It’s a beautiful thing, going to Superior Court and not worrying about it. That’s what the man said — beautiful. And it’s beautiful because it was once sweaty and horrible and frightening, and it isn’t anymore. Facing an old horror without getting scared can have a certain beauty in certain places.

Everything at the 8 a.m. meeting of Narcotics Anonymous is relative. A day out of jail is better than a day in jail. A day seeing the kids is better than a day not seeing the kids. A day clean is better than a day all messed up.

The meeting is the first of the day. There are lots of meetings. And at all of them, there is just no way to pull off any cool junkie detachment. The dope wisdom in the room runs deep. People have been there. They know every dumb, self-destructive, self-delusional move an addict can make.

At the meeting last Monday morning on the second floor of the blue house next to the dining hall at Amos House, addicts took their turns telling of getting through another weekend. There was church, surrender to God, baptisms arranged. There were get-togethers with family. One man cleaned out a basement and that made it a good weekend.

There was some funny stuff. One man told of getting a prescription for codeine after recent surgery on his arm. Once, he said, he would have turned that prescription to cash. Now, he’s thinking about framing it.

Sonny sits in the corner next to his girlfriend. He is a month out of the ACI. He went in on Father’s Day. He has, among other things in his drug life, awakened to find the mother of his children dead next to him of a heroin overdose. And there was that abandoned building in Providence where he lived in a little drug colony. It was the building that always stank of urine and feces, and it didn’t seem to matter. And there was the time he got so desperate for money, he shoplifted.

“It’s the most embarrassing thing you can do. There’s no more status. It means Sonny’s a junkie.”

He is in the 90-day program at Amos House, and there is a lot riding on it. If he screws up, he’s looking at 2½ years in the ACI, the prison he claims to have been in 42 times.

Sonny is 35 and handsome and has no excuses. He grew up in Washington Park near the Cranston line. He had hard-working parents.

“My father worked; I strayed,” he says.

So, after spending more than half his life straying, he is here in the company of others who are running out of time and opportunity. He goes to meetings, to carpentry classes and observes the curfews Amos House imposes on those who live there. He lives with other men in a house in a neighborhood where he used to get high.

Sonny is following an increasingly familiar route from the ACI, through Amos House and on to a life that will always be a reclamation project.

In a state that doesn’t do a lot for those coming out of its prisons, Amos House has become a refuge and a place to actually consider legal possibilities. It has its programs, and when it comes to those like Sonny who are carrying heavy addictions, people who have been there and done that are a vital part of the process.

“They help each other,” says Eileen Hayes, Amos House’s executive director. “That’s crucial. They’ve run with each other. They know each other inside and out.”

Hayes says Amos House receives hundreds of letters from prison inmates who want to be paroled there or go there as part of their probation. Public defenders call.

“Sometimes, the parole board has paroled people here without even asking ahead of time,” she says.

There are plenty of chances for people to mess up. Providence awaits. Old haunts and old friends are out there.

“I’ve gone to crack houses and pulled people out,” says Hayes.

She knows the people who come to this place. She knows how hard it is for many of them to come to terms with what they’ve done and what they need to do. Some are in their 30s and have never had a real job.

When the rules are broken, nothing is automatic. But coming clean is the best way to go.

“If you relapse and lie, we ask you to leave,” says Hayes. “But if you relapse and say ‘I slipped,’ we’ll keep working with you. Relapses sometimes tell you what you did wrong.”

Sonny says he got “saved” earlier this year when the Providence police pulled him over. He had just been packaging some product. The heroin put him back where he had been so many times before. But he says his court-appointed lawyer realized how badly he needed to get into a good program. He went from the courthouse to Amos House with no illusions about what happens if he just keeps being the same old druggie.

“What’s normal — you go to jail, clean up, meet more people who can get you drugs,” he says. “You’re back on the street with new numbers to get drugs.”

Sometimes, he says, he’ll see somebody he thought was dead, taken by the drug life.

“I say ‘what, he’s clean!?’ Now, I’m one of those people.”

He loves the carpentry program. He thinks about being out there on the job some day. He thinks about life with his girlfriend and their kids.

He thinks about the 2½ years he’ll do for probation violation if he screws up this opportunity. There might not be any more opportunities after that.

He looks good and he sounds good. But as he’ll tell you, people who have never been “dirty” have no way of knowing what people who have been dirty are dealing with. Everything will seem to be going right and then something that makes no sense at all can turn it upside down.

So Sonny and the others go to their meetings. Addicts help addicts.

But sometimes on Monday mornings, they’ll look around and notice somebody didn’t make it back from the weekend.

bkerr@projo.com