I only wish she could have found Phoenix House first

As all administrators, board members and advocates of state-funded social service agencies are doing these days, Phil Francoeur is spending every spare minute working on ways to convince state legislators how disastrous proposed state budget cuts would be to vital substance abuse prevention and treatment programs.
From his seat on the advisory board of Phoenix House, the Dublin-based residential substance-abuse treatment and recovery program, Francoeur said he has watched success story after success story emerge from the program’s three campuses over the years and cringes at the thought of seeing many of the programs lost to funding cuts.
But much of the passion the 55-year-old Nashua native has for state-funded programs like the Phoenix House comes not from his role as an adviser. A one-time drug addict and trafficker who served several years in State Prison, Francoeur largely credits the Phoenix House’s comprehensive, soup-to-nuts treatment approach for what he is today: Alive, clean, sober, employed, productive and happy.
“I’ve been clean and sober many times,” Francoeur said recently in his small, cozy apartment in Milford, where he now lives with wife Doris. “Addicts do that a lot. But it never lasts.”
Achieving lifetime sobriety is a far different animal, Francoeur said.
“You need to get to the root of the problem, to find out what causes us (addicts) to keep putting poison into our bodies,” he said. “That’s why we need these long-term programs, these residential programs like Phoenix House.
“They work.” Francoeur added. “I know they work.”
It’s that kind of personal experience, coupled with a lot of determination, that inspired Francoeur and several other Phoenix House graduates to record “real-life impact” videos as part of a “YouTube Channel” initiative by the Concord-based prevention and advocacy group New Futures.
Each recounts in the videos his or her personal stories, which include “crashing and burning with heroin at 23, 24 years old,” said contributor Rob Winslow, and “realizing when I was 15 that I had alcohol and drug addiction,” said Jenny Vanderbilt, who is now a counselor at Phoenix House.
Asked his date of birth, Francoeur, a member of the well-known Francoeur Baking Co. family whose parents, Reginald and Muriel Francoeur, still live in the family home on Wood Street, unhesitatingly answers “Jan. 20, 2001. I’ve been clean and sober since that day,” he says. “I remember the date like it’s my birthday, because it is.”
On the video, Francoeur calls it the day “I finally got help.” It’s sort of an infamous birthday, really, because it also marked the beginning of a string of court appearances and incarcerations resulting from his arrest for dealing cocaine to undercover police officers, who had him under surveillance for six months.
When he was sentenced later that year to six to 12 years in State Prison, Francoeur told Judge Bernard Hampsey he wanted to go straight. “I said I realize I owe the state time because of what I’ve done,” he said. “I told the judge I want to pay back the community by doing drug education programs and help people, help kids.”
Francoeur kept his promise, first earning his GED – he’d dropped out of Nashua High at age 16, in his junior year – then moving on to college-level courses, some of which were taught by local college professors and others, by fellow inmates whom the professors trained, he said.
Ordered by terms of his sentence to undergo drug rehabilitation treatment in prison, Francoeur said he wanted to go one step better and receive treatment through an “outside” program like Phoenix House, rather than in the state-run program.
“I filed a request. It was denied right away,” Francoeur said matter-of-factly. Undeterred, he called Nashua lawyer Steve Maynard. “He looked it over, said it was really well done, made a few tweaks to it … and guess what, it was accepted,” he said.
Calling his bid to enter Phoenix House “the best thing I ever did,” Francoeur enrolled in May 2005. “Everyone comes in with little or no self-esteem, no sense of worth at all,” he said. “That’s where I was. They (the counselors) start peeling off layers, like an onion, to get down to what’s causing all the negative behavior” of each resident, Francoeur said.
Phoenix House’s inclusive, peer-centered philosophy is a major reason the program works, Francoeur said. “Residents actually run the house,” he said. “The staff is there to guide you, but you learn how to do things for yourself. It really builds self-esteem, a sense of accomplishment,” he said.
“Seriously, I don’t know where I’d be today if it weren’t for Phoenix House.”
Francoeur emphasizes that in his segment of the YouTube video.
“I’m clean and sober almost 11 years now, thanks to funding the state has provided to Phoenix House and other drug rehab programs throughout the state,” he says.
Following through with proposed funding cuts would be “devastating” to prevention and treatment programs and those who need them, according to New Futures executive director Linda Saunders Paquette.
“These cuts will eliminate all state support for community prevention programs and cut 33 percent of funding for treatment programs,” she said in a statement. “The impact will harm more than 30,000 children and adults in New Hampshire who will not receive critical services to prevent and treat addiction.”
Francoeur said he has also received treatment through the former Keystone Hall, now the Greater Nashua Council on Alcoholism, one of several programs of the Nashua-based Partnership for Successful Living.
He grows animated as he cites some relevant figures. “The state is projecting $1.18 billion in alcohol sales for the next two years,” he said. “Something like $376 million of that is profit. We (Phoenix House and similar programs) get about $3.6 million a year in funding (roughly $7.3 million for the two-year period).
“And now they want to cut these wonderful programs like Keystone and Phoenix House by 55 percent?”
Adding to Francoeur’s determination to keep such programs intact is the memory of a devastating personal loss, one he believed may have been prevented with timely drug-treatment intervention.
In summer 2001, as Francoeur sat in jail awaiting prison sentencing, his girlfriend of several years took her own life. “We’d been using…she had problems with depression too,” he said, shaking his head. “She just lost hope.
“I only wish she could have found Phoenix House first.”