Caleb Warnock

For the past two years, Thomas McGowan has been in and out of the Utah County Jail on drug and related charges.

For years, Utah County Jail has been a revolving door of drug addicts who, given up on by their family and friends after years of drug abuse, simply cycle back into the drug culture after leaving jail, only to return to jail again and again.

The year-old Re-Entry Assistance Program, called REAP, hopes to interrupt that cycle.

"Ninety percent of inmates are incarcerated because of drugs," said jail Chaplain Richard Green, who co-founded REAP.

Charles Williams, a former drug addict now sober two decades who co-founded the program, said an initial challenge to the REAP program was getting inmates to admit they had no place to go upon leaving jail. Jail rules, now changed for REAP applicants, required that inmates have an address before they could be released; many simply lied and returned to the street or their drug supplier.

REAP works with the Housing Authority of Utah County to provide subsidized housing for participants. The pilot year of the REAP program has been so successful, helping seven addicts to find jobs and hope, that the program is now expanding, and hopes to be helping 30 addicts in twelve months' time, Williams said.

But that goal will be impossible without committed volunteers, who will need to help addicts get identification, find jobs, take them to therapy and court appointments, help them get onto food stamps and other local aid programs and help them navigate the red tape of the very government programs designed to help them -- which in and of itself can be so intimidating that some addicts simply give up and go back to drugs, Williams said.

The work is not easy. REAP officials must convince landlords to allow a drug addict to rent from them. To help, REAP pays a year of rent up front. It is also not easy for addicts, many of whom are convicted felons, to find jobs. Clients, as the addicts are called, are required to pay $50 a month or 30 percent of their wages to rent, whichever is greater.

Volunteer mentors are given six weeks of training to learn to deal with addicts who may be more eager to tell mentors what the addict thinks they want to hear, rather than dealing in truth and reality, Green and Williams said. More than anything, volunteers must be willing to believe in those they mentor, to be a positive influence to a person grappling to be free from the long reach of addiction.

McGowan said he struggles primarily with addiction to cocaine, crystal meth and alcohol. So deep is his addiction that even the sight of ice cubes at his work ignites his desire for crack cocaine. His struggle to be sober is a minute by minute job.

After he joined the REAP program last year, he relapsed in September and went back to jail for a time. He has now been clean since Dec. 15 and is working as a cook at a nursing home in Springville.

"I have this by the grace of God," he said of the REAP program and particularly Williams, who has been at his side to encourage him even through his relapse. "When you are addicted, you have nowhere else to go because you've been rejected by society."

Williams said he believes McGowan began to have a change of attitude about the REAP program after discovering that REAP and Williams had not given up on him because of his relapse. Williams is paid for part of his REAP work by his family company, Forever Green, which sells health products.

"I know how valuable an addict can be when they are recovered," Williams said, noting those who have truly left behind a serious drug addiction often then reach out to serve the community. "If someone had not bothered with me, I would not be here today."

For information about the REAP program, call Chaplain Richard Green at 592-6001.