Pubdate: Sat, 19 May 2012
Source: Bay City Times, The (MI)
Copyright: 2012 The Bay City Times
Contact: http://www.mlive.com/mailforms/bctimes/letters/index.ssf/
Website: http://www.mlive.com/bay-city/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1453
Author: Cole Waterman

BAY COUNTY DRUG COURT: OPIATE ADDICT RELIEVED HIS TODDLERS WILL
KNOW 'THE CLEAN ME'

This is the second installment of a three-part series.

BAY CITY, MI - For the past decade, John has been plagued by a
virulent opiate addiction.

The urge to feed his habit led him to crime - larceny, forgery,
breaking into homes - in an effort to make it through another day. But
now, John is on the mend, fighting to kill his craving, thanks to Bay
County Circuit Court's new drug treatment program.

"If it wasn't for this, I'd still be using," John says without
hesitation. "I honestly needed this. This is honestly one of the best
things to happen to Bay County in a long time, I believe. Being on
regular felony probation, I'd still have room to get high. This gives
us the tools to not relapse and helps us realize why we're relapsing."

The program started in the fall with the court receiving a $100,000
federal grant, shared with District Court's sobriety program, in
operation since 2005. Circuit Judge Harry P. Gill oversees the drug
program, which has four intensive phases designed to help repeat
offenders overcome addiction. All participants must have a history of
drug-fueled criminal activity and, as a condition of their admittance,
have to plead guilty to at least some of the new charges they face. If
they graduate, the charge they pleaded to is reduced to a lesser
count, and they avoid incarceration.

John - not his real name - is one of the program's seven participants.
He was accepted in February after pleaded guilty a five-year felony
count of third-degree home invasion. Prosecutors agreed to dismiss
counts of second-degree home invasion and larceny in a building.

"I was owed money from my boss, and I thought the best way to get the
money was to take his pills," John said of the summer 2011 break-in.
"It was the wrong decision. I know that now."

John's path to drug addiction started when he suffered a knee injury
playing hockey at 16.

"The doctors prescribed me Vicodin, and it was downhill from there,"
he recalls.

When his dependence on Vicodin grew more fierce, John turned toward
other prescription medication such as OxyContin and, eventually, heroin.

"The town I grew up in up north, it was easy access," he says.
"Everyone was doing it, and I figured I'd see what was going on with
it."

The 27-year-old father of two toddlers hails from northern Michigan
but has lived in Bay City for several years.

Come Monday, John will advance to the program's second phase. The
intensive nature of the program has reduced opportunities to maintain
his addiction. Each week, John has at least two random drug tests, two
visits with an out-patient counselor, attends three Narcotics
Anonymous meetings and sees his case manager.

"Everything they have us doing takes away time from thinking about
getting high," he said. "It helps us come up with ways to change our
lives."

Police and addiction specialists have said heroin is in the midst of a
rebound in Bay City.

"It's hard to stay clean in Bay City," John says. "You got to change
every aspect of your life, and they teach you that in the program. You
can't just white-knuckle through it. You have to change your friends,
your associations, who you talk to, what you do."

A helpful aspect of the program is its compassion. When participants
fail a drug test, the enrollees are sanctioned with minor penalties,
but they are not expelled nor their participation forfeited.

A few weeks into the program, John tested positive for THC - the
active component in marijuana.

"As addicts, we're going to relapse," he said. "It's all part of the
program."

The judges and probation officers involved don't come down on the
participants when they falter along the way, but instead attempt to
correct the behavior and get the addicts to understand their errors,
John says.

"The judge is not like a judge, but like a mentor to us," he says. "If
we screw up, he doesn't yell at us or tell us we did wrong. He tries
to find out why we did what we did. It's more like a support system
for us."

With the first of four phases about to wrap up, John says he is
already feeling the effects.

"This is the second longest I've been clean in my whole life," he
said. "I'm getting a lot of respect back from my family. Me and my
girlfriend don't fight anymore. It's a lot easier to wake up in the
morning, not having to worry about getting my next fix. I can wake up
thinking about what I have to do that day to take care of myself."

John plans to enroll in classes at Delta College in the fall in hopes
of getting an associate's degree in the applied science of
construction management. He said he then would like to get a
certificate in substance abuse counseling to help others who have
faced addiction.

Perhaps the biggest influence on John's reason for getting - and
staying - clean is his daughters.

"I'm glad I'm doing this now," he says, referring to their young age.
"They know the clean me. They won't grow up to know the drug addict
that I was."
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MAP posted-by: Matt