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Highlands Today

Drug Addiction Brings People To The Brink Of Destruction

TWO RECOVERING ADDICTS AND A MOM

Jesse Osbourne/Highlands Today

Mechanic Vaden Nealy works on a tractor that belongs to the city of Avon Park at Glade & Grove Supply Company recently. Nealy is a recovering drug addict who was given a chance by the company.

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By Joe  Seelig | Highlands Today

Published: November 25, 2007

Addiction does not discriminate by age, race or sex and it crosses all national or geographical boundaries. Each year about 100,000 people in the United States die due to drug use, according to the Mayo Clinic.

The Narcotics Anonymous text book reads that addiction is a "continuing and progressive illness "and for a using addict the end results are always the same, "jails, institutions and death."

Short of the grave, there is hope for addicts to recover. There is hope in public, private and faith-based drug treatment programs, 12-step programs and churches. Now there are jail programs such as JASA, (Jail Alternatives to Substance Abuse) offered at the Highlands and Polk county jails.

Rejoining Society

Life for Vaden Nealy, 44, of Avon Park, has changed drastically since he stopped using drugs almost four years ago.

He has held a steady job as a mechanic on Case tractors in Avon Park. His ex-wife and kids are back in his life.

Life is good, he said, but remembering where he came from is important.

"I was a 205 pound man and I got down to 130 pounds," he said. "My waist went from a 36 (inch) to a 31 (inch). Don't pick up that first drug cause it's gonna lead you down a road you don't wanna go. Take it from a man who has been through it."

After his last stint in the Highlands County Jail, he was sent for six months to The Bridge, a treatment facility in Orlando, where he was shown the tools he needed to stop using drugs, but it took a while longer.

Nealy's Story

Born in Wauchula to Patricia and Archie Nealy, young Vaden grew up in Highlands County, raised in-part by his aunt Peggy and uncle Dixie Scott. "It was an upper middle class home, pretty much," he said. "I was spoiled."

In his early teens a trip to the drive-in theater led to his first encounter with marijuana.
"I remember going in a car (with friends) to the drive-in on (State Road) 17," he said. "I didn't smoke, but I got a contact high."

It wasn't long before he smoked pot in school. By age 15 he tried cocaine. His first brush with police came after he forged a check and cashed it.

"The law came to the house to give me the shakedown," he said.

He moved to North Carolina where his dad was working but didn't want to live by his dad's rules.

"I wanted to be part of the 'in' crowd," he said. "I would leave for weeks at a time."

Troubles Snowball

Nealy messed up his dad's truck.

"He beat the dog meat out of me and I left," he said.

He stayed with a friend for a week until he forged another check.

At age 17, he served 130 days in jail and eight months in prison for forgery. He wasn't out 30 days when a dirty urine test put him back in prison for 18 months.

Meanwhile his parents moved to Williamsburg, Va. He was released.

"Momma tried to get me back into school, but before you know it I met up with the wrong crowd. I started using cocaine," he said.

He avoided the law for three years but then he met up with a biker gang. He learned how to make methamphetamine out of ingredients found at a corner drug store.

Eventually he landed in prison again.

His worst memory was from 1986. Nealy, with his best friend, Alan, and some friends headed from Williamsburg to a theme park. Alan was too drunk to drive his pickup, so Nealy was elected. Playing games with another driver, a tire caught a curb and the truck flipped several times. Nealy's eyes grew watery talking about it.

Alan died. Nealy's blood alcohol was over the limit at .110. The limit at that time was .100, he said. Authorities wanted to prosecute him for DUI manslaughter, but somehow Nealy beat the rap. It scared him.

In 1990 he met his wife, Mary, who worked at a dairy in Highlands County. He worked at a hardware store. For three years Nealy drank only beer, he said, and they had two of their three children.

Off And Running

In 1993, he didn't handle his father's death very well.

"A guy came to the house with some meth," he said. "I did a line of it and next thing I knew it was three days later before I went to sleep. I picked up where I left off."

He dealt drugs until 1996. That was the year he bought marijuana from an undercover officer and was arrested.

Mary took the children and divorced him in 1997.

Nealy moved in with his mother in Sebring and got to see his children every other weekend. He was under house arrest.

He remembered crying to the Lord and asking what he needed to do. He had a moment of clarity. His mom told him to flush everything. He did, he attended church, but that the clarity became clouded again when his mother died in 1999 of cancer.

Out on another binge he spent a $40,000 inheritance and lost her house, he said.

"I never shared a needle," Vaden said. "Even though I was a junkie, I still had standards."

He stole them from a diabetic.

When he got out of The Bridge program, he moved in with another meth addict and was right back at it.
He developed a $200-a-day drug habit using heroin and methamphetamine.

"I just had to wait until (the drugs) bit me a little more," he said.

He said he went back and forth between Alabama and Florida for a time.

Mary, her mother and a friend named Hank attempted to intervene. Hank had promised Nealy's mom before she died that he would try to help him.

"I pretty much got an ultimatum, that I would lose my wife, kids, friends," he said. "So I gave it up. I was tired of looking over my shoulder."

He attends the First Avenue Baptist Church and credits the church members, Hank, and the support of his family that helped him through the detoxification phase.

"I could call them any time if I needed to talk," he said.

He enjoys his new life.

"I don't miss a meal," he said with a broad grin. "The first thing that made me smile was my daughter saying, 'Daddy, you're getting fat.' My pants wouldn't buckle."

At 212 pounds, by his account, Nealy eats good these days.

Getting JASA-cized

There has been a lot written in the press lately over the success of the JASA program, recently introduced into the Highlands County Jail at the behest of Sheriff Susan Benton.

Mell Williams Jr., program supervisor for the Tri-County Human Services JASA program, has been working in the field of substance abuse since 1993 and has been working with offender populations since 1994.

"We're very proud of it because it's been very effective," Williams said.

Through a collaborative effort with the jail security and treatment staff, the idea is to get to these individuals before they end up in prisons using cognitive behavioral modification.

"Their mode of thinking is screwed up," said Williams. "What may be logical to the addict is often illogical to the society. If you change the way you think, you'll change the way you behave."
The process includes a special aftercare program.

"We try to work holistically with the client, mind, body, emotion and spirit," he said.

Clients may, if they wish, attend spiritual classes in addition to the JASA program.
Warner's Story

Born in Miami, Brian Warner, 39, said when he was 23 or 24 he moved to Lake Placid and worked as an orderly in a hospital.

"I was a functioning alcoholic at that time," he said.

He credits the JASA program with saving his life.

"I have another drink or drug left in me, but I don't have another recovery left in me," he said. "I want to use my addiction and my alcoholism (experience) to help other people, which is unusual for me."
He now has more than 18 months free from drugs.

Since his release from jail, Warner has gotten involved with the Mathetes Redemption Ministries, Inc., a jail ministry offering aftercare, counseling, job training and life management as well as discipleship training.

He's has managed to keep out of trouble.

"I started hitting the bars at 16 because I looked older," he said. "I went from alcohol to marijuana to cocaine to gambling and I had to have all of the above to go to the casinos."

But people don't just pick up and use drugs and alcohol, he said. There are underlying reasons.
"I was selfish," he said. "I didn't want to help anybody. I cared about me."

On July 1, 2005, Warner said his drug use came to a halt when he got caught for possession and purchase of marijuana during a reverse sting operation.

"Then I violated my probation with a dirty urine — cocaine," he said. "It was the insanity of doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. You think you're invincible, that it can't happen to me."

Deliverance

At the jail, Warner met up with Candi Garcia, a pastor with Iglesia Christo Te Ama, Outreach Community Church and the Mathetes Redemption Ministries International.

"Recycling Men For The Kingdom" is its motto.

"The ministry is here to help men," said Garcia. "To guide them, to bring them back into society. You can't mix females and males together — otherwise you have a bomb."

The JASA program and the jail ministry changed Warner's life.

Warner explained that after an interview process he moved around inside the jail to the JASA dorm. Twelve addict volunteers were separated from the other inmates. It was two picnic tables, four toilets, a shower and 12 bunks.

"The dungeon," said Garcia. "That's what we used to call it in those days. The dungeon. It was in the old jail in the middle of the building. No windows. They slammed those doors. Clang, clang, clang."
"The way the class was presented it taught you a new way to think," Warner said. "I came to the realization it was nobody's fault but my own that I was sitting there. I used to blame everybody else for my problems."

The Mathetes ministry has provided him with a place to live, a clean environment where recovering men can live and grow until they can fend for themselves after getting out of jail.

"It's those little things you keep in the recesses of your mind that will keep you using," Warner said. "Some things in your past that you have buried, that you don't want to deal with. You have to let them out."

"That's called deliverance," Garcia said. "To be delivered from that past, it will set you free."
Warner never married, but his immediate family knew he was using drugs, although he never admitted it.

"I could see the pain on their faces and the frustration of knowing they couldn't do anything about it," he said. "They were victims too, well I was a volunteer - I made the wrong decisions."

Today he runs his major decisions past his support system of aftercare counselors, his pastor and seeks God in prayer.

He is a member of Celebrate Recovery, a 12-step Christian program and Promise Keepers. His family supports his recovery.

"My dream is to work in the field with other drug addicts and alcoholics, giving them hope to turn their lives around," Warner said. "(Addiction) took my freedom, everything you value, family, job, bank accounts.

"Now my relationship with my family is stronger than it ever was. They can see what I was doing with the drugs and the alcohol was part of a disease."

A Parent's Worst Nightmare

That was the fate of Irene, the deceased daughter of a Lake Placid woman who has asked to remain anonymous. But she wanted her daughter's story to be told in the hope that it will save a life.

"It goes back," Jane began. "She's gone 25 years now. Her real name was Irene, but I lovingly called her Renie (Jane pronounced the name Ree-nee).

From birth she was active and alert, Jane said.

Jane described a gifted child growing up in New Jersey; artistic, musical, physically agile, "a competent gymnast," she said. "She was a kid with a lot of interests and hobbies."

But Renie's principal (a nun) warned Jane to watch out for her peer group. It wasn't long after that Renie began missing classes and skipping school.

"She went from being a great dresser to dressing in tight jeans and wearing harsh makeup," Jane said. "Darker. The makeup was dramatic.

"She had a crush on a handsome young man who had a reputation for drugs. I went back and forth on how to deal with it. She was out of control."

She quit school. Renie ran away again and again. She nearly overdosed in a home for troubled teens.
"She showed up at my house stoned," said Jane. "This beautiful child with this look on her face — her balance was off — her confidence was shot. She had a mean streak — explosive — she was stealing. I couldn't stop her from hurting herself."

Renie was placed into a drug and alcohol mental health facility in Ambler, Pa., three hours from Jane's home.

"I was angry that this happened to my beautiful child," she said, fighting back the tears. "We were planning that she would actually go to college. I was getting her back."

At age 18 she was released. She seemed better, but continued with counseling. It was Memorial Day weekend 1982 when Renie returned to her mom to stay.

Her father bought her a car. She was supposed to drive to Ambler to see visit her doctor, but the doctor called. Renie never arrived.

There was a party at her gymnastic coach's house, Jane said. She was served liquor. It was raining and her car struck a pole.

"Renie was killed instantly," she said. "The first drug changes you. You lose your identity. It changes the patterns in your brain and in the end — drugs kill. My warning to parents is don't be so smug you think it can't happen to you."

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