Community Health Initiative Bare-Bones Acupuncture, Big-Time Recoveries

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, July, 2001 by Elise Hancock

Add full-body acupuncture from Tai Sophia Institute faculty and alumni volunteers, which is available to Penn North clients once they've been clean for one to three months. Auricular acupuncture is generic, one-treatment-fits-all. In full-body treatment the practitioner selects from hundreds of points, choosing for the needs of a particular patient.

Add some classes in life skills and the quiet counseling that goes on as part of full-body acupuncture. Especially, add "the houses," as they're always called. ("I Can't We Can" is an inspired descriptor, but a mouthful.)

A place to get strong: the houses of I Can't We Can

The seven houses of I Can't We Can, home to about 50 men and 30 women (as of December 1998), cluster on or near the 2400 block of West North Avenue, a notorious corridor for drugs. At night, gunshots ring in the distance. But never mind, it's safe inside the solid old rowhouses. Paint may be peeling off the floor, but the wiring meets code and every person here is off drugs, building a new life. (Mercer says that the last time she tested urines, of 46 samples not one was positive for drugs.) People with addictions can live in the houses for six months to a year, contributing $200 a month to the house.

The day at I Can't We Can is highly structured: out of your bunk bed at 5:30, breakfast, a meeting to say prayers and get the day organized, then chores. For those not walking to Penn North, 10 o'clock brings another meeting, this one to study from the Narcotics Anonymous book and talk about what's going on for each person. For example: "Do you overhear yourself thinking that you're strong now, you could have just one hit and still be all right?" That's a common glitch in healing, it's called "a reservation," and the house wants to hear about it.

And so on through the day. Lunch. Another house meeting. An hour in which some residents go for acupuncture, while others help those who need it study for their high-school equivalency diploma. Free time and cooking dinner. Dinner. Chores. Then the whole house goes out together for a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, and so to bed at 11. "They're reinventing monasteries," says one volunteer, laughing.

Founder Israel Cason refuses to compromise the schedule and other structures: for example, that no one at I Can't We Can sees family or friends or goes anywhere alone for the first 60 days. Rather, you spend the days "sitting on the couch. And there's no TV, no radio, no nothing," explains Jesse Jones, clean sinceAugust and now a house manager. Jeffrey Chapman says, "You contemplate your character flaws and you write them in your journal. You get into yourself." Going to acupuncture or anywhere else, the newcomer must "walk with the house," and if there's a need to see a doctor or parole officer, a veteran house member goes along. That way, a moment of craving won't lead to a slip.

For similar reasons, no resident is allowed to work for six months. "That's what everyone wants to do, but they're not strong enough yet," Cason says firmly. "We're addicts, and we respond to daily stress and strain by using. Absolutely nothing is more important than recovery, and recovery is a process. You can't skip any step." Even after six months, it's important to be picky about the work. Many available jobs involve driving trucks or working in warehouses - not helpful, because it's the wrong culture. So many workers already use there that temptation would be overwhelming. Cason says the next step could be to start some small businesses that can provide jobs with a clean culture -- an I Can't We Can thrift shop, for example, or computer repair, or teams to rehabilitate houses: "We have carpenters, we have plumbers, we have electricians. We can do it." And Cason wants more houses, because he hates to turn people away. It takes roughly $3,000 to set up each house, which may not seem like a lot unless you're working with the pooled money and food stamps of desperately poor people. These folks can't even afford vitamins.