THE NEEDIEST CASES

On 48th Try at Rehabilitation, an Alcoholic and Addict Finally Meets
With Success

Douglas Moye, 44, talks about the 47 other times he has found himself
in an alcohol detoxification program, and why, on the 48th try,
something began to sink in.

He tells of his troubled life as a petty criminal, a manic-depressive
and an alcoholic while rapping the knuckles of one hand on a table, as
if that knocking were some sinister summons to the door.

Mr. Moye was born in Hollis, Queens, on July 7, 1961, to a troubled
family. He says that with the encouragement of family members, his
substance abuse started early: alcohol at age 8, cocaine at 10. "They
gave me alcohol to put me to sleep while they partied," he said.

At 16, he dropped out of school, living with a grandparent or
sometimes on the street. He always had a drug habit or his alcoholism
to feed.

The turning point came, he said, when his darkening thoughts turned
toward killing. On an autumn day in 2004, as he was collecting bottles
and cans on the street for recycling, Mr. Moye suddenly started asking
drug acquaintances where he could buy a firearm, preferably an
automatic or semiautomatic.

"I was going to kill somebody and anybody around me," Mr. Moye said in
a recent interview at a treatment office supported by UJA-Federation
of New York, a beneficiary of The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund.
"I was just going to spray."

He struggled to explain: "It's like, you go out and open a door, and
you get punched in the face. Every time. But one day I got punched,
and I felt like punching back. Hard."

Luckily, the man whom he had asked for a firearm, someone Mr. Moye
used to smoke crack cocaine with, said, "I could get you a gun, or you
could go into detox, and I'll go in with you."

It was the stark choice that Mr. Moye said he needed. "When I became
homicidal, I did not like that feeling," he recalled. "I was not put
on earth to kill."

So, in October 2004, Mr. Moye checked into the alcohol treatment
center of St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx. It was 24 years after
Mr. Moye first entered a detoxification program, at a Queens hospital
whose name he can no longer remember.

Now Mr. Moye says he has been clean and sober for more than a
year.

The street acquaintance who prodded him into the program dropped out
of it early. Mr. Moye said he knew him only by his street name, which
he also cannot remember. But he now sees the man's bold offer as a
heroic act, perhaps even an example of divine intervention.

However long Mr. Moye's list of setbacks, including suicidal
depression, countless days in jail for public drunkenness and a year
in prison for purse snatching, he has not lost his sense of humor.

Could he swim when, at 27, he threw himself into the East River in an
impetuous attempt at suicide? "If I didn't know how to swim before, I
learned that day," he said, a slight smile crossing his face.

Since he turned a corner in his drug rehabilitation and received a
referral from the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, Mr. Moye has
been getting counseling from the intensive psychiatric rehabilitation
treatment program of the Federation Employment and Guidance Service
Inc. in Manhattan.

His bipolar disorder, which helped fuel his substance abuse, was only
recently identified, and Mr. Moye is now receiving medication.

Sharona Perel, Mr. Moye's caseworker, said, "Doug is helping others
now." Since March, he has been a co-leader of several discussion
groups; he also tutors others in high school math.

Public assistance got him a small apartment in a single-room-occupancy
hotel and a $500 grant from the Neediest Cases paid for the
necessities that will help him make a life there: pots, pans, dishes,
silverware, bedding and a vacuum cleaner. "I never had any of those
things before," he said.

Someday soon, Mr. Moye said, he hopes to hold down a full-time job.
His longest period of steady work was four months as a front-desk
clerk for the Volunteers of America, and he figures he can do
something similar now, but without the entanglement of substance abuse.

He also hopes to find the daughter he fathered five years ago. Her
mother left for Florida and never returned, Mr. Moye said.

"I'm going to speak my mind, help other people, and not look over my
shoulder anymore," he said.