STOPPING DRUG USE, FIGHTING THE FIRE

Dec 23, 2005 Durham's drug problem is like a fire. The job of law
enforcement is to put water on the fire, to douse it, Police Chief Steve
Chalmers said. But if what's fueling the fire isn't shut off, then the
blaze will continue roaring. Bull City cops have been busy popping drug
dealers around here, putting water on the fire.

But as long as our neighbors continue getting high, the flicker will always
end up raging out of control as new dope pushers swoop in to ply their
trade. The fuel supply for a community's drug problem? Drug users. If
nobody's getting high, there's no market for illegal drugs. The flame gets
extinguished.

Which, I guess, makes Chris Barnett something of a neighborhood
"firefighter." He's been at it five years, trying to get people off drugs.
The work is tough.

Barnett figures 160 guys have come through his substance-abuse program.
Only 40 stuck with it.

"It's kind of discouraging if you look at it statistically," he said. But
Barnett's got faith.

"We plant a seed," he said of the Christian-based program that models
itself after Narcotics Anonymous. Sometimes the seed takes root. Other
times it gets choked out by the weeds of this life and the cares of this
world. New Way of Life Recovery House is run out of an old abode on North
Mangum Street. Ride past and, if you notice it at all, there's the chance
of mistaking it for one of those withered inner-city haunts where junkies
congregate to get their fixes.

Instead, Barnett's inside offering life to the 16 men living at the
transitional house that doubles as a church -- God's Property Urban
Ministry. Barnett's the pastor. The living room is his sanctuary, with the
pulpit next to a big-screen TV, a bottle of Food Lion olive oil nearby for
the healing services.

"I'm a blue-collar pastor," said Barnett, who generates money for his
ministry through Champion Wash On Wheels, a mobile detailing and
power-washing service. The pastor actually gets out there with the guys in
the program and busts the suds. Call 730-5050 if you need some work done.
You may have seen some dudes on U.S. 15-501 asking you to put money in
plastic tubs. They wear orange vests and have permits to be out there. They
are -- some of them -- raising funds for Barnett's program, trying to
gather whatever change they can. So they can make a change. So they can
stay clean. Guys like Nathaniel Thompson.

"I like being around positive brothers," he said. When I met Thompson, he'd
been living at the transitional house for three weeks. Yet he's already
clean, been off drugs for seven years. It didn't make sense to me. Why hang
out at a halfway house? "I just like being around the environment,"
Thompson said. "That's what keeps me clean."

When the men leave the house, they must go two-by-two. That's one of
Barnett's accountability measures. If one guy gets weak and wants to buy
some drugs, another is there to jerk a knot in him.

"I am my brother's keeper," explains Thompson, 37. Yeah, but the monkey
could jump on both brothers' backs, and they might figure just one little
hit won't hurt. Next thing you know they're sneaking dope back to the
recovery house.

Barnett, a former substance abuser, wasn't fazed by my skepticism. "Being
an addict, you can pick up on the signs," he said. In other words, the man
can spot a flame.

John McCann's column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays.