Washington
Drug Court Grad Gets His Life Back
Excerpt: Ira Michel remembers the moment he realized he was hopelessly addicted to drugs and alcohol.
“I was sitting in my car, a glass pipe in one hand, a bottle of whiskey in the other. I took a drink of whiskey and said to myself, ‘OK, I’m done.’ But a minute later, I picked it back up,” he said recently from his office at Okanogan County Juvenile Detention. Again and again, he tried to take just one more drink, one more hit, and set that bottle and pipe down forever.
But he just couldn’t do it.
Sativa Story Conclusion
We previously posted parts 1 and 2 of a series about the recovery of a Washington man and his quest for custody of the child he believed to be his daughter. Here is the conclusion of the series:
http://www.tdn.com/articles/2009/09/28/top_story/doc4abda56dd7cd37685553...
Media Blitz for Collaborative Law Awareness Week in Washington
Jeff Bean called our attention to an interview of Holly Hohlbein in recognition of Collaborative Law Awareness Week in Washington:
Daily News Series Tells Story of Man's Recovery to Obtain Custody
"Anything for Sativa (Part I): Drug Court, baby girl give him strength to battle addiction"
A Kelso, Washington man in a drug court program is followed as he tries to establish paternity and gain custody of his daughter in this three-part series which begins here:
http://www.tdn.com/articles/2009/09/21/top_story/doc4ab57f2f9fe079525065...
Veteran's Court Offers Second Chance
From the front page of The Olympian (Olympia, WA) paper:
Excerpt: Ryan Harrington returned home from war a broken man.
A former Army Ranger, he served a combined 18 months in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, and lost his best friend in an attack.
Suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, Harrington, 26, couldn’t hold down any one of a series of eight jobs. Always on edge, he’d binge drink to get a good night’s sleep; otherwise, he’d be up for days. He fired three therapists after exploding in anger when they wanted him to talk about experiences he had locked deep inside.
Drug Court Celebrates a Decade of Getting People Clean
Yes, it is another drug court graduation story. I've stepped over several so as not to fill this day's news feeds with story after story of graduations. But, this one is different. First, it is a special occasion for the court-ten years. Secondly, it includes a photo of a judge hugging a defendant in congratulations. Visit the link just for the photo.
http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2009/apr/24/drug-court-celebrates-a-decade...
Excerpt:
Statistics Show Drug Court Works
Nathaniel Shorter is the kind of person prosecutors and judges point to when touting new statistics that show the success of Pierce County’s drug court program.
Before his most recent arrest, Shorter, 46, was living in the “jungle” of encampments under Tacoma overpasses, where sparring with rats and raccoons was not uncommon. By the time he started to get clean, he was, in the words of one mentor, “looking like burnt toast.”
In March, Shorter marked the second anniversary of his sobriety and has transformed himself into a choirboy. (Yes, he’s actually singing in a church choir.)
