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Dawn Farm employees Johanna Horn, left, and Nancy Thom stand before some of the barns on the farm. All residents take part in working on the farm.
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Imagine being told you must follow a new diet, one that involves no more eating. Your family enforces the diet, and you find out if you do eat, you are breaking the law. Then you talk to someone you trust, who has followed the diet. They say they felt hungry for a week, or two and then, they were fine.
That is how Jim Balmer, president of Dawn Farm, a chemical dependency recovery center in Ypsilanti, describes how an addict feels when forced to part with their drug of choice.
Food is necessary for survival, but it can be seen as social or nurturing, as well.
To someone who is chemically dependent, drugs fill a gap that make them feel complete.
"All of them say, 'I was doing OK, but I never felt comfortable in my skin. It was like they gave everybody else the manual on how to be a person, and they didn't give it to me,'" he said.
When addicts try a mood-altering drug, or alcohol, he said they finally feel normal.
"They think, 'This is how normal people feel,'" Balmer said.
They take more and more of the drug to keep that feeling, and they become addicted, and are no longer in control of their lives. The drug calls all of the shots.
And then, before they overdose, before their lives become irreparably damaged by drug use, if they are lucky and get arrested and are offered a choice of jail, or Dawn Farm, there is hope. That's if their brains are still able to make the right decision and they find Dawn Farm, Balmer said.
Many addicts who make their way to Dawn Farm say that if life was fair, they should have been dead many times over.
Dawn Farm began in 1973, the vision of Gary Archie, and Jack Shultis, both recovering alcoholics. They rented an old farmhouse on Stony Creek Road in Ypsilanti, and began offering help to addicts of all kinds.
There's help in the form of a place to stay, food, and a place where they can attend meetings and follow strict rules. It's a place where they are confronted with their dependency and forced to recognize their denial of their illness.
The principles are based on a 12-step program that many people follow to end various addictions, from drugs to gambling. The 12-step program was developed in the 1930s when Bill Wilson, an alcoholic, tried to help himself become sober by encouraging other alcoholics to do the same.
"At that time, most places would not take (every kind of) addict. There was an exceptional amount of prejudice from people for heroin addicts," Balmer said.
It was believed, he said, that those addicted to heroin, an opiate-based drug, could not be helped.
Balmer said he knows for a fact that residential treatment centers can help heroin addicts because many in the medical profession, who have become addicted through writing their own prescriptions for opiate-based drugs, have come clean through residential treatment.
However, he said he has never in 30 years seen anyone become sober who has switched from heroin to methadone, which is a common treatment for the masses of heroin addicts because it is cheap enough to give away the drug, which prevents them from stealing to buy higher-priced heroin.
However, the high levels of methadone make it impossible for anyone, ever, to end their dependency.
"If you are over a certain dosage, they can't detox you," Balmer said. "I have encountered people who want to be detoxed, and the clinic had to say no.
"It's chilling. They are stuck."
Dawn Farm began as a residential chemical-dependency treatment facility with the bare bones of funding. It began at a time when many residential treatment centers were offered at local hospitals. It's now the only residential treatment facility in Washtenaw County.
Balmer said that when they first opened the detox center, he called on the neighbors, mostly senior citizens, gave them his home phone number, and told them to call him if they ever had any concerns.
"I never had any complaints," he said.
Balmer said when he goes to the detox center, he has enjoyed the incongruity of finding elderly neighbors teaching clients of the detox center how to play bridge.
In the 1980s, Dawn Farm added on, which required new zoning laws to allow them to expand and remain in their space. Balmer said Ypsilanti Township has been a wonderful municipality to work with.
"We have ongoing support from them," he said.
Ypsilanti Township Clerk Brenda Stumbo said she could not say enough positive things about Dawn Farm.
"They run a tight ship. They have high standards for the people who attend there," she said. "It's good for the community that they try and help people."
Thirty percent of Dawn Farm's annual budget of $3 million is publicly funded, while the rest comes from private donors. The farm serves 150 clients per year and the detox center, run at overcapacity every day of the year, helps 1200 people, with a total of 1,800 helped at all the sites during the year.
The cost is $2,500 per month per person to stay at the residential center. No one is turned away if they are unable to pay, Balmer said.
The budget serves all of their facilities, and just meets their expenses; however, Balmer does not take clients who are willing to pay big bucks, but want to change or shorten his three-to-six month program.
"We tell them, feel free to find a 30-day program. We are not it," he said. "You have to know what business you're in."
While Balmer said he hates to call people a product, he is trying to help and be responsible for them the best way he knows how. A 30-day program simply won't do. Recovery takes more time, he said.
"There is one guy who comes every Sunday, even though he became sober 30 years ago," Balmer said.
Balmer has a photograph on his wall of a recovery group from 20 years ago. It has 25 people in it, and he still knows where 15 of them are.
"I am 35 years sober," said Balmer. "I'm old, crusty. Clean before the farm. I'm hopelessly outdated. Now people compare their ages to how long I've been sober."
Alana West is a freelance writer. She can be reached at mmagwest@sbcglobal.net.
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