BANGOR – Chris Vydas could hear the muffled voices of family members gathered around the holiday table as he sat on the toilet, tied off his arm and shot a syringe of heroin into his vein.

“It was a time of moral degradation,” Vydas recalls. “I always thought that despite doing drugs that I had some morals and ethics. I began to do things I wouldn’t normally do.”

Until that fall of 2000, Vydas had maintained some control of his life, acknowledging he was always a bit of a troublemaker. He smoked cigarettes as a youngster, sipped a rum and Coke while doing his homework as a teen, and smoked marijuana and even dropped a little LSD while in college.

As bad as all that was, Vydas managed to get by. He worked, went to school, played hockey and maintained relationships.

Then heroin dealers from out of state set their sights on Bangor. As far as heroin went, Bangor was virgin territory and filled with addictive personalities like Vydas, ignorant to the consequences of the traditional big-city drug.

Two years later, the courtroom at Penobscot County Superior Court in Bangor is filled every Friday afternoon with about two dozen people. Most of them, like Vydas, are addicted to heroin or other forms of opiates.

Health and corrections professionals in the area say it’s just a very small portion of the people in their 20s and 30s in the area whose lives have spun out of control because of opiate addiction.

But the state hopes its newest venture, Drug Court, will offer some of them a second chance.

In other parts of the state, like southern Maine, alcohol and cocaine are the leading substances launching people into the Drug Court system. But in Penobscot and Washington counties, the vast majority of Drug Court clients are addicted to opiates.

Vydas joined the Bangor Drug Court last September and is expected, if all goes well, to be the first to graduate from the yearlong program. He landed in the criminal justice system when he broke into a woman’s home and stole her computer because he felt she had stung him on a drug deal.

The confluence of events may have saved his life, because while Vydas was spinning out of control in a flurry of needles, highs and debt, meetings were taking place in courthouses across the state and the court system was developing the first statewide Drug Court designed specifically for addicts like Vydas.

Vydas’ attorney, Jeffrey Silverstein of Bangor, recognized that Vydas was more of an addict than a criminal and signed him up.

Today, a little more than a year since that Thanksgiving he spent strung out in his family’s bathroom, Vydas is looked upon as a “superstar” by Superior Court Justice Andrew Mead, one of two judges who preside over the Bangor Drug Court.

“I have great hopes for him,” Mead said excitedly during an impromptu meeting in the courthouse hall recently. “I really think he’s going to make it.”

Vydas agreed to talk about his addiction and the recovery process, which he admits is still a struggle though he hasn’t used heroin since 4 p.m. Dec. 7, 2000.

A remarkably handsome young man, Vydas, 25, has piercing eyes, chiseled features and an easy and broad smile that most likely helped him get out of a jam or two as a teen-ager. He was raised in Brewer and Holden in a two-parent, upper-middle-class home. His dad is a doctor and he has two older brothers.

He remembers the early pull of drugs and alcohol.

“I just seemed to naturally gravitate toward drugs and alcohol,” he recalled during an interview at a downtown Bangor restaurant. “I always acted out. I smoked cigarettes and chewed tobacco on recess as a kid and I found like-minded friends.”

Vydas recalls stealing Captain Morgan rum from his grandparents’ home and sipping on drinks in his bedroom while doing homework as a teen-ager.

Somehow, despite being kicked off the Brewer High School hockey team for smoking, running away from home for a while and getting kicked out of school on occasion, Vydas managed to graduate with his class in 1995 with reasonable grades.

After dropping out of college in his early 20s, Vydas moved back home to his family’s house in Holden and got a job. It wasn’t long, however, before Vydas was crashing wherever he could. He began working at various jobs for short periods of time and turning more and more to drugs and alcohol.

At first he and friends would drive out of state to buy heroin, but a dealer moved into town and heroin became more plentiful.

Vydas managed to rent an apartment in Brewer, working at various restaurants for money.

“At first I got by just using occasionally, but I was getting more and more addicted. At first it was just, you know, recreational, on the weekends and that sort of thing. Then I needed it to help me get through work and it became a daily thing,” he says matter-of-factly.

By the time his addiction took control of his life, Vydas had virtually fractured any relationship with his family and the drugs were taking a physical toll as well.

“I avoided mirrors because I didn’t know what I was going to see,” he said. At 6 feet tall, Vydas’ weight dropped to 145 pounds. His eyes and cheeks were sunken in and often red and white blotches appeared on his body. He was three months behind in the rent for his Brewer apartment and his cellular phone bill was out of control.

He was sick and facing a felony criminal charge and jail time for stealing the computer.

Soon after that Thanksgiving Day his brother came to his apartment, having figured out the extent of the trouble Vydas was in.

Then, despite a frayed relationship, Vydas’ father arrived and again offered him help.

“I was so, so sick. Everything in my life was messed up and out of control and he stood in the middle of this apartment and asked if I wanted help. I said yes,” Vydas recalled quietly.

Last year, Vydas’ days were filled with efforts to get drugs – how to pay for them, where to buy them.

Today his whole life revolves around recovery.

He goes to Drug Court once a week, meets with his case manager once a week and calls him every day. He goes to several counseling sessions each week and attends about five Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous meetings a week.

In between, he works at a local restaurant and works out at a local gym.

“I know it sounds busy and hectic, but to tell you the truth, life is so much easier now. Life as an addict is very hard. It’s so hectic constantly thinking about where and when you are going to get high,” he said.

And as for Justice Mead thinking he’s a superstar? He smiles shyly and says that’s very nice to hear. “This is a great program. It’s an amazing feeling to know that you have someone like him pulling for you.”