Grace Under Fire by Israel Cason

Grace under fire

By Israel Cason

Remember the old adage “No good deed goes unpunished?”

That’s what it’s felt like at times at I Can’t We Can.

A day doesn’t go by when someone doesn’t stop me in traffic or come by our office in Park Heights and say, “I thought the city closed you down!”

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Yes, the city refused to continue to fund I Can’t We Can and gave a bunch of questionable reasons for their decision.

Forget the fact that more than 10,000 addicts have come through our program and have changed their lives around. Ignore the truth of hundreds of people now working and contributing to their communities and paying taxes because they found a new way of living through I Can’t We Can.

The powers that be in our city were more concerned about whether we were using too many extension cords and wondering when our landlord was going to fix a leak in our ceiling. If the intentions of the city’s drug dollar czars were to bring about the demise of this organization they will be greatly disappointed.

But as my grandmother used to say one monkey don’t stop the show. The work of saving lives and winning souls must go forward. Clients continue to arrive everyday and treatment on demand is still the policy at ICWC. Staff members, instead of walking away, have agreed to take substantial pay cuts or go without salaries all together and instead volunteering. Their dedication has moved me beyond words.

I founded the holistic recovery program in 1997 as a way for people to get help for the disease of addiction. Not just the symptoms of their addiction – unemployment, abandoning their families, homelessness, thievery, violence, prostitution – but as a way to get at the root causes of why they turn to substance abuse in the first place.

There is an epidemic of loneliness, depression, hopelessness, and low self-esteem that has driven generations to crack, heroin and now, new designer drugs like ecstasy and crystal meth. And yes, quite honestly, too many addicts have learned their behaviors from watching their parents and their grandparents succumb to a lifestyle of self-destruction and self-defeat.

Millions of dollars are spent in our country everyday trying to understand the science of why drugs continue to have a stranglehold on society. The answer is actually simple and has been staring us in the face for a long time.

Addiction is about a lifestyle more than it is about substance abuse.

If you can reconnect an addict to their soul, they will turn away from the behaviors that continue to fuel their addictions.

A person who understands their own self worth and the importance of their place in the universe will not allow alcohol or drugs to deter them from that mission.

Several years ago as I was walking through the streets of Seoul, S. Korea with a delegation from the United States a female soldier in full camouflage came running up and jumped on my back.

After the initial shock, I realized that the young woman was a former client of I Can’t We Can. She came to us beaten and bruised from abuse and in the throws of her addiction to heroin and alcohol. After 12 months of intensive and comprehensive self examination and tough love, we enlisted her in the Army and there she stood in front of me a continent away from the life she used to know as a strong, energized, happy and drug free woman.

With or without city funding, I Can’t We Can has no choice but to continue this important work.

 Israel Cason is the founder and CEO of I Can’t We Can Recovery Inc.