Pubdate: Fri, 02 Dec 2005
Source: Press of Atlantic City, The (NJ)
Copyright: 2005 South Jersey Publishing Co.
Contact:  http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/29
Author: Meggan Clark, Staff Writer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/women.htm (Women)

HANSEN HOUSE FOR WOMEN OPENS TODAY

GALLOWAY TOWNSHIP -- Heroin calls.

It doesn't call softly. When it's leaving your system, your body 
aches, your nose runs, your eyes run and your skin crawls. You'll do 
anything to end the misery. Anything for another hit.

"(When you're high), you don't feel; you don't care about anything," 
recalls Jennifer Hansen, who was addicted to heroin in her early 20s. 
"You notice time passing, but you really don't care. Heroin is such a 
physical addiction that you can't live without it."

You can get clean - go through the agonies of withdrawal - and then 
be using again within weeks. Hansen used to tell herself she'd just 
drink socially, smoke some marijuana, have a good time with friends. 
Pretty soon, she was shooting up again.

"Addiction is the most cunning, baffling and powerful disease I have 
ever come across," she says. "You have to really be ready to change 
everything about your life. It's not easy."

Hansen went to eight treatment centers before she kicked her habit. 
Each time, she'd quickly relapse once she got out. She needed the 
structure of a halfway house. But she had to move to California to find one.

A decade after kicking her habit - in California - Hansen is back in 
New Jersey and trying to fill the gap that drove her to the West 
Coast. Last year, the 24-bed Hansen House for men opened in Galloway 
Township. Today, Hansen and her supporters celebrate the opening of 
Hansen House for women, a 24-bed transitional home next door.

Built with about $1.25 million in state and county grants, Hansen 
House for Women will get most of its operating revenue from state and 
county contracts. It will offer 24-hour staffing, counseling, job 
training, 12-step meetings and "life skills" coaching for people who 
may have never lived independent of drugs.

At least four women will move in immediately. Seven will be living 
there by the end of next week, executive director Harry Morgan said. 
Soon, he expects Hansen House for Women to be full, like Hansen House 
for Men - which currently has three people on its waiting list.

The women will stay anywhere from three months to a year.

"I love the statement, 'It's easy to get clean - all you have to do 
is change your entire life,'" Morgan says.

Hansen House is about changing an addict's entire life.

Jennifer Hansen knows the battle the women face.

She began using alcohol at 13, and LSD and marijuana as a high school 
student. She turned to heroin in college. She graduated, started 
using crack cocaine and "went off the deep end for a couple of 
years." Instead of getting a job, she sold drugs to support her habit.

Finally clean, Hansen moved back to New Jersey about eight years ago 
to run the Hidden Creek Golf Club for her father, Roger Hansen of Ole 
Hansen & Sons.

And she partnered with Morgan, the director of Hendricks House in 
Vineland, to help others recover.

"I knew how to do it," he says. "She had the dream and a lot of 
energy and a lot of drive."

Hansen House is combating what Morgan describes as a heroin epidemic 
in New Jersey. A few years ago, most addiction treatment centers 
focused on alcohol. Now, more than 50 percent of patients are 
addicted to heroin. Many get hooked at 19 or 20, experimenting in 
college. They lack college degrees, basic life skills and work experience.

"It's not just being drug free," Morgan says. "It's 'What are you 
going to do with your life?'"

Detox facilities get people off drugs. Halfway houses, Morgan says, 
teach them how to live without them.

Does it work? Morgan doesn't know how many of Hendricks House and 
Hansen House's patients have stayed sober in the long haul. But of 
those referred by drug courts - about half of patients - 70 percent 
are clean after five years.

Hansen says the urge to use goes away after about two years. But 
until then, she says, "You have to remember what the last day using 
was like. Because you never want to go back to that again."
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman