'One Day at a Time' - Staying clean everyday battle for recovering drug addict

New Year's is not a time of rebirth, renewal or reinvention to Lee McKeithan. He doesn't bother with showy resolutions or make lengthy lists of things he'd like to do better.

Rather, Jan. 1 is just another day on the calendar to Mc-Keithan. He wakes up and tells himself to do the best he can, same as he does the other 364 days of the year.

Work hard, live right, repeat.

McKeithan is a recovering drug addict and he knows no other way to approach life.

"One day at a time, man, one day at time," McKeithan said. "I don't have any other choice. That's the way it has to be for me."

The fall for McKeithan, 42, was especially steep. He's originally from Washington, D.C., and grew up the son of a clothing-shop owner.

Like many addicts, he started with marijuana when he was young before moving on to harder drugs. He said he was snorting heroin even as he ran the family business in the 1980s after his father retired.

"I could keep clothing in the store when I was on heroin, but that crack cocaine, it was like nothing else," he said. "When I did crack, everything just vanished right out of the store."

After the business foundered, McKeithan came to Winston-Salem nine years ago to live with an aunt who'd become gravely ill. He stayed in her house after she died, even though his father and sister had moved to Greensboro. (His mother died in 1999.)

All the while, he continued to abuse drugs. These days, though, he's clean and simply wants to stay that way.

"I'm just a guy with a drug problem who's trying to do right," he said on New Year's Eve while relaxing in the common area of the Prodigals Community, a long-term drug rehabilitation ministry program on Waughtown Street.

Humble and unassuming -- he might tell you the term is "humbled" rather than humble -- McKeithan represents the best that Prodigals has to offer those who seek help.

"If you want help, it's here," he said of the non-denominational local ministry that he credits with saving his life.

About Prodigals

Prodigals Community was established in 1986 as an offshoot of a prison ministry intended to help ex-cons make the transition from prison.

Along the way, it evolved into an intensive, 15-month residential program to help recovering addicts.

"We aim to give people the tools they need to attain and maintain recovery," said Jeff Coppage, the executive director/pastor for the program.

That, too, is perhaps modest. Prodigals expects to make 40 percent of its $400,000 budget through the services -- moving and landscaping -- its residents perform. (The rest comes through donations and whatever grants the staff can drum up.)

Internal surveys indicate that about 80 percent of those who graduate maintain sobriety after they leave.

"That's not to say that a number of those don't have a relapse," Coppage said.

"But after having been here for 15 months, they have the ability to reset. Scientific documentation shows that long term is far more effective than 14- or 28-day programs."

Wake-up call

Marijuana, heroin, crack cocaine. Jail, rehab, homelessness. Recovery and relapse. Despair to euphoria. McKeithan has experienced all of those. He's lived the life, hit bottom and bounced back.

He remembers clearly the day he knew with certainty that Prodigals was his last, best hope.

It was two years ago, Monday, Jan. 4, 2008.

He'd been to Prodigals before, stayed two months and thought he had whipped his addiction.

Because the program is voluntary, he just left. Eventually, he started smoking crack again.

"I lived just around the corner from here," McKeithan said.

"I was using that day, walking behind the Food Lion and it was real cold. I remember thinking ‘If I wake up tomorrow, I'm not using. I'm going back to Prodigals.' It was my moment of clarity."

The next day, true to his word, he came back.

He stayed the entire 15 months, and did so well that he was asked to stay on as the property supervisor.

"I'll be clean two years on Jan. 5," McKeithan said.

"You never have it whipped. If you think you do, you're dead. No day -- New Year's, Christmas, whatever -- is more important than another. It's an everyday battle."

So if you're thinking about lighting up or skipping that trip to the gym, think about McKeithan before you do.

ssexton@wsjournal.com
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