Hope for the Addicted (DVD)

This is a story of hope for the addicted. Hope, because it is the story of Paul Fusca, a young addict who had totally hit bottom. After more than ten years on drugs, starting with marijuana as a schoolkid of eleven years of age, he ended up a near alcoholic, with a $800 a day heroin habit. To support his habit he turned to crime. He was desperately unhappy, but felt he could find no way out. He had been in "rehab" half a dozen times, but no program worked: they were too short. But just when had overdosed and was near death, he was rescued by the two women who never quit on Paul -- his mother and Franca Carella, whose small drug rehab center, the Vitanova Foundation in Woodbridge, Ontario helped Paul when almost no one else could or would. HOPE FOR THE ADDICTED takes a parent, a drug addict, a therapy group, or a drug counselor through Paul's story, and it is an inspiring story. Franca Carella helped Paul Fusca find his way to Italy and to a remarkable drug treatment center known as the Community of San Patrignano, a therapeutic village where every inhabitant from the doctors at the modern hospital to the guests are all addicts or recovering addicts. San Patrignano was founded not by a government, but by one man who cared deeply about the grip drugs have on the young. Vincenzo Muccioli was a wealthy landowner in Rimini, Italy. Turning his country estate, San Patrignano, into a place where addicts could recover, he built his non-profit center from a few dozen individuals in 1978 to Europe's largest live-in drug treatment center today. And inspired by San Patrignano, Franca Carella is creating her own Vitanova Foundation as a therapy center that follows the principles and practices she discovered working with Vincenzo Muccioli. At the time of filming this documentary, Paul Fusca was living drug free at San Patrignano, and in his fourth year of recovery.

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