Former addict counsels teens on ‘hood’ life dangers BY JAY BODAS Staff Writer EDISON — After serving four and a half years in state prison for selling drugs, Dwayne Bowen, 34, is now giving back to his community. “I was an alcoholic when I was in high school at J.P. Stevens, where every morning I would wake up to a 40-ounce walking to school,” Bowen said. He spent the summer after his junior year in rehab and returned to graduate from Stevens in 1990. “But I graduated from special education classes, so I was looked at as a problem child, and that is the role I chose to play,” he said. He would not play that role forever, though. Two years ago he started the Lifeline Mentoring Group for adolescent teens, which meets weekly in Edison. “I wanted to go back and make a difference, and we counsel teenagers on how to be more productive, make rational decisions, and how not to fall victim to a ‘hood’ image,” Bowen said. “From around this month to April we hold meetings every Thursday, and we have about 35 to 50 kids.” Bowen now lives in Plainfield but grew up in Edison, attending Martin Luther King, Woodrow Wilson, and J.P. Stevens schools. While he had managed to stop drinking, it wasn’t long after graduating from high school that Bowen found himself in Rahway, selling drugs. “I sold everything from marijuana to heroin and cocaine,” he said. Bowen was arrested twice before he was hit with a four-and-a-half-year state prison term following his third arrest. “A lot of people think that prison is this place where you have to watch out for all these guys ... but you can choose to make your stay rough or a learner’s stay,” Bowen said. “I had no altercations for the whole time I was there, and instead of watching TV I chose to educate myself.” “Prison is bad because it takes your freedom away from you, and I saw a lot of violent things go on in jail, but I had to make good out of a bad situation,” he said. “When I was in prison, this bell rung in my head that I didn’t have to be this bad person.” Bowen enrolled in educational programs and took classes in African-American history. “I just read a lot about history, and any book that laid around I read it,” he said. After serving his sentence, Bowen went to a halfway house in Newark in 1998, where he stayed for 17 months. “I educated myself there as well because I knew that going back to jail wasn’t for me,” he said. “I got my commercial driver’s license, and I went on to be a better person in society.” In the last six and a half years, Bowen went on to drive trucks and became a supervisor with an environmental company. He said that if he could go back and talk to himself as he was in high school, he would first and foremost tell the young Dwayne Bowen to stop drinking. “I think drinking really suppressed my feelings, and it stopped me from learning,” Bowen said. “It stopped me from being a better person earlier in life. A lot of the guys that I grew up with are now strung out on drugs and alcohol, and very few from my neighborhood are really doing something with their lives.” He said that when he was younger, he was “angry, confused, and lost, in part due to the fact his father left the family when he was 12 years old. “I think many kids who are in special ed, they come from a broken household, as their mother may not be there enough and their father may not be in their life ... and it gives you this idea that no one loves you,” Bowen said. “At one time, people knew me as an angry guy, and now they see me as being approachable,” he said. “A lot of people can’t imagine I used to be like that ... but I let the tough guy thing go a long time ago.” For more information about the Lifeline Mentoring Group, call Dwayne Bowen at (908) 884-1647.