The Voices of Integrity: Compelling Portrayals of Addiction

By David H. Kerr

The Voices of Integrity
by David H. Kerr, August 8, 2013

The best way to understand people is to hear their story. Because in the lives of others, we hear echoes of ourselves. The power of the human voice to tear down walls cannot be overstated - and the power of the voice of recovery is gathering. Gil Kerlikowske, Director, White House Office of National Drug Control policy, June 11, 2012.

The savvy, the sincerity, the knowledge, the crafty talents, the instincts, the ability to read others, the hard work and finally the charisma and role modeling of recovering addicts, illuminated my path in founding the Integrity House drug treatment program in Newark, NJ, in the fall of 1968.

This book describes the founding role that Integrity House played in working with other people and programs across the country to generate the first working definition of a type of self-help communal interactive healing that is positive and therapeutic. Dr. Max Jones defined this worldwide model as the Therapeutic Community.

The book offers the history of Integrity House through the many compelling true stories of addiction, treatment and recovery, told by addicts who have completed the Integrity House program since the late 1960s. It gives the reader a solid understanding of the disease, the personal torment and the crimes essential to obtain money for the next fix. It describes the difficulty clean and sober addicts have in staying on the road to recovery, year after year. Finally the reader will be amazed at the achievements, the insights and the help for others, demonstrated by the recovering addicts interviewed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 23, 2015
• ISBN: 9781493105410

David H. Kerr

Biography of David H. Kerr, Founder and past President of Integrity House, 1968. Founder and President of the Recovery Advisory Group in 2012, comprised of past Attorney General’s, past Commissioners and two past governors of NJ. David Kerr established Integrity House, the nationally recognized premier provider of substance abuse treatment and support services, in 1968 in one of the toughest inner cities, Newark, N.J.

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Copyright © 2015 by David H. Kerr.

Edited by Peter Bergstrom and Jerry Graff, MD

Library of Congress Control Number:   2013917383

ISBN:   Hardcover               978-1-4931-0540-3

            Softcover                  978-1-4931-0539-7

            eBook                        978-1-4931-0541-0

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without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

The views expressed in this book are solely the personal views of the author. This book has not been authorized, approved or in any way endorsed by Integrity House. Nor are the views expressed regarding treatment philosophies necessarily endorsed by Integrity House.

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Rev. date: 04/21/2015

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CONTENTS

Foreword

Preface

Introduction

A Day In The Life Of An Active Addict

A Day In The Life At The Integrity House Therapeutic Community

SECTION 1 The Beginning

Community As Healer

Chapter 1 An Unlikely, Unplanned, And Precarious Beginning

Chapter 2 Troubled Beginnings: Background

Chapter 3 Sharing What We Learned In Our Tc With Other Addiction Treatment And Self-Help Programs Was Critical

SECTION 2 The Process

Chapter 4 What Is The Therapeutic Community?

SECTION 3 The Growth

Chapter 5 Early Funding

A Strong Foundation

Chapter 6 We Started With Good Will

Chapter 7 Early Learning Experiences And Hard Knocks: Richard Finds Our Twenty-Four Homes

Chapter 8 Youth Programs: Addiction In The City And In The Suburbs

Chapter 9 Adult Programs: Newark To Berkeley Heights To Secaucus. Rodney Remembered As Part Of Integrity’s Foundation

SECTION 4

After Integrity House, The People In Recovery

Chapter 10 Many Vietnam Veterans Return As Addicts: Dennis’ Testimony

Chapter 11 Aids Brings Death. Founding Of Secaucus Campus; Expansion, And Increased Regulations; Marcella Remembers

Chapter 12 One Of Integrity’s First Student Members And Community Organizers, Donald B.

Chapter 13 Addiction And The Street Savvy Of Manny

Chapter 14 Early Long-Term Staff, Ernie M. Talks Firsthand About Addiction And His Wild Street Days

Chapter 15 Walk The Talk

Chapter 16 Mentor And Role Model To Hundreds Of Staff And Student Members

Chapter 17 Management Secretary And Mentor To Hundreds Of Staff And Student Members

Chapter 18 Interview With Dale R.

SECTION 5 Programs & Progress

Chapter 19 Gangs In Newark: Not All Bad

Chapter 20 Summary

Addendum 1 The Webus Database

Addendum 2 References

End Notes

My heartfelt thanks and love to my wife Linda who was my inspiration, my encouragement and my advisor in writing this manuscript!

FOREWORD

I am privileged to have the Forward written by a long term experienced professional and friend, Don Louria. Donald B Louria M.D. has had an international reputation in infectious diseases, preventive medicine and drug abuse. For 30 years he was Chair of the Department of Preventive Medicine and Community Health at the New Jersey Medical School in Newark, New Jersey. Here is his statement:

I arrived in Newark in the late 1960s, not long after the devastating Newark riots/rebellion. Newark at that time was awash in violence and drug abuse. My training had been in internal medicine and infectious diseases, but now I was being asked to develop a Department of Preventive Medicine and Community Health. That included a focus on drug abuse. My own experience in that field started in the late 1950s and early 1960s at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. While there I wrote what was considered a seminal article on the medical complications of heroin addiction. I then chaired a committee on drug abuse for the New York County Medical Society, and subsequently was appointed by Governor Nelson Rockefeller to be President of the New York State Council on Drug Addiction; this was an unpaid advisory board to the newly formed Commission that was focused on rehabilitating drug abusers rather than jailing them. In the 1960s it became apparent that heroin and other drug abuse was not going to remain confined to the inner cities. It had spread into the formerly pristine suburbs and that created considerable public panic. So it was no surprise that my first book called The Drug Scene, was quite popular and resulted in a large number of talks as well as television and other debates.

When I arrived in Newark, the government (The National Institutes of Health) was eager to fund drug rehabilitation in Newark and my Department was asked to basically coordinate the 6 major drug rehabilitation groups; 3 residential therapeutic communities, a methadone maintenance program and 2 outpatient programs. Integrity was one of the therapeutic communities. Our major activity was tracking the progress of everyone enrolled at these 6 facilities. Integrity was the only one of the 6 that prospered and that was due completely to the tenacity of its founder, David Kerr. Given its hardscrabble early circumstances and the turmoil that made its continuing existence tenuous, it is amazing that Integrity transformed itself into the largest, most successful and most respected rehabilitation program in New Jersey. This was followed by national recognition for both Integrity and its leader, David Kerr, who in 1988 became the President of Therapeutic Communities of America.

That does not mean everything was perfect. There is one huge problem that is no fault of Integrity or David Kerr. That is a lack of long term evaluation. As President of the New York State Council on Drug Addiction, I visited each of the large facilities created under Governor Rockefeller’s rehabilitation program. Each offered some educational and vocational programs as well as group counseling, but in my judgment, they were, for the most part, warehouses for drug abusers, at an eventual cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. Despite our repeated urging, those in charge of implementing the program would not consider any significant follow up for those returning to their communities. They had no data on success or failure rates. As a result they could not learn from experience and could not modify the program to increase its effectiveness. They were uninterested in finding out the characteristics of those drug abusers who succeeded as compared to those who failed. That information is essential. Eventually the entire rehabilitation venture failed and we ended up with draconian and counter-productive New York State drug laws. The large tracking and staffing grant my Department received included no money or staff positions for long term evaluation. Similarly, over a period of decades, David Kerr and Integrity have had no funds for such long term follow up.

That is really unfortunate. As Kerr points out, every drug abuser entering a therapeutic community should, after graduating from nine months or more of residential stay, have at least a 5 year follow up, including periodic urine drug testing. That 5 year mandatory follow up of participants should also apply to any other treatment modality, whether residential, outpatient or methadone maintenance. We need to know what works and what doesn’t. We need to compare those who graduate from residential or other programs to those who drop out after enrollment. We need to know what percentage of those who enroll (or graduate) remain free of drug abuse and lead constructive lives. The long term successes must be compared to dropouts in regard to many variables, including: age; gender; ethnicity; court pressures; family and community support; job history and income; previous attempts at rehabilitation; types of past or current drug use; religiosity; whether they lived in more or less affluent communities etc., etc.

Only then can we determine which programs are cost effective and who is more or less likely to succeed at any given rehabilitation program. We can then begin to match the drug abuser to the program most likely to work for that individual and we can figure out where best to commit limited financial resources; we should expand programs with reasonable long term success rates and not continue to fund programs with very small (or virtually non-existent) success rates. Every drug abuse rehabilitation program must have rigorous, preferably extra-mural, long term evaluation, David Kerr has more than 4 decades as a leader of a good therapeutic community. He has devoted most of his adult life to molding Integrity into the highly respected program it is. He is passionate about Integrity and what he believes needs to be done to maximize the potential for success of therapeutic communities. His views, based on long experience and a lot of careful thought about a very difficult and vexing societal and individual problem, deserve our careful attention. After all, when drug abuse diffuses throughout our society as it has, it is everyone’s problem.

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PREFACE

Addiction: True Stories of Disease, Torment, Treatment², and Recovery

You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.

-William Faulkner

The best way to understand people is to hear their story. Because in the lives of others, we hear echoes of ourselves. The power of the human voice to tear down walls cannot be overstated—and the power of the voice of recovery is gathering (Gil Kerlikowske, Director, White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, June 11, 2012).

This book describes the pain of addiction as well as the focus and discipline essential for a lasting recovery. Counselors (called Coordinators or coaches in the Therapeutic Community or TC) who have been there can identify and serve as role models, not only because they have a degree but mostly because they have a heart. The family³, self-help, and mutual help are at the very core of recovery.

Founded in 1968, The Integrity House Therapeutic Community was one of the first nationally recognized healing communities in the United States, designed with and by recovering addicts with my interaction, guidance and support. It is nationally accredited and state licensed, transforming the lives of hundreds of people in recovery every year.

The long-term clean and sober recovering addict remains the prime example and mirror of hope and help for hundreds of addicts completing the Integrity House recovery program every year. When Integrity House began in 1968, the savvy, the sincerity, the knowledge, the crafty talents, the instincts, the ability to read others, the hard work, and finally the charisma and role-modeling of recovering addicts, illuminated my path.

Experienced long-term clean and sober recovering addicts with State certification, should have parity as drug treatment professionals at the same level as professionals with a BA or master’s degree. This is my observation and strong recommendation to the State of New Jersey, after seeing the contributions and abilities and value of both groups firsthand for over four decades. In fact, on average, I have noticed that the non-degreed, experienced, long-term recovering person is often more effective and useful as a counselor to newly admitted addicts than the degreed professional. However, the best help for addicts often comes from a combination of experienced and degreed professionals.

Many addicts seeking help in the 1970s found that the self-help TC was more relevant to their need for long-term recovery than the traditional shorter doctor-patient programs⁴. This is why these unique self-help programs flourished in the 1960’s and thereafter and grew and continue to receive public dollars. They work due primarily to a supportive community of recovering people working together to help themselves and each other. The TC uses a family approach in which the family or a community of recovering addicts and program staff work together to create and maintain a positive and healthy environment. Here addicts can take an active role to begin and continue their long-term support and lifetime recovery process. All staff and student members (traditionally referred to as clients) take ownership in the therapeutic community family and their own recovery.

To remain a national leader in the non-traditional therapeutic community (TC) approach, Integrity has resisted the pull of the traditional shorter treatment model in favor of the long-term healing and caring process of lifestyle change embedded in the culture of the TC family.

My experience with decades of effectiveness of the self-help TC model is that it creates an environment that positively transforms the very lifestyle of the hard-core addict. The Integrity House TC takes Bill Wilson’s AA approach⁵ to another level, demonstrating effectiveness even with addicts forced by the courts to participate in TC treatment to turn their lives around. The TC movement of the 1960s has been so effective that thousands of TC’s now exist in the United States and around the world. Such programs have certified staff and- national accreditation and many are managed by recovering addict professionals.

In the TC, recovering addicts are seen as individuals, there to help themselves and one another as well as to receive services of a degreed professional. In fact there are many professional services available for student members (clients) in the TC.

All program personnel, paid or voluntary, counselor/coach, cook or carpenter, have an impact on the recovery process in the TC. With experienced training each can be a positive influence and role model especially to incoming student members of the TC family.

The recovering family is always there. To the extent that TC family members can show love and understanding and offer alternatives for another student member in need, the TC is working as it should. The family is the guts and the heart of the TC. In this model, all TC participants are involved in the personal growth process. Whether staff or student member all are family members. It is gratifying to see so many of our recovering addict student members continue their education by completing college and in some cases graduate work!

I cannot stress enough that the best way to understand the history and the development of Integrity House is to understand those who have come for help. It is the mission of this book to provide this understanding.

What is the Therapeutic Community (TC)? The TC is not about a measure of individual counseling hours or counselling techniques or even counselling ability. Rather it is about the measure of concern, quality, and level of participation and positive interaction expressed and felt by staff and student members in the program. It’s also about an understanding and practice of ethics, good choices, compassion and regard by all for fairness and truth.

I had to listen and spend time with our recovering staff and student members to understand them. I had to understand them in order to love them. I had to love them in order to teach them to love themselves and to help themselves.

Our neighborhood senior citizens responded to a city councilman’s rebuke of Integrity House early in 1970. The councilman’s concern was that Integrity House had too much property in Newark, and there was too much going on. We don’t need all of this drug stuff, he pronounced. But the area’s senior citizens stubbornly replied, Where nobody else helps us, Integrity is there for us. They come in, they go shopping for us, they set up the Christmas tree at Christmas time for us, they have a Christmas party for us, they do this, and they do that. This response is indicative of what Integrity House is and how Integrity House works: people first, all people.

Carrie entered Integrity House from the suburbs when she was 16 years old in the early 1970’s. Here is what she said in an excerpt from my interview with her: Going to Integrity kind of shocked me out of continuing down the bad path. I can remember waking up that first full day at Integrity House. I couldn’t believe where I was and what I had done to get there. It was very positive for me and came at the right time. It just shocked me out of my old ways, and it forced structure on me that I needed. I learned that I just couldn’t get all that I wanted in life all the time. Carrie F.

I learned things at Integrity about people that I’ve used over and over much later in my life. It was better than a college education because it was an experience; you felt it. Roland K., one of Integrity’s first Student Members.

Here is another quote from a former student member of Integrity House, Manny: When I came around here I was still a little boy, but now I’m older and I’m still alive. I must know something, and what I know is that you listen to what is said in this TC program. Listen, and it may not be the way it was in them days of old, but the message is still here. The dance is still going on here. I could feel it when I walked in the door. And if you listen and watch people and learn, you can live a decent life. I’ve met people I never expected to meet in my life. I’ve done things I never thought I could do. I learned how to speak in the TC. I learned how to carry myself with respect. I learned how to manage my life, and I learned how to clean things around here. I learned structure. The TC put that in my life. It did a lot of other things, very powerful things. I went to school and I never expected to go to school. All that stuff happened because I was a member and went through the Integrity TC.

When student members take a firm grip of ownership and work shoulder to shoulder with paid staff, the TC program will operate most effectively. The TC allows addicts to experience and thereby learn recovery, and that is why it is so powerful. Again, the innate talent of an addict with years of experience in counseling and positive evaluations by his peers must be recognized on a par with those holding a master’s degree or we will eventually lose the most valuable asset in drug addiction recovery coaching: the experienced, recovering addict role model.

The TC model of help is one whose services are provided by peer student members who also need services, under the guidance and coaching of trained TC staff. Many counselors/coaches who have been there can identify and serve as role models, not because they have a degree; no, it is because they have a heart. In the family model, all TC participants are part of the personal growth process; whether staff or student member, they are all family members.

Here’s a statement from Donald B. who went through Integrity House in 1971: After Integrity House, everything was structured; everything was done. Things started falling into place. People would say, ‘Well, this guy, he’s not using drugs. He’s okay. He’s doing this. He’s doing that. People started listening.’ All of this came after Integrity; even till today I’m still doing the good things. After I graduated Integrity, I was given two awards from Integrity House: Outstanding Accomplishment to Self and Community in 1975. In 1977, you gave me the 5 Year Distinguished Personal Achievement award by Integrity House. In June 1990 I was given a citation from the Somerville mayor for outstanding service to a community. In November of 2000 I received a letter of recognition for individual effort in bringing minor league baseball to Somerville. In 2003 a letter also from the mayor and the Borough Council, acknowledging my efforts in organizing and hosting the street cleanup day. I was voted into the Somerville Hall of Fame in 2003. In 2006 I received the La Salle University Alumni Association President’s Award for Community Service. I’ve been on La Salle’s TV program, and I’ve been in Somerville’s public TV program for community service. And like I said, I’m doing the HIV talks. I’m very active in that. I’m active with Somerset Co., Hunterdon Co., and Middlesex Co. I was appointed on a planning board by the Freeholders and I’m still active.

Here is a statement from Dennis C., blinded and addicted in the Vietnamese war, who went on and earned his PhD in Clinical Psychology at Penn State after Integrity House and now is a practicing licensed Clinical Psychologist in New Jersey with a following often too large for his services. I was ready to move away from the black hole of blindness and broken dreams and into a brighter understanding that maybe I could have a life even though I couldn’t see.

Review of The Voices of Integrity

by Debra Wentz, Ph.D. Dr. Wentz is Chief Executive Officer, New Jersey Association of Mental Health and Addiction Agencies Inc. (NJAMHAA)

David Kerr’s The Voices of Integrity is a gritty, honest window to one man’s lifelong dedication to helping addicts achieve long-term recovery through understanding and love, so they could love and help themselves. The Voices of Integrity does more than tell David Kerr’s story of dedication to helping addicts achieve long-term recovery at Integrity House in Newark, and Secaucus NJ. It shows the determination and drive of the man who says, ‘I had to listen and spend time with them to understand them. I had to understand them in order to love them. I had to love them in order to teach them to love themselves and to help themselves.’ This book is not about addiction. It’s about the recognition that recovery from addiction is a long, uphill road to travel and requires an entire ‘family’—a therapeutic community—of support along the way.

David Kerr’s book, The Voices of Integrity, tells the story of the development and growth of Integrity House, a program he developed in Newark, NJ, to help addicts attain long-term recovery. Honest and direct, Kerr’s book explores his successful paradigm for creating a ‘therapeutic community’ to support addicts’ uphill battle back to a productive, meaningful, and healthy life. Although now retired, Kerr clearly sees his mission continuing through this book.

‘I had to love them in order to teach them to love themselves and to help themselves.’ That’s how David Kerr describes his relationship with the addicts he’s spent more than 40 years assisting on the road to recovery. In his book, The Voices of Integrity. Kerr gives the reader a window to Newark, NJ, in the 1960s—drugs, racial strife, gang warfare. This is the backdrop for the development of Integrity House, a program to help addicts regain productive, meaningful, healthy lives. Kerr doesn’t just provide a history of his successful program; he gives it heart and soul by using the words of the addicts with whom he worked. By telling their stories, Kerr tells his story—and the story of Integrity House.

David H. Kerr spent over forty-five years working—and fighting for—drug addicts. In early 2012, he retired as President and CEO of the Integrity House, a Newark, New Jersey-based drug treatment program serving 2,000 people a year. In The Voices of Integrity, this pioneer of treating addicts through a therapeutic community model says that although his learning how to counsel addicts was essential, it played a minimal role in a "process of self-directed, long-term recovery.

Kerr draws on the words and experiences of the addicts, the counselors, the supporters, the mentors and influencers from other programs, and some of Integrity House’s most experienced staff to tell the story of the vision, development, and growth of the therapeutic community, the Integrity House.

In some ways, this book reads almost as a history book, sometimes stark and violent. But that is the story of the Integrity House as it began in the 1960s. Racial strife; war in Vietnam; rampant drug use in Newark; gang warfare; and, in the 1980s, the AIDS epidemic all provide the backdrop for the birth and growth of the Integrity House and Kerr’s therapeutic community that is, in his words, ‘almost counter to the traditional form of doctor-to-patient counseling.’

The book is punctuated with Kerr’s conversations with former addicts and those associated with Integrity House, as well as his thoughts on gaining funding for the program and managing the increasing requirements of government mandates. He also talks of one of his major goals—clearly delineated in the book—to change the requirements for being a counselor. As Kerr says, A license should not require the attainment of a master’s degree at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars. One of my goals is to put together a certification process for people with recognizable talent and long experience as a counselor.

Kerr’s book is engaging. You are drawn in to his experiences with and his passion for developing a therapeutic community that can provide the appropriate setting for addicts to help themselves and each other.

Qualification: Because it is cumbersome to use he/she or him/her or himself/herself throughout, I am referring to the addict as male. The reader should understand however, that there are just as many female addicts as there are male. No one has an accurate count.

______________________________________

Drug addiction will take it all and it will work on you a little at a time, year after year, until you have nothing and there is nothing to do but to cry— from a woman after years of addiction and over ten years in recovery –

Maxine N.

INTRODUCTION

The story of Integrity House is compelling because it is real. It comes from the depth of the souls of those who have been part of its family and felt it’s caring. It could be the story of addicts anywhere who were lucky enough to get past long waiting lists and find their way into and through the long-term and rigorous recovery process. It is a story of beautiful, creative, and intelligent but driven people turned desperate, sometimes even criminal, by the disease of drug addiction. The voices in this book are all real people with real stories that demonstrate their desperation and nearly total loss of any hope. They are hard-core, long-term addicts but they have turned their lives around, a process initiated in the Integrity TC. All but three of these people are still living and they died decades after leaving Integrity House, of natural causes. These are creative people who talk about their final, often reluctant, acceptance of the need to seek help and to help themselves in a long-term recovery program. All have completed the Integrity House addiction recovery program. Many have been staff members for decades. The intensity of their collective voices needs to be heard and understood to provide a better view of what we are now calling the disease of addiction. They are the Voices of Integrity. What better way to tell the story of Integrity House but through their experiences, their thoughts, and their feelings?

This book represents the story of Integrity’s founding and subsequent growth over four decades. The interviews portray its development as a group of people living and interacting very much like a family to overcome huge obstacles and challenges. Its focus is dynamic and interactive rather than a chronological history. The history is embedded in their tales and interesting personal revelations and reactions and memories of those who participated in the intense long-term recovery process. Two phrases were often repeated in these interviews: Integrity House turned my life around or Integrity House saved my life.

The decision to establish Integrity House in 1968 was not solely mine. It was the result of both the desperate need of addict parolees I was working with in the 1960s and the encouragement from Howard Quirk of the Victoria Foundation and Dr. Don Louria of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of NJ (UMDNJ) as well as the practical help of my cousin Richard Grossklaus. These three men encouraged Integrity’s start by their supportive words, dollars and help in finding our first house. They and others fueled my incentive to begin a program to help the hard-core criminal addicts and my former parolees with whom Richard and I were living at 45 Lincoln Park in Newark, New Jersey, 1968.

Addicts often know what they need, and for most, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA) has been their only lifeline to continued recovery, one day at a time, since the founding of AA in 1935. Bill Wilson⁶ and Dr. Bob were the co-founders of the AA movement in 1935. The AA meetings often motivated the establishment of hundreds of more formal addiction recovery programs emerging in the 1960s in response to a nationwide heroin epidemic. Though addiction has been part of the history of humankind for thousands of years, the substances abused vary from culture to culture and decade to decade. Addiction is still the same problem but one where addicts can be treated with a combination of self-help, mutual help, and professional coaching. With the addict’s active participation, recovery can be successful, enabling a positive lifestyle change and years of clean and sober living.

The problem of addiction has moved from the heroin junkie of the 1960s to the present-day suburban painkiller addict in the first decade of 2000. In 2013 we began witnessing a return to the illegal street-drug heroin, as prescriptions for the expensive and addictive OxyContin and other painkillers cannot be easily refilled more than twice. Black-market heroin is the alternative drug of choice.

Addiction, now called a disease by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), is likely to be one that will plague individuals long into the future. Because of the tenacity of the illness and the failure of many prevention and traditional medically oriented treatment programs, efforts have been made to confront this sometimes life-threatening problem using the therapeutic community approach. This approach uses all staff and student members to work together as a caring community encouraging and demonstrating wellness and right living. Integrity House is one such effort called a therapeutic community, beginning in Newark, New Jersey, in 1968.

Hearing what long-term addicts say about their personal experiences, suggests a more thorough review of present-day understanding and terminology.

Today’s understanding of addiction as a disease may limit the way we approach help for the addict. Certainly, the genealogy of addiction and the phrase it runs in the family are true and would support the concept of addiction as a disease.⁷ The national studies of your brain on drugs also support the disease concept. Electronic scans show that drugs have a visible effect on the brain. The behavior of most addicts would corroborate the idea that the brain in addicts has been altered, causing visible changes in behavior, attitude, and lifestyle. In fact, the brain of an addict changes in appearance according to NIDA. However, while addiction is best described as a disease, help for the addict may not conform to the normal disease or medical treatment model.

Here are some excerpts from a paper I wrote and posted to NJ.com on 9-22-12:

"Addiction to Drugs or Alcohol - A health problem much different than that of other physical diseases"

http://blog.nj.com/njv_david_kerr//print.html?entry=/2012/09/addiction_to_drugs_or_alcohol.html

Healthcare insurance companies should understand the nature of this behavioral disease as somewhat different from other physical illnesses. It is similar in its lifelong chronicity when compared with diabetes or high blood pressure. However, it is much different from these two diseases in that people tend to like it, at least at first. Few people like diabetes or high blood pressure nor do they get good feelings from these illnesses.

As a result of these unique differences, help will be different, often conforming to the self-help and mutual help model of support and coaching. Here are my recommended protocols for funding for the long-term recovery support for many if not most people with the disease of drug and alcohol addiction:

1. The treatment or detox related and structured recovery process needs to be long term, at least five years,⁸ and recovery needs to be an active life-long process to overcome decades of negative lifestyle and to assure that the addict’s new clean and sober lifestyle has a chance to become practiced and permanent.

2. In Therapeutic Community (TC) programs, the primary counselor is often the addict himself, demonstrating the self-help nature of effective and lasting recovery. In the TC, the word coordinator or coach is more appropriate than counselor" since the self-help, mutual help, role modeling and personal growth is facilitated by a supportive, compassionate and experienced role model coach.

3. The TC treatment/recovery protocol must be internalized by the addict at the addict’s own pace. It cannot be set up like a school course or some other time limited didactic approach based on funding criteria. In the TC, it is recommended that addiction treatment and recovery providers find ways of supporting the recovery of their student members⁹ for years after the funding ends. However, the long-term recovery process is critical and should receive some funding. An addict’s recovery rarely conforms to the length of funding. Many treatment/recovery providers have established alumni groups to support each other through the essential long-term recovery process for years even after funding ends.

4. Recovery engagement and support during and after the initial medical treatment is a lifetime process and this point cannot be emphasized enough in order to offset what sometimes is two to three decades of addiction for many addicts.

5. In the TC, the long-term clean and sober recovering addict must play a prominent role in the continuing support and guidance of the new recovering addict in treatment and recovery programs. Giving back to others is a key element of lasting recovery. If this is not possible, a TC coaching staff member should remain in close contact as a mentor to the new recovering addict for several years.

The all-hands-on community or therapeutic community approach has evolved over thousands of years¹⁰ focusing on behavior, attitudes, lifestyle change, and interactions with and feedback from others in recovery. Present concepts of help for the addict have taken the form of traditional treatment as in the treatment of physical diseases. While this approach is a part of the long term recovery process, it must be combined with the cajoling and confrontation, encouragement, guidance, and role modeling of peers. Positive peer influence is a key aspect promoting personal change in the TC and this approach cuts down on the need for hiring many staff, making the TC the most cost effective model of help for addicts!

People Who Were Key to Starting Integrity House

Many people were critical in creating the beginning healing community that my mother suggested I call Integrity. My cousin Rich Grossklaus had the major role of locating all of the present-day historic and beautiful turn-of-the-century brownstone homes and now state-of-the-art living units in nearly two dozen historic buildings at Integrity House, in Lincoln Park, Newark, NJ. These are now the homes for over three hundred recovering addict student members¹¹ in Newark and in our Secaucus,¹² New Jersey site. Also critical in helping us get started were the following: Jerry Buermann, attorney; Ivan Schragen, State Vocational Rehabilitation Commission; Art Hartmann and Archie McAllister, Essex County Probation; Jack Dennis, former state assemblyman; Mike Festa, Integrity Trustee and former Verona, NJ Health Officer; Pete and Rosemary Cass, attorneys in Bloomfield, NJ; Cole Lewis, executive at the Prudential Insurance Co.; and Walter Steinmann, former Verona, New Jersey Town Administrator and of course my cousin and co-founder Richard Grossklaus.

The decade of the 1960s was angry and violent and full of social problems, including teen runaways and heroin addiction, in both the urban and suburban communities. These problems challenged us all. Their very threat to human life brought an intense local, statewide, and federal response. In the 1960s, I spoke to dozens of community and school groups throughout the state, and the interest and concern about the problem was reflected in the hundreds who attended each public engagement. Teaming up with local and state law enforcement, we focused most of the presentations on what used to be called Narcotics Addiction.

Now, a half century later, the problem of suburban and urban prescription painkiller abuse and addiction is so widespread that it rivals the spread of heroin in the 1960s. This addiction has now accelerated into yet another heroin epidemic. I don’t think that people suffer more from pain now than they did in the last several decades. However, because we have the pain medications that give instant relief, many patients are requesting them over and over, and there are some doctors and pharmacies that have been cooperating and over prescribing. The result is a reduction of pain symptoms, along with a growing number of long-term drug addicts! Now, because of the high cost of pain pills, our society is noticing many normally law-abiding citizens replacing the legal pain reduction pills with the far cheaper but unregulated illegal heroin.¹³

Manny, a recovering addict treated at the Integrity House and now employed at a private company in Newark, explained to me: The reason I want to speak out to others is because this thing is powerful. I’m still alive, but something happened. Something happened in this room; in these Integrity House buildings and it changed my life forever, and I have something to say. I have something to say to the counselors and to others like me.

Manny’s testimony is one of many that captures the intensity of feelings and gratitude of those in recovery who have come through Integrity House and have adopted an entirely different and constructive drug free lifestyle. They are the voices that speak from the heart about their own desperate struggles and the impact that the Integrity House has had on their lives.

A day in the life of an active addict

A day in the life at the Integrity House

Therapeutic Community

The reader should understand that TC’s in the U.S. and across the world operate to reflect their own culture to best prepare student members for a new drug and alcohol free lifestyle in the community. The process of lifestyle change is time consuming since new habits must be practiced before they become natural and automatic. This is why many of my colleagues and I recommend that the treatment and recovery process in the TC span a period of five years. The question of What is a Therapeutic Community will be answered in Chapter 4.

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SECTION 1

The beginning

COMMUNITY AS HEALER

The Therapeutic Community (TC) is sometimes referred to as the community as healer. The full description of the TC is found in Chapter 4.

Here is a good description of the TC taken from my

interview with Ernie M.

EM: "When I was a Student Member here, there was little time that I spent with my counselor. I found out that this was by design since the community itself rather than any one person such as a counselor was in fact the healing agent. Once I entered ‘the community,’ or the Therapeutic Community—TC, the peers that were already there served as models for most of my insights and the treatment that I needed. My peers actually were the ones who helped me zero in on the concepts of Integrity. Concepts such as openness, patience and consistency, courage, blind faith, responsibility and responsible concern, peer pressure, self-help."

This statement comes from one of Integrity House’s top staff members who is still working and guiding the Integrity family and who has achieved a master’s degree in the field of social work. His focus continues the Integrity tradition, i.e., the design, maintenance, and support of the whole community of people working together with a healthy understanding of each other, encouraging self-help and help to others (mutual help).

CHAPTER 1

An Unlikely, Unplanned, and Precarious Beginning

Mugged

It was a cold evening in late February 1968, in the front of the Colonnade Apartments in Newark, when I came face to face with my potentially fleeting mortality. The well-muscled African American man looked familiar with the cross like pin in his left ear. He gave eye contact, so I said in my best cool nerd voice, Hello. Aren’t you part of the ‘Barons’ street gang? At the time, the Barons were feuding with the Condors, another gang from the Lincoln Park area of Newark in the ’60s. He responded in a low-key tone, Yeah. Who wants to know? I introduced myself and recognized him as a former parolee from Newark. His tone softened when he thought that I might be the law, and he started his game.

He talked about his family and his kids and ended with a plea for money. I told him that I couldn’t give him any money, but if he was off drugs, I would help him find a job. In an instant, he was holding a knife to my neck, asking for all my money. In a quick attitude reversal, I gave him all I had, $34.00, and showed him my empty wallet for proof. Not such a great idea since he might have taken my wallet as well as my money. He took my money and actually thanked me and walked off quickly to buy a bag of dope. I remember having a difficult time reconciling what just happened but knew that he would be high from a few nickel bags of dope in less than an hour. On the one hand, my instinct told me not to be afraid of him; he’s okay, a person out of work, needing money. He needs help. On the other hand, maybe he was just a slick predator. My conclusion: he was both nice guy and predator. While not true for every addict, it seems to fit the profile for most. I later discovered that an addict in recovery is still very resourceful and cunning, bright but often unbalanced in decision-making with a high need for recognition, as well as a desperate unspoken need for help, guidance, structure, and hope.

This was only the first of six muggings I experienced during the late 1960s. These assaults, all by addicts I was trying to help, gave me some insight and a better understanding of the addict’s mind and the dual nature of the addict’s behavior while addicted. Thankfully, I was never hurt.

Newark 1960s: Violence, Rebellion, Addiction

In the late 1960s, the City of Newark was a cauldron of violence, a cradle for the new black power movement. The first step toward significant progress in what had become a national civil rights movement swirled around with a tone of rebellion in many neighborhoods. Many of Newark’s young black men, energized by the exploding incidents of revolt and rebellion in Watts and Detroit and in many other cities, took to the streets. They wanted basic equality and opportunity and justice to be offered to them on a par with white folks. They wanted and they demanded long overdue recognition and trust.

The Civil Rights movement accelerated in 1963 but the byproduct of violence was seen as a threat to the established order in Newark. The police responded aggressively to what was perceived as a general threat to public safety. Verbal altercations turned into shouting matches, and soon pushing and shoving erupted into physical beatings and burning and violence. The perceived and real political exclusion of blacks from city government, from urban renewal efforts, from adequate housing, from employment opportunities, and from decision making was met by protests in the streets and eventual violent clashes between a primarily white police force and young black demonstrators.

The riots or more aptly labeled the civil rights rebellion of 1967, which took place in Newark, New Jersey, from July 12 through July 17, 1967, were sparked by a display of police brutality. John Smith, an African American cab driver for the Safety Cab Company, was arrested on Wednesday, July 12, when he drove his taxi around a police car and double-parked on Fifteenth Avenue, Newark. At 11:00pm., one of the civil rights leaders informed the police that a peaceful protest would be organized across the street from the precinct. A police officer handed the leader a bullhorn to address the crowd. Bob Curvin, a member of CORE, joined by Timothy Still, the president of a poverty program; and Oliver Lofton, the administrator of the Newark Legal Services Project, presented the case for civil rights for the black community.

Eventually, the moderate voices and compelling message of Curvin, Still, and Lofton and many others were replaced by loud and spontaneous protests and violence and burning of buildings by angry black youth. Peace, seen as selling out to whitey, was out of the question. As the protests grew, so did the violence, and it was met by the force of a mostly white police department. Violence and death followed.