A challenge that can save lives

Faith-based program helps mend broken souls

Brenda Guymon is convinced that Teen Challenge saved her daughter's life.

Before she entered the faith-based treatment program, Nevada Monroe, now 20, was addicted to the prescription painkiller OxyContin. She and her boyfriend, Matt Mussi, had used it for two years. She also had tried methamphetamine and alcohol.

Mussi almost died after getting a staph infection from an old needle in October 2007.

The experience scared Monroe away from OxyContin, but she was drinking heavily to cope with the pain of seeing Mussi in the hospital. That could just as easily have been her, barely clinging to life.

Something had to change - and fast.

Mussi's mother had heard about a program that could help her son and told Monroe about it. Teen Challenge, a long-term, faith-based residential program, has helped countless young adults overcome addiction since its founding in 1958.

After emergency open-heart surgery and several operations on his lungs, which had been damaged by the staph infection, Mussi recovered enough to enter a Teen Challenge men's treatment center in Seattle on Dec. 27, 2007.

Monroe left for a women's treatment facility in Missoula a few days later.

"I don't remember going into it," she said. "The next thing I know, here I am at the door."

She began Teen Challenge on Dec. 31, 2007. Program coordinators wanted her to start on New Year's Eve so she would avoid that evening's parties.

In the program, Monroe found herself very carefully watched and her time meticulously accounted for. After waking at 6 a.m., she spent an hour of devotional time, followed by group worship and breakfast. She worked two days a week, took Bible classes another two days, and was home and in bed each night by 9:45 p.m.

The first fortnight was the hardest, she said. It was a "blackout period" with no outside contact allowed.

"That's the longest two weeks of your entire life," Monroe said.

After the blackout, she was allowed one phone call a week for three months. Then she was allowed two two-hour visits a month, then she was given a five-hour pass and allowed to leave.

After six months, Monroe was supposed to go home for a three-day visit, but a new program coordinator issued a monthlong blackout. It wasn't undeserved, Monroe admitted; the participants had been sneaking letters out and weren't following the rules.

But for Monroe, who had been trying to just get through her time in the program, the blackout was the last straw. Her three days at home - which would have included camping with her family - had been canceled.

She called home, told Guymon to come pick her up and began packing her bags. The coordinator came into her room and sat on the floor while Monroe packed and yelled. Then she calmly told Monroe she wouldn't let her leave - even if it meant grabbing her around the legs and not letting go.

Monroe stopped yelling and laughed, realizing for the first time that the coordinator really cared about her. She wasn't trying to punish the women in the program, Monroe said; she was simply trying to teach them that their actions had consequences.

"At that moment, I really wanted to change," she said. "I realized running away wasn't really going to solve the problem."

Monroe had more struggles after that decision. She fought with friends in the program who weren't as committed as she to truly getting better. But in the end, it was worth it, Monroe said.

"It's taught me not to give up when things are hard, because a blessing is just around the corner," she said.

"You come in that program broken. You hate yourself. You hate the world," Monroe added.

"Now I have hopes and dreams. I know I have a future. I know I don't have to turn to drugs."

Monroe completed the program Dec. 30. Mussi will finish Jan. 27.

They've spoken only once in the last year - at a supervised Teen Challenge event in Spokane. They don't know yet what the future holds for them, Guymon said.

Mussi plans to spend at least a year in Los Angeles when he gets out. Monroe has found a job working with her mother for a local accountant. She says she doesn't have a long-term plan.

"I'm taking it one day at a time, because if I put too much on my plate, I forget to live for now," she said.

She does plan to keep in touch with her friends from the program and is helping her mother raise money for Teen Challenge's Montana Women's Outreach.

The program isn't cheap. When Monroe entered Teen Challenge, it cost $1,500 a month. The program tries to cover half that, Guymon said, and the family - or the family's church or community - pays the rest.

Most of the people who enter the program don't have $750, Guymon said. Sometimes they don't even have family. They've spent their money on their addictions and alienated the people who could help them.

Guymon stood by Monroe but wasn't able to pay as much as she would like.

"I've done what I could, and I've gone down to Missoula" to support the program, Guymon said. "It hasn't been enough. I haven't felt good about what I've been able to do."

To help rectify that, Guymon is helping Teen Challenge put on a dinner theater fundraiser this week.

"Redefined Chaos' takes place at 6:30 p.m. Jan. 30 at Kalispell Christian Center. Tickets are $15 each or $120 per eight-person table.

Guymon said she feels a little overwhelmed - she has never organized a major fundraiser like this before - but she is glad to do whatever she can for the program that saved her daughter.

"I will support this program until the day I die," she said.

For more information about Redefined Chaos, contact Guymon at bguymon@vzw.blackberry.net, or call or text her at 270-5678.

On the Web:

www.teenchallengepnw.com/montana_womens

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or by e-mail at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com