Reformed drug addict returns to Phillipsburg to sing praises of recovery program

Participants address personal issues through Bible study, service work and building healthy relationships.

View full size Keith Rhinehart supplied these before-and-after photos from his days of drug abuse and after his recovery, which he credits in part to working with Teen Challenge in Newark. Courtesy photos  

Heroin controlled Keith Rhinehart’s life for 17 years.

A watershed moment came in 2006 when he took an excessive amount of prescription drugs and robbed a Phillipsburg Burger King. The next morning he robbed the Exxon gas station across the street from the fast food chain on Memorial Parkway (Route 22).

He then spent five years in New Jersey State Prison for the robberies.   

“Drugs had really taken everything from me,” Rhinehart said.

When he was released, Rhinehart was determined to kick his addiction and to make sure he never returned to prison. Then he found Teen Challenge.

The program, started in 1958, is a 15-month residential program that helps people 12 and older fight drug and alcohol addiction by rebuilding their lives in a Christian community. Rhinehart now works with the program’s choir and admissions and is scheduled March 24 to visit the Emmanuel Christian Center in Phillipsburg with the men’s choir.

Done with 'terrorizing'

The group will perform and share their recovery stories with the public. Rhinehart said many youth from the Warren County area are currently participating in New Jersey’s chapter, based in Newark, and he said he's excited to return to the area.

“At one point, I was terrorizing that community,” Rhinehart said. “Today, I am over five years clean. We’re excited about going back to that area and sharing a message of hope.”

The program treats addiction as a symptom of a disease, Rhinehart said. Participants address personal issues through Bible study, service work and building healthy relationships.

The Rev. Doug Cowie, of the Emmanuel Christian Center at 560 Tuttle St. in Phillipsburg, said this is the first time Teen Challenge is visiting the church. Cowie, who ran church services for 18 years at New Jersey's Mountainview Youth Correctional Facility in Clinton Township, said that spiritual programs like Teen Challenge can change an addict’s life.

“Where (Alcoholics Anonymous) would have people say, ‘I’m an alcoholic, but I’m staying clean,' with Teen Challenge you would say, ‘I’m not a drug addict anymore. I’m literally a new person,'” he said.

Avenues to sobriety

Drug courts in New Jersey are five-year probationary programs for nonviolent offenders struggling with addiction and will soon be a sentencing option for judges in Warren and Hunterdon counties. In Northampton and Lehigh counties, Treatment Continuum Alternative to Prison is an alternative to jail time that incorporates inpatient and outpatient treatments and intensive supervision.  

Freedom House, a long-term residential drug and alcohol treatment center in Glen Gardner, helps chronic addicts who are at a high risk of relapsing without 24-hour support, said Galindo King, the facility's clinical director. Residents must work their way through a tiered program by finding employment, undergoing counseling, finding a sponsor and building peer relationships, he said. The program provides residents with basic skills to return to society drug-free.

“Our house, I would say, is on-the-job training for how you should live,” King said.

After treatment, finding support is crucial, according to Michael Krim, manager of the Bethlehem Recovery Center in Bethlehem. The center is a volunteer-run, peer-support center that hosts a number of 12-step programs for recovering addicts. The center also has a drop-in center with computer and television access and career assistance.

“We believe recovery is an ongoing process,” Krim said. “Once people stop using the drugs, they need support in their lives. People helping each other is really the long-run solution.”

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