Where hope begins

I n the addiction business, they call it hitting rock bottom, and it's never a pretty sight The crash comes at different times and different places for different people, but there's no question about hitting it, because there aren't many alternatives. You can hit bottom and begin the painful and lifelong process of getting sober. Or you can die. Jack, whose last name will be kept confidential to protect his privacy, hit bottom a year ago, in the middle of the eighteenth summer of his life. Parents move to Sussex County to get away from the dangers of urban life, to raise their children in a healthy and clean environment, surrounded by nature and all the comforts and diversions that affluence can buy. But the demons that found Jack don't care about social status or zip codes. The plunge into the abyss began when Jack was 13. "I had older brothers who were drinking," he said recently, talking by phone from the halfway house where he is learning to live his life one day at a time. Jack joined them, they moved on to other drugs, finally settling on heroin and cocaine. He made it through high school, but not without trouble. Last summer, he already had one arrest for drugs and was on probation, but his addiction had a firm hold on him. "I was stealing from my family," he said. His parents threw him out of the house, and, he said, "I had no place to go." He got arrested again, and this time, the court system told him he could either go to jail or go to a place high on a hill in Lafayette, a place called Sunset House. It was built in the 1950s as a monastery for Catholic monks who were "non-compliant," which was the phrase the church used to describe those who had addictions or psychiatric problems. Around 1980, the church sold it to a private individual who converted it into a for-profit rehabilitation facility. Unable to make it work financially, he sold it to a not-for-profit organization that has operated it for some 20 years. Back then, said Kieran Ayre, the facility's chief clinical officer, "there were 15-20 facilities like this in New Jersey. Only a couple survived. Today, there's only two or three in the state." The setting is peaceful and serene and the former monastery with enclosed cloisters, vibrant stained-glass windows and tiny cells, is surrounded by forest and hay fields. Inside are beds for 68 patients divided into four sections, one for adults, a second for mothers with small children, a third for de-tox, and a fourth, on the second floor and totally isolated from the other two units, for teenagers. It was in that unit that Jack finally got sober. The juvenile unit has 12 beds, and, said Dory Rachel, the facility's community relations representative, Sunrise House has openings in the unit and state money to fund treatment for a several additional patients. To get the word out in Sussex County about the available beds and money, Rachel invited a reporter in to tour Sunrise House and see what goes on there. At eight in the morning, it is already a busy place. The day starts early there; wake-up is at 7 a.m. And it's filled with meetings, activities and therapy. It has to be, because when patients enter Sunrise House, they leave nearly everything they are used to behind. For the first five days they can not contact anyone from the outside world, including their families. There are no cell phones, no iPods, no computers, no television, no radio, no make-up. It's a serious place. It has to be. "When patients get to this level of care, it's a life-or-death situation," said Ayre. Ayre's patients take in the entire range of society, from doctors and professors and celebrities to kids like Jack who find themselves alone on the streets. They come from all over the state and from neighboring states. The program they encounter is built on the AA 12-step blueprint. "We have thousands and thousands of people who have walked out of here with new lives," he said. One of them is Jack, who is working construction now and living in his halfway house. He has reconciled with his parents and beginning to put his life back together. "I'm happy with where I am now," Jack said. "Without Sunrise House, I wouldn't' be where I am." Jack could have ended up in prison. But special drug courts now divert addicts like Jack into treatment. If he stays sober, he stays free. "It's far more cost-effective to send people to treatment than to send them to prison," said Ayre. Jack is proof of that. Instead of being incarcerated at the expense of taxpayers, he's working and paying taxes. "The message," said Ayre, "is that there is hope and treatment does work." The hope and the treatment are on top of a hill in Lafayette. In 20 years, says George Dominguez, the facility's chief operating officer, Sunrise House has treated probably 20,000 people and impacted 60,000-70,000 lives. "We save lives," he said. "We put families back together."