DECATUR - Designed to hold nightmares captive while letting sweet dreams glide down their feathers to the person sleeping below, the dream catchers in Danny Hill's apartment signify nothing more than his taste in home decor.

They could symbolize the control he's gained over the demons that have ruled much of his life, but they don't.

"I like American Indian art; I don't know why," Hill said. "I just think the colors are beautiful."

Yet the earth tones adorning his one-bedroom apartment fade into the background whenever he bends over hundreds of brightly colored beads on the coffee table in search of inspiration. The next necklace or bracelet he creates could be the design that sells well enough to let him help someone else.

Generosity is what makes Hill, 54, different from most people with serious mental illness. "He feels this great need to give back," said Alma Hogan, his case manager at Heritage Grove apartments in Decatur.

Hill advocates for the Oasis Day Center, which gave him refuge when he was homeless, and has supported it with money he made selling his key chains. He also speaks out on behalf of supportive housing like his own.

But giving toys and other things children need is nearest and dearest to his heart.

"I want them to have a better childhood than I did, and I want to give hope to people who don't have any," he said.

Hill was one of those people until April of 2004. That month began the longest stretch of sobriety of his adult life - a dawn after four dark decades of abusing alcohol and other drugs, nearly killing himself several times, to escape the pain of bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and his memories.

Tragedy struck early and often for Hill, a native of Pekin, as it often does in the lives of people who become mentally ill.

His father died drunk behind the wheel of a truck soon after his birth, and his mother gave him up. He was adopted by a paternal uncle, another alcoholic who beat him as a child and molested him as an adolescent.

The sexual abuse happened after his adoptive parents had divorced, when his mother sent him to live with her ex-husband because she couldn't cope with his temper or get him to stop skipping school. The arrangement ended after Hill told his mother what his father had done, but his truancy persisted.

He wanted to get away from classmates who picked on him and had started getting into the secret stash of beers his dad had left behind. "I was a good baseball player, but my mom couldn't get me to go to tryouts," Hill said.

Sometimes, he didn't come home, sleeping in the janitor's room at his junior high school or hitchhiking to Peoria to meet up with a buddy and get into mischief.

"The trouble started when she was gone at night, working," he said, then brought himself up short. "I went down the wrong road, and it was nobody's fault but mine."

His mother remarried a man who was a stabilizing influence, but nothing - not his beloved mother and stepfather, now deceased, not hospitalization, not reform school and not a boot camp for boys - could get him back on the right path. "I wanted to do things my way," he said.

His way led to heroin and cocaine addiction, six marriages, two children and six grandchildren he rarely sees, and prison. After injuring his back in the early 1980s doing maintenance work at an Urbana restaurant, he also became dependent on painkillers.

The pills turned out to be a hard habit to break, flaring up following heart surgery soon after Heritage Behavioral Health Center opened Heritage Groves in 2002 and he moved in. But with the help of inpatient substance abuse treatment and the structured environment provided by Heritage - one that monitors his medications and allows him just $68 a week from his disability check - Hill gave them up as he had alcohol in 2000 and street drugs in 1985.

"I got tired of the life and didn't want to do it no more," he said.

In the four years since, Hill joined three other Heritage patients in helping to design and conduct a survey of Oasis Day Center clients and has spoken in favor of funding for Oasis and Heritage at public forums, including a regional budget hearing conducted by state legislators March 10 in Decatur.

"Danny is willing to help out and is passionate about it," said Diana Knaebe, president of Heritage. "It's not something many of our folks like to do."

He has also given toys, hats and gloves to children at Heritage and Wee Folk, once brightened the lives of pediatric patients at Decatur Memorial Hospital by delivering wrapped gifts on Christmas Day, and recently donated two footballs and a basketball to the Boys & Girls Club of Decatur.

Businesses that have helped support these efforts include both Decatur Wal-Marts, Sam's Club, Victory Pharmacy and Lutheran School Association Resale Shop.

At the same time, Hill and his handmade jewelry have become a fixture at Decatur Celebration, and he frequently takes the city bus to Hobby Lobby for supplies. "I've got so many beads, I dream about them," he said.

Even so, old compulsions stand ready to supplant the new ones and led Hill to seek another round of outpatient substance abuse treatment just last month.

Grieving over a breakup with a longtime girlfriend, he said he was getting angrier and angrier and afraid he would start drinking and popping pills again.

Now he's feeling strong enough to tackle his addiction to cigarettes, a craving he needs to conquer in the face of worsening health problems, including diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

So he's been taking a drug that blocks nicotine from attaching to receptors in the brain, which helps by day but triggers "stupid dreams" at night.

"The other night I dreamed I was trying to get somebody out of my apartment that had alcohol on them," he said.

In reality, he often thinks about asking Wal-Mart to move its liquor farther away from the milk and doesn't want too much cash in his pocket for fear of how he might spend it.

"I wish my mom and stepdad could see me doing what I'm doing now," Hill said. "Sobriety is something money can't buy, and I never want to be without it again."

Theresa Churchill can be reached at tchurchill@herald-review.com or 421-7978.