Pubdate: Sun, 25 Apr 1999
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Copyright: 1999 San Francisco Chronicle
Contact:  http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
Forum: http://www.sfgate.com/conferences/
Author: Joan Ryan, Weekly Columnist

A NEW SCRIPT FOR ONETIME HEROIN ADDICT

When I interviewed Berkeley filmmaker Steven Okazaki two weeks ago about his
new HBO documentary, ``Black Tar Heroin: The Dark End of the Street,'' he
worried that viewers would turn away from the nightmarish, dead-end lives of
the young San Francisco addicts it chronicles.

``There's no hope in the film,'' Okazaki told me.

The documentary ends with a shot of Tracey, a disheveled wreck who had
gone back on heroin eight hours after being released from jail. You
see her at the needle exchange van in Hemlock Alley, turning in
handfuls of used syringes for new ones.

The day after the column ran, I received a phone call. ``This is
Tracey.''

She was calling from the Mission Street offices of Sage, Norma
Hotaling's extraordinary organization, which helps
ex-prostitutes.

When I walked into Sage, I recognized Tracey instantly from the film,
though she looked younger and prettier: shiny brown hair, Amy Irving
eyes, clear skin.

``The film was so accurate, it was amazing,'' she said as we sat to
talk. ``There was no hope. But there is hope.''

In February of 1998, two months after Okazaki wrapped up filming,
Tracey was arrested again for selling drugs. She spent four days in
the ``kick tank,'' a room with five other addicts twitching, vomiting
and hallucinating from cold-turkey drug withdrawal.

>From there, she asked to enter the jail's detox program. ``I told God
I surrendered. I just couldn't live like that anymore.''

She had already failed twice in detox programs, but this time she met
Hotaling, who had been an addict and a prostitute. Hotaling didn't
judge. She told Tracey she was smart and beautiful. People like her do
get clean, Hotaling kept telling her, and Hotaling herself was living
proof.

``For the first time, I thought, `This might work,' '' Tracey said.
``Norma was that bridge between my old life and getting to a place
where I could feel like a normal person again, that I'm not the sum of
all the things I did.''

After 2 1/2 months in jail, Tracey spent nearly four months at a
residential treatment facility, then moved into ``clean and sober''
Salvation Army housing on Turk Street, around the corner from where
she used to shoot up. She showed up every Wednesday night at Sage's
support group meetings.

Hotaling soon hired her full-time at Sage, where Tracey has become a
state certified counselor on issues of violence prevention. She has
been clean for 14 months. When she sees old drug friends in the
Tenderloin as she walks home from work, she says she's not tempted to
join them. Since she's been clean, four friends have died, three from
overdosing and one from AIDS.

In December, Tracey spent the holidays with her family in Ohio, the
first time in five years she had seen her mother, who had prayed and
sent money even though Tracey had lied and stolen from her.

``I had to make so many amends,'' said Tracey, now 28. Tracey brought
a picture of herself. The last picture her mother had was Tracey's
high school photo. ``She could finally put up a new one in the hallway
with the rest of the family,'' Tracey said, laughing. ``I have arrived.''

When Tracey watched Okazaki's documentary two months ago, she feared
it might be so disturbing she would return to drugs. Instead, she felt
empowered.

``To see the amount of abuse and squalor and pain and the overwhelming
sense of hopelessness I came out of . . . God, I want to carry the
message that you don't have to live like that. It's not too late.''
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