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HOGANSVILLE — Cruisers for Christ hosted a classic car show on Highway 29 in Hogansville this Saturday. The cause this time was to benefit Celebrate Recovery Hogansville, a rehabilitation program that seeks to help those recovering from alcohol and drugs.

Vehicles from as early as the late 1920s to as recent as the early 2000s lined the parking lot of Georgia Wholesale, offering spectators a glimpse of the cars of the past, including a 1938 Ford Coupe, a 1967 VW Beetle and a highly coveted 1968 Pontiac Firebird

Bill Dollar, one of the leaders for Celebrate Recovery Hogansville, said the event had 80 participants total and garnered over $2,500 for the program overall.

Celebrate Recovery Hogansville is one of 35,000 Celebrate Recovery church-based organizations that acts as a support system for those in alcohol and drug recovery programs.

Dollar explained that the program coordinates with the Troup County Drug Court to filter in participants, acting similarly to an Alcohol Anonymous program. Participants in the Troup County Drug Court attend an 18-month program and will go through Celebrate Recovery Hogansville during this time.

Celebrate Recovery Hogansville has been present for nine years, Dollar said, and has helped hundreds through its Tuesday and Sunday meetings held at First Baptist Church in Hogansville. The program performs accountability sponsorship with its participants. Dollar said while the program does encourage participants to get involved with an area church, this is not forced, and the program attempts to meet its participants on “their level.”

“We try to become part of their life because they might be very scared,” Dollar explained.

“They’ve been living a life of addiction for so long and suddenly they’re not. Everything’s changed for them.”

Dollar noted himself as a former addict and has been clean of drugs and alcohol for nine years after nearly three decades of addiction. He said such experience is crucial to helping the program’s participants.

“They need someone who’s been there,” he said. “Whenever they [begin to relapse], we say, where you at? The first thing they need is someone to talk to. Afterward, we tell them not to let the shame of [relapsing] kill them. Relapse is an absence of recovery, but it happens and so we’re not critical of anyone who’s in [our program].”