Ask Alan Fahringer what it takes to overcome an addiction, or live a fulfilling life, or make a difference in the world, and he’ll tell you it boils down to two words – integrity and accountability. He should know – he’s lived it.

That was the message he shared Sunday night at an Evening of Inspiration hosted by the Bountiful Food Pantry. The event, held at the Bountiful Community Church, was presented as a way of “giving back” to the community for its support of the pantry, according to BFP Executive Director Rebekah Anderson.

Fahringer makes no bones about the life he led for his first 50 years – a functioning addict as a young adult who turned to methamphetamines – both as a user and a dealer. It led to three separate arrests in 2005 for trafficking and manufacturing meth and a downward spiral that cost him almost everything.

“I started sneaking liquor while my parents were out of the house,” he told an audience of many community leaders. “My parents were good people and I had every reason to succeed in life, but as you will hear, I didn’t.” 

He started hanging out with the wrong person in school – smoking, doing marijuana and other drugs. “The worst part of it was that I was sneaky,” said Fahringer. “The worst part was that I was duplicitous. It was easier just to hang out with birds of a feather and fly in that flock. As an addict, I could fake it for a long time, and I did. I faked it through two marriages, but they didn’t hold up. Somewhere in my 30s, I was introduced to meth. Life became a dumpster fire. It wound up being 37 years of drug addiction, criminality and lying and cheating. At 50 years old, I had lost my family and friends and my dignity and integrity.” For a while, he lived in a storage unit since he had no car, no job and almost no hope.

What turned life around for Fahringer was Delancey Street, a therapeutic community in San Francisco where he was allowed to go instead of to prison after his third conviction, thanks to “an empathetic judge.” He was ordered to stay at Delancey for two years as part of his plea bargain. He stayed for six. It was at Delancey Street that he learned the value of a therapeutic community, or a TC as it’s called.

“The therapeutic community model can help not only drug addicts, but literally everybody in this room,” Fahringer said. “We could literally change the world one person, one household, one family, one community at a time. We have to make a commitment to integrity and accountability. They are the two elements of the change model that can literally change every life.”

He wanted to share that message. Three years after leaving Delancey Street, he came to Salt Lake City to help launch The Other Side Academy. Like Delancey, the Other Side Academy TC model helps men and women reinvent their broken lives. After four years there, he was hired by Red Barn Academy, another fledgling therapeutic community in Farmington.

“We’re very fortunate here in Utah to have two great TC’s in The Other Side and Red Barn,” he said. “Once you learn how to be accountable and once you learn how to have integrity, it becomes your drug. It feels so good just to do the next right thing. Stand where you are, and take a step forward. Wherever you land, do what’s right for that moment. It changes your behavior not just to what you know, but who you are.”

Anderson told the community a little about the pantry, its continuing mission to provide food for hungry families in Davis County and the ever-increasing number of people who need help. She said the pantry is developing a plan to raise money for expanding its services and adding a pantry location to the north end of the county, where almost 30 percent of its regular clientele live.

“The community has helped us for 50 years so we wanted to give something back to them, and the best thing to give back is positivity,” she said. “I hope we do this again and get even more people to come and participate.”