Kathy has been with I Can't We Can for 8 months now. She began helping ICWC serving coffee and then moved up to the register. Simultaneously she moved up through the house system to become a house manager. Now she also prides herself as being Israel Cason’s personal secretary. Here, she sits by the window in one of the restaurants run by ICWC along Park Heights Avenue.

Q: How do you like the program here?

What I love about this program for me- when I first came in I was beat up. I came in homeless with just the clothes on my back. But before I became homeless I had the house, car, job, husband, and two kids. Because of drug use I lost everything that I had. Beat down. I got tired of living the way I was living. One day I just cried and said I couldn’t take it anymore. So I walked across town all the way here to ICWC.

Q: When did you start using drugs?

I started when I was 10 years old. I was living in New York City. I had low self esteem about myself. My mother had left me with an aunt and I felt alone even though I had cousins around me. I just wanted to do what the cool kids were doing- smoking weed, drinking beer. I did that over the years and then eventually I started sniffing cocaine, smoking crack. Sniffing heroin.

Q: Have you been in other programs?

I’ve been in and out of treatment centers. ICWC is my third. For me, so far, I love ICWC. It’s the best because it’s a spiritual program. That’s something that I didn’t get from the other programs I had been in before.

“The key to making it in this program is to be humble."

Q: Were you raised in a spiritual setting?

No, they weren’t a spiritual family. My faith had never been tested until I came into this program. Being in this program there’s a lot of adversity. Where there’s good there’s bad. We have character defects. I used to stuff a lot of my problems- I had so much anger built up inside me. If I had been talking about my problems I wouldn’t have had all that anger. So by adversity I mean people here to push my buttons.

Just living with different personalities- we have to learn how to live with each other. Just like a new job- different personalities but instead of working with them, living with them. It really helped us, teaches us how to be humble.

The key to making it in this program is to be humble. Nobody is ready for that when they first come in. Everybody is like that- with attitude problems. Eventually, with help from people in the house, you can learn how to deal with that- nobody comes in the house humble.