2002 by the Maine Lighthouse group to establish a long-term residential drug treatment center at the former Navy base in Cutler.

The Cutler plan was opposed by area communities and failed to win approval, but Gibson remembered that the planned center was based on Daytop, a residential treatment center operating in New York since 1962. Gibson was able to get his son into that facility, where he stayed for months.

There were no options for such treatment in Maine, both father and son said. Matthew remembers spending the better part of a day calling treatment centers in the state and finding long waiting lists for admission.

When Matthew was sent to New York, his parents could only get time off from their jobs to visit once a month. Most of the other residents at the center were from New York and had more frequent family visits, Matthew said outside the hearing, so missing family made the ordeal worse.

“I have multiple friends that I would like to see get the kind of help I got,” Gibson told the committees, help that is beyond most of those friends because there is no such facility in Maine.

The key component of the kind of program Daytop offers, and which would be offered by Maine Lighthouse, is the length of stay.

Kathleen Miller, executive secretary to the Maine Lighthouse board, told the committees that Maine “desperately needs to increase” its residential treatment capacity.

The long-term treatment approach would begin with an assessment of patients for two to four weeks, she said.

The core phase of treatment would last nine months to a year, although some patients, with supportive families, might be able to leave earlier, Miller said.

The final component includes re-entry into society through halfway houses, she said. Maine Lighthouse plans to have several of these, first establishing them in the southern part Maine.

Most of the bond money – $2 million – would pay to acquire and renovate a former motel on the base, Miller said.

“It’s a great facility,” and could accommodate 80 patients, Miller said.

An adjacent building also would be purchased and renovated to house another 150 patients.

Yet another building would serve as a banquet hall to feed 250 people and for meetings and counseling sessions, Miller said.

Though Miller acknowledged that spending $1 million of the bond for training staff is unusual – most bond spending is tied to purchases – she said it was essential to get the program running.

That portion of the funding would be used to enroll employees in existing treatment programs so they could learn how they function, then return to Maine.

Miller said there is a shortage of substance abuse counselors in the state, and that many recovering addicts likely would want to fill those positions.

Outside the hearing, Matthew Gibson said he believes the length of the treatment was key to his recovery.

About a dozen people spoke in support of the bond, including state Rep. Anne Perry, D-Calais, a nurse practitioner who said she has seen the effects of addiction in Washington County.

Opiate addicts, Perry said, suffer debilities similar to those with brain injuries. Some take nine to 18 months to regain short-term memory, which is why the long-term treatment facilities boast an 80 percent success rate, she said.

Sen. Dennis Damon, D-Trenton, said turning the tide of addiction in Washington County was as much an economic development issue as it was a health concern.

James Carson, president of South Portland-based Local 340 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, said the success rate of long-term treatment centers “should get everyone’s attention.”

He also highlighted analysis that shows for every $1 spent on rehabilitation, $4 in public costs – law enforcement, jail, health care -is saved.

“How many homes are not going to be robbed?” Carson asked. “How many marriages are not going to be destroyed?” if addicts are rehabilitated.