By Diane Strandberg

Once a crack addict, Linda Rubidoux now helps people with drug problems. Photo: Simone Ponne/The Tri-City News.

LIKE ALL good daughters, Neita had hoped for the best, and when she last saw her mom in Fort McMurray, she assumed things were going well. She got a call one evening in October 2001 which proved differently.

She found Rubidoux in an acute care bed at Northern Lights Regional Hospital. Her small body had wasted away to nothing. She was covered in scabs and required constant care, as well as pure oxygen from tanks in the emergency room.

Neita was disappointed – but not surprised. When you have a crack addict for a mom, you never know when someone’s going to tell you she’s dead.

Daughter and mother had a happy reunion in the hospital; but it was another two weeks before Neita got her mom home. At one point, Rubidoux went AWOL in search of her dealer, wearing nothing but her hospital issue PJs. It was months before she was free of the drug.

Rubidoux remembers that cold day in Fort McMurray when her daughter pleaded with her to get help. She also recalls hearing a voice – not her daughter’s, but a voice inside her head.

It said: “Linda, this is the end for you. This is the end.”

Rubidoux listened to the voice. She would later say that it was God speaking directly to her heart. But whatever the source, Rubidoux found another path, one that took her past the crack pipe into another world – a world some people would call peace of mind, others would call religious faith.

October 18, 2001 passed in haze of pain and withdrawal. But that’s the day Rubidoux now celebrates as the day she finally got clean. She didn’t do it alone this time, couldn’t have done it alone.

After Neita rescued her mom from her drug dealer’s house, she put her in the back of a rented van, put on the video called 28 Days, a comedy about a columnist in rehab, and drove the 1,200 kilometres or so to Vernon, where they stopped for a week so Rubidoux could detox.

It was not a happy time. Mom was locked in the basement, while, upstairs, Neita, her boyfriend Les, and Matty, Rubidoux’s little dog, waited out the cries and screams and the curses coming from downstairs. Love made Neita her mother’s jailer.

When the effects of the drug wore off, the family drove home to Vancouver and started taking stock of Rubidoux’s situation. Free of drugs, she didn’t know what to do next – until she saw a Bible in the rented house.

The Psalms, especially, spoke to her. They said: “You’re not alone.”

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She took those words as a promise and, at her daughter’s urging, called a Port Coquitlam recovery house run by the Hope for Freedom Society. It proved to be one of the last escapes she would make.

The recovery house she entered on December 18, 2001 scared Rubidoux. She wasn’t used to being with people and 14 women in one house seemed daunting. But she took her spot on a bunk, and started the journey that would see her into recovery.

Accepting Jesus as her personal saviour was a step she took, encouraged by Carol Smith, a pastor at Northside Foursquare church in Port Coquitlam. Like her, Smith was a former addict; the two shared both a spiritual bond and a friendship.

Rubidoux’s mothering instincts soon came to the fore, and with Neita and Carol supporting her, she became house mother at the facility, and then a paid staff member.

Not long after Smith and Rubidoux became friends, Smith was diagnosed with breast cancer. When she died, Rubidoux became a counsellor at the recovery house and took over Smith’s job as pastor of the Higher Ground ministry at Northside Foursquare church. Along the way, she upgraded her education, including studying to be a pastor.

Today, Rubidoux still grieves for the loss of her friend Carol. She thanks God for their friendship – and the support of her daughter, the church and the other women who helped her through recovery.

Rubidoux is now a mentor for other women, former addicts like herself, and celebrates their victories and worries about their problems. Her daughter, meanwhile, married Les and moved to Coquitlam to be close to her mom.

Neita admits to having a tough life after her mother escaped into crack addiction. However, he says: “Everything I went through is so insignificant compared to the people she helped.” Rubidoux, now six years clean, hopes people will find a comforting message in her story.

* * *

Higher Ground is a lively place, where a rock band plays and people hug before they take their seats. By the time pastor Linda Rubidoux grabs the mic, the crowd is thoroughly warmed up, so she gets a laugh when she starts to speak.

“Shall we do that again?” she says.

“He’s not only our rock but he . . .” she says, pointing the mic at the crowd. “Rocks!” the crowd roars back.

“And so do you,” she says softly.

A dozen men, wearing ball caps and baggy pants, shaved heads and hoodies, sit like choir boys – while their female counterparts on the other side of the room do the same.

“You are more than the mistakes you’ve made,” Rubidoux tells her flock.

“You can make positive choices about your life.”

In the back of the room, a man says “Amen.”

January 2008