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Recovery in the News
Addicts helping addicts. They help others stay clean by following a 12-step program
Meredith Bonny
Richmond Times Dispatch
February 28, 2007
Gordon was sitting on the floor in a dirty diaper.
Margaret Shepherd didn't care. She was waiting for her husband to walk through the door with a bag of heroin. When he did, Shepherd bent over the living room table and did her line.
She wasn't expecting what happened next. Her 2-year-old son, who loved to copy his mom and dad, mimicked her, making his own snorting noise.
"I looked at my husband and said, 'Did he just do that?'" Shepherd said.
Today, the skinny brunette with brown eyes and a nagging nicotine habit is not proud of that memory. But she believes talking about her lowest points has aided her recovery from drug addiction.
"All I ever wanted to do growing up was to be a mother," Shepherd said. "I wanted to do it different."
Shepherd, 38, recently shared her story while sitting in the basement of Hatcher Memorial Baptist Church on Dumbarton Road in the Lakeside area of Henrico County. The basement is home to The McShin Foundation, a recovery program in which recovering addicts help other addicts stay clean by following a 12-step program.
Members of McShin, created in 2004, say they belong to a herd -- a core group of people who have banded together to fight their addictions.
They are the gazelles. The drugs are the tiger. And as long as the gazelles stay with the herd, no one gets bitten.
John M. Shinholser, a 48-year-old retired Marine with a thick Southern drawl and a preacher's heart, leads that herd. He is the president and co-founder of the group.
"He's got that Marine mentality," said William Brewer, 39, one of the program's recovering addicts. "Break you down and build you up."
J. Daniel Payne, 29, a Virginia Military Institute graduate and another recovering addict, is McShin's executive director. Once strung out on crack cocaine, Payne now leads by example.
"I've got a new lease on life," Payne said. A few years ago, he didn't want to live. Now, he is happily married, owns a beautiful home in Hanover County and is the father of 6-month-old boy.
"You get what you get when you do what you do," he said.
Shepherd said she, too, has learned that painful lesson.
Her past seems almost surreal. There were arrests, prostitution and times when she would talk men into giving her their urine, which she would use in drug tests to trick authorities into believing she was clean.
She talked about overdosing and sitting in jail and asking her husband, "Why didn't you just let me die?"
Shepherd says she has been drug-free for a year. She's trying to rebuild her life so she can raise her son the right way. "My son is 10 now," she said.
"I don't want him to go down the same path."
One recent afternoon, Payne and Shinholser talked about the stigma attached to drug and alcohol abuse and their goals for McShin, a grass-roots group that is attracting plenty of attention in the recovery field.
"If you need treatment today, God help you," Shinholser said, speaking to the lack of insurance coverage and medical assistance for recovering addicts.
The resources, Shinholser said, fall far short of the need.
To put the problem in perspective, Shinholser noted that the Richmond area hosts about 400 Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings each week.
There are about 20 people who attend each meeting. Virginia has about 2,200 meetings each week.
"And that is just in the 12-step pathway," he said. "There are also religious and other faith-based pathways to recovery."
Kelli Tuck, once a shining athlete with a scholarship to play soccer at the University of North Carolina, is trying to rebuild her life after hanging around a crack house in Hillside Court, a public-housing complex in Richmond.
"This is the first time I've had real friends who didn't want anything from me," she said. "That's what this program is about -- people helping each other."
McShin's founders say they have helped hundreds of recovering addicts ages
17 to 60, ranging from doctors to homeless teens.
"This disease is not discriminatory," Shinholser said of addiction.
In the Richmond area, The McShin Foundation has 28 beds at its three recovery houses, where addicts can live while trying to stay clean. The daily counseling is free, but those who stay in the houses have to pay rent.The foundation also helps addicts find jobs.
The group's name comes from a combination of Shinholser and that of his wife, Carol McDaid, who is a lobbyist in Washington for addiction treatment.
The foundation has an annual operating budget of $200,000, which comes from private contributions and fees charged to participants who require housing or specialized treatment.
McShin serves about 50 people a week who are looking for information, a helping hand or just about anything in between.
The homes operated by the foundation aren't palaces. But they're clean.
In some cases, men sleep three to a room. Mattresses are strewn about the floor. One of the beds is covered with boys' action-figure sheets.
Dwayne Parsons, 46, another recovering addict, manages one of the homes.
He's been clean for 16 months and believes his living arrangements have played a big part in his recovery.
"Loneliness is the single worst thing for me," he said.
On a recent Sunday, the men in his house huddled around a television to watch a NASCAR race. Parsons made chicken wings, spicy hot dogs and shrimp for everyone to snack on.
It's a long way from where he was less than two years ago.
At his lowest point, Parsons blew through his inheritance in a month and lost his parents' house because of drugs.
The former Hermitage High School baseball player said he'd spent 30 years of his life addicted. Parsons recalls checking into a hotel for a week. He spent $1,500 on drugs each day.
"It was a blur," he said.
He still harbors guilt.
"My parents saved every nickel they could. And as much as they hated drugs, I blew all their money on drugs," he said. "In the end, it was either eat or do drugs. I couldn't afford to do both. I had no life left. No spirit -- all I wanted to do was get high. I didn't have anything."
Parsons hopes he can be an example to the younger men entering the program.
He's landed a job that provides health insurance and recently was able to buy himself jewelry -- a reward for his hard work.
But he knows some of the young ones will have to fall a few more times before they learn how bad things can get when drugs rule your life.
J.T. Lee, 17, is just finding out. He started smoking marijuana at 11. That was just the beginning.
His drug use spread to snorting Ritalin, a stimulant used to treat children with attention-deficit disorder, snorting cocaine and popping pills. He even took cold medicine to get high.
Before joining McShin, he was homeless, Lee said. He would roam from couch to couch.
During his darkest days he spent two nights on the street. It scared him into trying to get clean, he said.
"I need help before I get older," Lee said, looking at the older addicts in the room. "If I don't, I'm gonna end up just like them."
Contact staff writer Meredith Bonny at mbonny@timesdispatch.com or (804) 649-6452.
© 2007, Media General. Part of the GatewayVA Network.