Coming clean: Drug users struggle to rebuild their broken lives

They come here to let it all out, every gut-wrenching detail.

The anger. The resentment. The hatred. The drugs.

It was drugs — mostly the insidious demon known as methamphetamine — that landed them here. Meth turns saints into sinners, good people to evil felons. And it puts them through pure hell.

They are both victims and perpetrators. They lie, cheat and steal. They abuse and they are abused, especially the women.

It turns caring mothers and fathers into selfish fiends who live life through a pipe or a needle. Everything and everyone else be damned, even their own flesh and blood.

They care about one thing: getting high. Anywhere, anytime, anyhow.

They have lost everything. Their homes, their jobs, their friends and families, their spouses, their children. That and every ounce of dignity they ever had.

At the appropriately named Odyssey House in downtown Salt Lake City, they work to get their lives back, one painful step at a time. They willingly swallowed something evil, and this place is jamming a finger down their throats. They will gag or they will breathe. It is a life-or-death ordeal.

Says Joe, a married father of three, this "is absolutely my very last chance at life."

Odyssey House has a reputation in the drug community for being the toughest treatment program around. It's known as the "rat" program, or the "snitch" program, in the Utah drug underbelly because at Odyssey House, people tell on each other for breaking house rules, including the "cardinal" rules banning sex, violence, secrets, contraband and drugs. But it keeps them headed in the right direction.

"They've been fighting the system their entire lives," said Karen Williams, women and children's program director. "Here, they are the system."

Odyssey residents have a language all their own, filled with terms like "pro-social" and "structure."

On a recent Thursday evening, 15 men and women — many moms and dads — gathered in a spacious, comfortably furnished upstairs room for a group session.

Typically in drug rehab programs, what's said in group, stays in group. Odyssey House residents, however, agreed to answer two reporters' questions as part of their weekly discussion and let them observe their interaction with each other. Group therapy is one aspect of the treatment plan.

On this evening, rain trickled down the windows outside, while tears streamed down cheeks inside. They sat on overstuffed sofas sipping coffee and spilling their guts.