Pubdate: Mon, 15 Dec 1997
Source: The Sun (Baltimore, Md)
Address: The Sun, P.O. Box 1377, Baltimore, Md. 212780001
Contact:  Include day and evening phone numbers with your letter
Author: Gregory Kane
Page: B1

RECOVERING ADDICTS HAVE INSTRUCTIVE TALES TO TELL

Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend stood in the middle of the room,
chatting pleasantly with two men and a woman, shaking hands with each and
praising them for their, as she put it, "courage."

Soon she was telling them about her celebrity relatives: her father, the
late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. Her uncle, the late President John F. Kennedy.
She even confessed that some character by the name of Arnold Schwarzenegger
is her cousininlaw.

As Townsend turned to leave the room, Dwight Donaldson chided Kennedy for
eating too much turkey over the Thanksgiving holiday. Turning on her heel
and flashing that mischievous Kennedy smile, the lieutenant governor walked
back to Donaldson and asked, "How did you know that?"

"I can tell," Donaldson answered, as a mischievous smile of his own crept
on to his face.

"That made my day," Donaldson said later, after the lieutenant governor had
left. "To know that a woman with such famous relatives as that would stop
in and talk to us."

Thelma Parran and Steven David  sitting near Donaldson in a groundfloor
room of the state parole and probation building on Guilford Avenue  nodded
their agreement. But any observer of the exchange among these three  all
recovering drug addicts  and the lieutenant governor would have to
conclude they had made her day as well.

Can drug treatment work? Parran, David and Donaldson say it has for them.
Their stories might be inspirational to some, instructive to others. We
should all take heed of them to learn what we can about stopping the
scourge of drug addiction.

Parran will be 32 in two days. She was an addict for 18 years, starting at
the age of 13.

"I got on drugs being a follower," she said. "Seeing people doing it. So I
decided to try it out. I got off when I was tired, and I was sick and tired
of being tired. I had hit rock bottom, and I felt there was a better way."

It was that last time in jail  about a year ago  for theft and violation
of probation that persuaded Parran to kick drugs. She has been in and out
of jail for years. Her first arrest came when she was 13. Even then she
started stealing to support her drug habit. She started with marijuana and
alcohol, later trying pills, acid, heroin and cocaine. Jail rescued her,
she claimed, because drug court required her to get treatment.

David started drugs when he was only 10.  

"I was trying to fit in with the older guys," David recalled. "I was
hanging with them  smoking pot and drinking." At 19 he started selling
pot. Later, he sold and snorted cocaine, denying all the while that he was
an addict. A trip to South Carolina  without his dope  convinced him
otherwise.

"I woke up sick from the lack of dope," David said. "I couldn't sleep. I
couldn't eat. I drank a lot of beer, and I still couldn't sleep." He
returned to Baltimore and the drugs. But before he left for South Carolina,
he had sold drugs to an undercover cop. There was a warrant out for him.
Baltimore police were looking for David as he was looking for a way out of
his addiction.

"I dropped to my knees and asked for God's help," David said. The police
knocked on his door at precisely that moment. They had come to arrest him.

"That was the day that saved my life," David claimed. "I've been sober ever
since." He went to a boot camp program, got his G.E.D. and has taken some
college courses. David said the help given him by Baltimore state Dels.
Ruth M. Kirk and Clarence M. Mitchell IV and 4th District City Councilman
Keiffer J. Mitchell Jr. has been invaluable.

Like Parran and David, Donaldson started using drugs early. He was 12 when
he started using pot and pills.

"It was curiosity," he remembered. "I saw some older folks doing it." Much
of his adult life has been spent getting locked up in drug raids, evading
police, fighting police and selling drugs. He was ready to quit after, he
claims, he overdosed on drugs and slept for four days  but not because he
wanted to.

"I couldn't move," he said. "But my daughter was born on that fourth day,
and that's when I woke up. That's when I knew there was a spirit. You have
to believe in a spirit, in God."

Parran and David agreed, testifying that it is God who has helped keep them
off drugs. Drug addiction is every bit as much an affliction of the soul as
it is of the body.

Friday will mark Parran's first anniversary of being drugfree. David will
be drugfree three years next month. Donaldson said he has been clean
nearly three years. Drug treatment has worked for these three, but
Donaldson warned that ultimately drug treatment is up to the addict.

"Until you're really ready to stop getting high," Donaldson admonished,
"nothing nobody can say or do will change you."