Celebrating sobriety as a way of life: Locals graduate from East End ‘drug court’ program

Tears of joy flowed at Southampton Justice Court today as six East End residents graduated from the drug court program. Two Riverhead residents, Deborah S., 48, and Ryan B., 43, were among those graduates, recipients of certificates to commemorate their journey toward a drug-free life.

The East End Regional Intervention Court program, established in 2004, allows certain defendants to remain out of jail if they sign a contract to participate in the program for at least a year.

“This has not been easy for me,” Deborah said of her experience in the program. But the hard work pays off. The program has a 75 percent success rate measured by its graduates not being re-arrested, according to coordinator Charlene Halsey Mascia.

“I wanted to be clean but I couldn’t let go of the drug,” Deborah said. “I thought maybe I could find a way to use and go to drug court too and that didn’t work.”

Deborah told RiverheadLOCAL her struggles with crack cocaine were so difficult the program itself almost failed to keep her out of jail.

“The last time I got sanctioned and I was sitting in the jail, they said there was nothing else they could do for me. It was either get it now or I was going to jail,” she said.

“The hardest part was sitting in the jail cell, knowing I don’t want to do this and that my disease lied to me once again. I’ve had clean time. I know what that’s like and I want that,” Deborah said.

“I knew that in her heart of hearts she wanted to get clean,” Mascia said of Deborah, “but the disease wouldn’t allow her,” Mascia said. “She has worked so hard since she’s been in drug court. She went back to work and started to achieve.”

Though Deborah agrees the program has been integral to her success, she said graduation is only the beginning for her.

“I always say it’s like a pacifier,” Deborah said. “You have supervision and something over your head. Now I don’t, so this is when the real work starts.”

Ryan, 43, said having a support system is the key to keeping clean after graduation, something Ryan said he learned from moving back to his Riverhead stomping grounds and relapsing after six clean years in Buffalo.

“I went to college and got a degree and I thought I was ready to come back and be clean and that was probably one of the biggest mistakes that I made,” Ryan said after receiving his certificate. “Because I wasn’t doing the right thing or following my program, it was easy to fall back into what I was accustomed to. I didn’t seek out positive things. I sought out the friends I had left and the reality is they were doing the same things they were doing when I left the first time.”

When Ryan was arrested in February 2011 in connection with a burglary, he said he chose drug court as the lesser of two evils next to jail.

“Going to jail for the first time in my life, this big guy right here was scared,” he said. “I was scared. I don’t like to be locked up. I don’t like to be confined. I don’t like people telling me what to do.”

Being told what to do made the drug program very difficult for him, Ryan said, as defendants are required to respectfully engage with a team of local judges, district attorneys, probation officers and counselors, who dictate their treatment and review schedule.

“One of the judges said I was arrogant and cocky – to sit up straight and sit in the front row,” Ryan said. “For that I’m ever so grateful because that was change for me. I wanted to come back at her, but I already knew if I said anything she didn’t like I was going to jail. I didn’t know how to drop my guard and let somebody help me.”

Now that he has graduated, Ryan told RiverheadLOCAL he is relying on a strengthened support system to stay on the straight and narrow.

“I’m working a 12-step program and just celebrated a year [of sobriety] on March 10,” he said. “Without a support network, it’s never going to work. You need to have a support network outside of drug court, go to meetings, you need to have a sponsor and you need to work the 12 steps.”

But there are other things that he wants to work on, other than the 12 steps of a fellowship program.

“I have two girls, 25 and 20, and because of my drug history I didn’t really have a history with them, but I’m working on it now,” Ryan said. “It’s still tough and it’s not going to be easy, but I’m just so grateful to be alive.”