Pubdate: Tue, 18 Mar 2003
Source: Daily Press (VA)
Copyright: 2003 The Daily Press
Contact:  http://www.dailypress.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/585
Author: Alison Freehling

Part 2 Of 2

REAL-WORLD PITFALLS AWAIT PROGRAM GRADS

OUR STORY SO FAR: Last spring, Tonya Turner of Richmond checked into the 
South-Eastern Family Project in Newport News to fight a heroin addiction 
that was threatening the life of her unborn daughter.

The family project - available at 245-1070 - helps pregnant women addicted 
to drugs or alcohol. Women stay at the center during their pregnancies and 
for up to two months after.

Tonya's daughter, De'Ja, was born healthy in late July. Now, they are out 
of rehab and on their way back to Richmond. Although many former addicts 
suffer at least one relapse, Tonya is determined not to be one of them.

Three months. That's how quickly most of the women who relapse after 
leaving the South-Eastern Family Project turn back to drugs or alcohol.

Tonya Turner vows that won't happen to her. A recovering heroin addict, 
Tonya lived at the Newport News rehabilitation center for six months before 
leaving in September with a healthy, chubby baby girl in her arms.

Felicia Tyler, director of the family project, looks at the 1-month-old 
baby, De'Ja, and sees a great success story. But she isn't sure what will 
happen to Tonya and De'Ja outside of rehab.

Tonya is at higher risk for a relapse because she had to move back to her 
hometown of Richmond, Felicia says. Tonya had wanted to find an apartment 
on the Peninsula and bring her five older children here after finding a 
job, but her ailing grandmother needed immediate help caring for those kids.

"Going home will make this a lot tougher on Tonya," Felicia says. "It's 
much harder to be around all of your old friends, especially if you see 
them get high. She didn't need this right now."

Recovering addicts face tremendous pressure outside the structured setting 
of the family project. They are caring for newborn babies. Some move into 
neighborhoods filled with drug dealers, the only housing they can afford. 
Many don't have jobs lined up. Others return to abusive boyfriends.

The number of people who complete the family project and stay totally clean 
is fairly small. Of the 42 women who had entered the program as of last 
week, 22 finished it and 13 suffered no relapses, according to Felicia's 
records. However, Felicia adds that many of the women who do relapse 
quickly seek help.

To stay off drugs, most people have to go to weekly Alcoholics or Narcotics 
Anonymous meetings and keep in touch with a sponsor, Felicia says. "If you 
ever lose focus," she says, "you're in big trouble fast."

Big trouble can mean losing custody of a child, landing in jail or 
wandering the streets. Recently, a male employee at the family project ran 
into a woman on a dark corner in downtown Newport News. The woman, a crack 
addict, had gone through the rehab program but had relapsed. She walked up 
to the employee and tried to prostitute herself.

"No, no, no," he repeated in horror, pushing her away and wondering what 
had happened to her infant daughter. "Come on, you don't recognize me?"

She didn't.

"She's all out of it," Felicia says. "She just keeps saying, 'Yeah, baby, 
do you want to get it on?' She's right back to where she was before she 
came here."

Felicia and her staff would rather talk about the women who do rebuild 
their lives. One saved enough money to rent her own apartment and take her 
baby out of a bad family situation. One regained custody of an 11-year-old 
daughter and plans to start cooking school this month. Another has a job as 
a nurse's aide.

Mainly, counselors at the family project focus on their primary goal: to 
save babies from the dangers of drug use during pregnancy. Some addicts 
have had scares during pregnancy, some babies have been low birth-weight 
and others have had withdrawal symptoms, but so far none of the children 
has suffered a serious birth defect, Felicia says.

Without the family project, she figures, many of them could have been born 
with physical and mental disabilities that would require years of expensive 
medical treatment. Or they could have been born dead.

Tonya knows she could have lost De'Ja. When she looks at her daughter, 
Tonya swears she'll kick her longtime heroin addiction. She'll reach out to 
support groups and family members instead of drugs, especially when she's 
depressed - which she has learned is a trigger for her drug use. When her 
temper flares, she'll use deep-breathing techniques instead of yelling and 
fighting.

"I have more tools I can use," Tonya says the day before checking out of 
the family project. "I've learned a lot about being an addict. I learned 
about my character defects - not to let other people's stuff interfere with 
my stuff. I'm powerless over what people say they'll do. I just have to do 
what I have to do."

She pauses.

"Basically," she says, "I'm not the same person as I was."

Tonya's newborn daughter - and her entire family - are counting on that. 
Tonya's grandmother, Juanita Neblett, lives in a small brick home in a 
peaceful, tree-lined neighborhood just outside Richmond. Juanita, who 
raised Tonya in the projects, pools money with one of her daughters - an 
employee at Medical College of Virginia Hospitals - to rent the house.

Together, the two run a strict but loving ship. Tonya's kids do their 
homework every night and don't miss school without a good reason. They say 
"excuse me," "please" and "thank you." Before they have a drink, they sit 
down so they won't spill it.

When Tonya gets to her grandmother's home after leaving Newport News, she 
carries De'Ja past six copies of the Bible piled on a wooden table near the 
front door and walks into a living room filled with sunlight and family 
pictures. She hugs her children. Her toddler son runs a toy car up and down 
her leg.

During Tonya's first days away from the family project, heroin is far from 
her mind. She's too happy being with her kids and away from all of the 
program's rules.

"I haven't been thinking about things too much," she says after a week out 
of rehabilitation. "I've just enjoyed spending time with my kids."

With a roof over her head and her children's heads, Tonya isn't in a big 
hurry to find a job. After a few months, she says, she'll either start 
nursing school - her dream is to become a registered nurse - or look for a 
job as an aide in a nursing home.

In the meantime, Tonya has to deal with sleepless nights, stomach cramps 
and diarrhea as doctors slowly wean her off methadone, a synthetic form of 
heroin they prescribed when she was pregnant to keep her from going through 
withdrawal.

Tonya knows the drill. She's been through methadone withdrawal before.

But this time, Juanita sees a change in her granddaughter.

"She has more concern for others," Juanita says.

"The conversations aren't as much about herself. They're about the future 
of her children."

Heroin is a tough habit to kick. The drug can make people euphoric in as 
little as seven seconds. In recent years, only alcohol was responsible for 
more admissions to treatment centers, according to the Substance Abuse and 
Mental Health Services Administration. The Hampton-Newport News Community 
Services Board, which runs the South-Eastern Family Project, also has seen 
a steady increase.

So at first, Juanita frets whenever Tonya leaves the house. As the weeks go 
by, though, she gradually relaxes. And before long, without notice, Dec. 6 
comes and goes. Three months have passed since Tonya left the family 
project, and by all accounts she hasn't relapsed - even after she takes her 
last methadone dose on Dec. 11.

Already, Tonya has beaten the odds.

"Going back to Richmond wasn't something I wanted to do, but I had to do 
it," she says just before Christmas. "I'm sure there will be some hard 
times ahead, but it's been good."

As of last week, a year has passed since Tonya first arrived in Newport News.

De'Ja is a healthy 7-month-old who already is trying to walk. The baby 
pulls herself up on tables, chairs and anything else she can find, Tonya 
says. She likes to play in a bouncy seat surrounded by toys. She smiles a 
lot, and two tiny teeth have sprouted in her gums.

"She's all over the place," Tonya laughs as the baby babbles in the 
background. "She's a fast one."

Tonya's progress toward her goals - getting her own place to live, 
regaining custody of all of her children and becoming a registered nurse - 
has been far slower.

She and De'Ja split their time between Juanita's house, where her older 
kids still live, and the home of Frank Jordan, Tonya's longtime boyfriend 
and a construction worker. Tonya says she spends about two nights a week at 
her grandmother's, although lately she has been there more often as Juanita 
recovers from knee surgery. Other times, one of Tonya's aunts cares for the 
children.

Tonya briefly had a job as an aide at a nursing home outside Richmond, but 
she says she lost it after her van broke down and she didn't have another 
way to get to work. Her new plan is to focus on her children while Juanita 
- - who also suffered a stroke recently - gets back on her feet, and then 
apply to a nursing program that starts in August.

Tonya goes to some Narcotics Anonymous meetings, but not as many as she 
knows she should. "I don't have transportation or a babysitter sometimes," 
she says. "I wish I could go to more."

But she says she doesn't crave heroin at all, and she credits the family 
project for her newfound strength.

"I'm more able to cope with problems that arise, as opposed to running away 
from them," she says during an interview last week. "I just want to thank 
them for everything."

Family members also believe - or at least hope - that Tonya has left heroin 
behind for good. Before her granddaughter went to Newport News, Juanita 
says, she would disappear for hours or even days at a time without telling 
anyone where she was going. Tonya never does that anymore, Juanita says.

"I think that program was a lifesaver for her," she says. "She had been 
dealing with things for so long, but she didn't really know how to. We 
loved her, but all the love in the world can't help sometimes. She needed 
to be away from familiar surroundings and people. She needed to have some 
strict rules. She needed a break from everything."

In the living room at the South-Eastern Family Project, Felicia Tyler and 
her staff keep potted plants to make the building look cozier. Life is 
busy, though, and the plants don't always get enough water. One day shortly 
after Tonya moved in last spring, all of them drooped over, their brown 
leaves falling to the floor.

The next week, some of the dying plants were gone. Others, though, were 
looking better. Drenched with water, they stood taller, with some green 
leaves growing toward the ceiling again.

Many addicts say they feel like those brown plants - barely alive - when 
they first check into the family project. Some of them never really get 
healthy, even if they stay clean long enough for their babies to thrive. 
Tonya Turner is one person who feels like she was reborn. Still, there are 
no neat and happy endings for her. Nothing is entirely green. Tonya's 
family still worries about her, and so does Felicia.

And as Tonya learned at the family project, her cravings for heroin likely 
will return. If not tomorrow, then sometime in the future. The taste of the 
drug likely will invade her mouth again - even if she never physically 
touches it.

Tonya simply has to believe she'll have the strength to say no. She put it 
best herself toward the end of her stay at the family project:

"It will happen - I will want to use. I don't want to have my guard down 
when it does happen. So now, for the rest of my life, my guard is going to 
be up."
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MAP posted-by: Beth