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06/30/09 - 05:01 PM
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Panama City, Fla:
Members of the Panama City Rescue Mission continue to grieve over the murder of Phillip Cotton, one of their Addiction Recovery Program graduates, who police say was killed by another program member.
Rescue Mission Director Rev. Billy Fox says they are still in shock over the murder.
Another member of the program, Matt Hickman, was friends with Cotton. He was the one who found Cotton Monday morning. He says he and Cotton worked together at one of the Mission’s Bargain Stores, and says Cotton usually took him to work each morning.
Monday, however, he knocked on Cotton’s door to no answer. He then got the apartment tenant to let them in.
Hickman says they opened the door and saw Cotton’s body lying on the floor.
He describes Cotton as a very positive, liked man and says he was a mentor to many of the program’s students.
He also knew Timothy Hance, who confessed to the murder, saying he considered him a friend.
Hickman says they went through the program together and that he never could have expected Monday morning’s horrific events.
“We’re just one bad decision away from making the biggest mistake of our lives,” Hickman says of the program’s students. “I just know that Phil [Cotton] would definitely want this to be an eye opener to everybody.”
“Its no game down here,” says Rev. Billy Fox. “This is a very, very, very serious place, that’s why we’re called a Rescue Mission.”
Fox says as awful as the situation is, it’s something they prepare for. He has worked with people recovering from drug and alcohol addictions for 24 years, for the last four years at the Panama City Rescue Mission.
He says there is a very real danger about what they do.
He explains that the Mission takes steps to monitor each of the Recovery Program’s students. They do random drug tests, regular counseling sessions, and they try to watch for strong anger or emotion building up in any of the students.
Fox says in this case, they didn’t see any warning signs from Hance.
“I talked to the man’s pastor today and he said I’m just so surprised at Tim [Hance] because at church he was just vibrant and full of life and was very excited about his new-found spirituality and he said he’s just completely shocked,” Rev. Fox says.
He says he’ll be meeting with the Rescue Mission’s Board members to re-evaluate and make sure they did everything they could do, and to discuss how to keep this from happening in the future.
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Relapse is a part of the recovery process. The addict must deal with the underlying issues that caused the initial development of drug abuse before he or she can fully recover. It is like having a headache. Headaches are not just natural occurrences, rather they usually have underlying causes and act as a warning of some other problem that needs to be addressed. Relapse (or binges) are a progression toward recovery and if an addict does not recognize the “trigger” and have an alternate plan in place to deal with it they can find themselves in a full blown episode. I hope the mission’s program does not suffer because of this one unfortunate act of violence. It comes with the territory when you try to help someone recover from an addictive lifestyle. Time alone does not heal all wounds.