Women work to break the cycle with help from Magdalene HouseBy Glenn Smith (Contact)
The Post and Courier
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Grace Beahm Nellie Gash (from left), Latrina Reid, Catherine Yantis and Cynthia Arrowood spend Friday afternoon together at Magdalene House. Video
Cynthia Arrowood and Catherine Yantis two of the four women living at the Magdalene House, a nonprofit that helps women try to break the cycle of addiction and incarceration, tell their stories. Watch » Video
Latrina Reid and Nellie Gash two of the four women living at the Magdalene House, a nonprofit that helps women try to break the cycle of addiction and incarceration, tell their stories. Watch » Nellie Gash stepped off the bus in Greenville and looked out on a landscape littered with reminders of past mistakes and old temptations. At 43, Gash had been addicted to crack cocaine for most of her adult life. The drug robbed her of a career and a stable family life. It drove her to sell her body to support her habit. It landed her behind bars. Now, freshly released from state prison, she was back where she started, free to pick up where she left off. No, she said, this time was going to be different. So she stepped back on the bus and continued on to North Charleston, where a bed awaited her at Magdalene House, a nonprofit that helps women try to break the cycle of addiction and incarceration. Five months later, Gash remains clean and has enrolled at Trident Technical College to resume her education. She is grateful for the chance to start over, to live again. "They saved my life," she said. "I don't think I've ever felt so whole in my 43 years. I am clean, I am safe and I like it." That is just what organizers intended when they opened Magdalene House of Charleston in June 2007. Modeled after a successful program in Nashville, Tenn., the home is a ministry of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church. The Leeds Avenue home is nothing fancy, just a tidy ranch with modest furnishings, a scrubby backyard and space to sleep four. To the women who live here, it is a welcome slice of normalcy, a lifeline to the world they left behind. These women had not only hit rock bottom, they had made it a way of life. They tell harrowing and painful tales of lost years in which they struggled with dependency and despair as they slowly lost everything that was important to them. Cynthia Arrowood, 43, was a middle-class mother of two who lived in Spartanburg working as an estimator and adjuster for the automotive industry. About eight years ago, she got hooked on painkillers she received for a back injury. When those ran out, she turned to heroin and, later, cocaine. Her habit grew so expensive that she started dealing cocaine and counterfeiting checks to keep herself high. Arrowood got clean for a time after a move to North Carolina, but her habit came back full force when she returned home to her old haunts. By the time she was arrested on drug and bank fraud charges last year, she was out of control. "I would have died," she said. "I know this." She has begun to put that life back together since coming to Magdalene House after her release from prison in April. "I'm clean now and I'm learning to live clean, which is something I had forgotten how to do. I'm like a child learning to walk again, and I'm so thankful." The Rev. Marilyn Powell, who led the effort to found the local Magdalene House, said the facility can't keep up with demand from women seeking help. The program hopes to expand to a neighboring home, but money is tight. The organization accepts no federal or state dollars, and the slow economy has cut into donations, she said. Magdalene House residents receive free housing and help in finding jobs and treatment for substance abuse. Executive Director Louise Lawrence keeps close tabs on the women, and they live by a strict set of rules during the two years they are there. The program is not for everyone. Of the nine women who have come to Magdalene House since it opened, five have dropped out and returned to the streets, Lawrence said. Latrina Reid is one of the success stories, having completed 11 months in the program. The Charleston woman, 33, started smoking crack at age 15 out of curiosity. "I wanted to feel better," she said. "I had no idea at the time that I had just created a downward spiral that put my life in the can." The drug ruled Reid's life for more than a decade. By the time she was arrested on drug charges in May 2006, she had lost custody of her four girls and was living on the streets. "I just didn't care anymore," she said. "I believe God did for me what I couldn't do for myself." Staying off the drugs remains a struggle, but Reid is determined to make it stick. "This is so much better than the life I was living," she said. "I'd be a fool to give this up." Catherine Yantis feels the same way. She arrived at Magdalene House in June with nothing but the clothes on her back. Her decade-long fling with crack cocaine had left her destitute, in and out of jail and on the outs with her family. The Kentucky native, who once aspired to be a state trooper, first tried crack at age 26. Someone told Yantis it would ease her depression after social workers placed her five children in foster care, citing her husband's violent temper, she said. Yantis soon became hooked. After stealing from relatives and getting caught up in a federal drug raid, she moved to Summerville to stay with an aunt. Yantis cleaned up for three years, but then relapsed after getting involved with a user. In two days she burned through $8,000 she had saved up working at a Dollar General. Then she turned to shoplifting, stealing what she could to trade for crack. She's not proud of any of it. But she is eager to change, she said. Yantis will spend the next two years on probation for her crimes, a period that coincides with her stay at Magdalene House. "I'm not here because I have to be; I'm here because I want to be," she said. "I can see my life coming back, slowly but surely." Reach Glenn Smith at 937-5556 or gsmith@postandcourier.com. |
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Comments
This article has 12 comment(s)
Posted by Cid95 on July 20, 2008 at 3:31 a.m. (Suggest removal)
I stopped reading this article in the second paragraph when I saw these idiotic sentences:
"The drug robbed her of a career and a stable family life. It drove her to sell her body to support her habit. It landed her behind bars."
No, HER CHOICE to use the drug did all those things. SHE is accountable for HER actions, no "the drug".
Posted by tripsa on July 20, 2008 at 8:19 a.m. (Suggest removal)
ditto Cid95. And there are those that think drug legalization will solve this. No, it just adds more to fuel to the fire.
And before the pro-dopers jum in,
-yes, alcohol abuse and addiction is a destroyer of lives-
Posted by hartley8184 on July 20, 2008 at 10:41 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Well said tripsa. Legalization will solve none of these problems. Legalizers only want to make drug use convenient for themselves, or they are liberal stooges for drug users. This story is exactly why drugs are illegal, need to stay illegal, and should always be illegal. That's why pretty much every sane country in the world makes them illegal.
Posted by Egap on July 20, 2008 at 10:50 a.m. (Suggest removal)
A retired Chs PD friend reports his experiences with the drug culture.
Indeed, this is NOT a victimless crime.
With regards to drug leagalization, we don't need another jeanie out of the bottle.
Posted by preachlove on July 20, 2008 at 1:04 p.m. (Suggest removal)
I'm glad to see that these women are getting the help they need and hope they don't relaspe.
However, I've heard stories of people going on drug binges and wasting a lot of money, their whole paycheck, etc., but $8K in 2 days? If I did something like that and realizing it after I came down from my high, I think I would have to commit myself to a mental institution.
Posted by tripsa on July 20, 2008 at 1:27 p.m. (Suggest removal)
I wish I had $8k to blow in two days!
Posted by majorjohnson on July 20, 2008 at 1:35 p.m. (Suggest removal)
So make alcohol illegal! You anti-freedom people who think that people should not be allowed to take drugs are hypocrites if you don't push for prohibition of alcholol, fatty foods and tobacco products.
I'm far from liberal. I consider myself far more conservative than someone who advocates increased government control of people or someone who advocates government control of religious functions like marriage or advocates using religion instead of the constitution to determine what is constitutional or not.
I keep seeing liberal this and liberal that, but big government conservatives seem to dominate the conservative landscape....that's why the freaking socialists are gonna dominate the house, senate and white house by this time next year. Conservatives are so busy pushing their noses deeper into Americans lives (and their hands in our wallets) people would actually rather have a freaking socialist than a big government republican ruling by Leviticus.
Republicans have no one but themselves to blame for the socialization of America, because they're too darned busy being a combination of big brother and daddy warbucks to take care of the peoples business. We have republicans doing everything from putting fig leaves on art in Washington to building bridges to nowhere to benefit their family. You just disgust people with your misguided priorities, and we're all gonna pay the price very soon.
Posted by hartley8184 on July 20, 2008 at 3:50 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Hey majorjohnson, you can consider yourself a conservative all you want to, but you're not. You're probably a libertarian. But, you are definitely far liberal if you think drugs should be legalized as a freedom issue and you think "people" are disgusted with religion in the public forum. Only liberals think that's true.
But, the truth is the GOP is doing a better job of enacting the Democrat agenda than the Democrats are. Nobody is voting against the GOP because it is trying to be Daddy Warbucks. You've got to be kidding. That's what Democrats vote FOR. So, forget the politics. Reconcile yourself to the TRUTH that all the politicians are on the same side. They're just playing you for votes, but they all take us to the same place. That's why America is socializing. Because the voters keep voting for it.
Posted by willie08 on July 20, 2008 at 11:05 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Legalization is not the issue at all.
I can name to you a handful of herbs that will make you trip harder than any street drug. All legal, and no prescription necessary.
Notice how one of the women started with PAIN KILLERS prescribed to her. A doctor gave her enough that it made her hooked.
She may not have been warned of the side effects of that drug.
This leads me to believe she was prescribed an excessive dose, and was not monitored closely.
Doctors are just as fault, and so are the Pharmaceutical Companies. I could go on an on about this issue.
Drugs will always be around, and prostitution will as well. They are not going anywhere. If certain drugs were legalized, this would put drug gangs and crooked drug dealers as well as pimps OUT OF BUSINESS, and it wouldn't cost us a penny to do.
Posted by majorjohnson on July 21, 2008 at 12:35 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Hartley is the typical "conservative" who think conservative means the bible is better than the constitution, and you freaks are why real conservatives don't want anything to do with you any more.
Take your prohibition gays and marriage are what people really care about crap to some island where those are the problems you joke. I couldn't give a rats ass for some guy drooling over his fix, and i wouldn't give a thimble of warm spit for whether joe marries steve. Those things don't have any affect on me, but they are the republican issues. Wallow in the socialism your short sighted narrow minded crap buries us all in.
Conservative like the Pope is how you're conservative. The conservative movement has moved backwards to the dark ages and left us stuck with you crapholes and the socialists.
Posted by wpc3iop on July 21, 2008 at 7:44 a.m. (Suggest removal)
PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY...no excuses!
Posted by hartley8184 on July 22, 2008 at 5:53 p.m. (Suggest removal)
No Majorjohnson, I'm afraid you are functioning on liberal autopilot now... saying things that you ASSUME I believe and think, because you are stuck in the prevalent paradigm of Fox News vs CNN, Democrat vs. Republican sort of mob hysteria. The 60s are over with. Rob Reiner is retired. Get with reality and start realizing that all politicians are on the same team. Escape from the insanity.