C.U.R.A. History

C.U.R.A., Inc. began over 50 years ago by heroin addicts who lived in the Decoto area of Union City.  There was a generational problem concerning heroin in this area.  As you may know, the most popular way to use heroin is to inject it.  Injecting drugs is called “fixing”.  The people living in Decoto at the time were, for all intents and purposes, Hispanic.  Fix in Espanol is “Cura”.  So our savvy ancestors turned a negative into a positive and used the derogatory term to create the acronym C.U.R.A.

C.U.R.A. stands for Carnales Unidos Reformando Adictos, Brothers United to Reform Addicts. Although, Carnales is a Spanish term for “Brothers” or “Bro”, twenty years later we replaced “Brothers” with “Partners” because it better suited the program since we treat women as well as men.

At first, C.U.R.A. was a resource for addicts to find a way out of their addictions.  As time went on, they found that homelessness was a huge problem. C.U.R.A. became a residential therapeutic community so that addicts could stay in a safe place to address all of the problems that accompany addiction and criminality. Over our 56 years of operation, C.U.R.A. has expanded its program to include a 48 bed co-ed Residential Therapeutic Community, a 48 bed Recovery Residence (All Male).