Second chances: Those in recovery celebrate sobriety at Problem Solving Court graduation
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
President Judge John DiSalle presents Lana Blue her Problem Solving Court diploma Thursday morning, for completing the restrictive treatment program and nearing 19 months sober. “This is a happy, auspicious occasion,” said DiSalle. “This is our way of recognizing the hard work that they’ve done. We don’t look at the time so much as their stability, accomplishments.”
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Years ago, on a visit to the Washington County Courthouse, Nick Moses remembers the judge “took his glasses and he slid them down his face. He said, ‘Do you want to take this to trial?’ That was the first time in my life that I ever thought maybe I should stop speaking,” he said. Moses, now of Pittsburgh, shared his life of addiction, trauma and recovery with Problem Solving Court grads and ceremony attendees Thursday morning.
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
“I took my first drink at 11 years old. I have not been clean until 18 months ago. That’s a long time I’m using,” Lana Blue said after graduating from Problem Solving Court Thursday morning. “I had no idea this was a thing (sobriety). I’d see happy, normal people and be like, they are on something, they are just better at hiding it. There is definitely another side of addiction, and it’s recovery and sobriety, and it offers just so much.”
Lana Blue stands proudly inside the Washington County Courthouse, where she received her restrictive treatment program diploma Thursday afternoon. Blue, a machine technician, said she didn't know life on the other side of sobriety could be this good.
It felt very full circle.
On Thursday morning, 15 men and women gathered inside the Washington County Courthouse’s Courtroom No. 2, a place they’d been before on criminal charges, to celebrate their graduation from the Washington County Problem Solving Court program.
“My clean date is 3-16-2019. I still get nervous coming into a courtroom,” said Nick Moses, a Tampa, Fla., transplant who graduated from the restrictive treatment program in 2021. “I remember when this all started, I came in here to get the offer for drug court in my beautiful orange outfit. Looking back, I’m surprised that I’m not only able to speak here, but to even be alive. In my early 20s, there was a 50/50 of the amount of time I’ve spent incarcerated to the amount of time that I’ve spent free, outside of an institution. I never thought that I could be clean. I never thought that I could achieve this kind of life. I never thought that this would be an option for an addict like me, and from where I came from.”
Moses, who grew up in an addict family and moved to Pennsylvania for a fresh start, considers graduating from the program “the biggest achievement” of his life, a moment made possible by those who didn’t give up on him: the judges, parole officers, counselors, sponsors and others who comprised his treatment team. He has, since graduating, moved to Pittsburgh and now sponsors others in recovery. Moses has spoken at anniversaries, picnics and conferences.
“Nothing fills my heart more and makes me happier than being able to come and share some experience and someone getting something out of it. I’ve gained so much peace in my life. I have a wonderful job. I have a license,” he laughed. “That wouldn’t be, if it wasn’t for the help of … the treatment team.”
Treatment teams are an integral part of Washington County’s Problem Solving Court. The court is a nationally accredited, evidence-based drug treatment and rehabilitation program that aims to keep people out of local criminal justice systems through intense, highly supervised treatment.
The program runs about 23 months. Those who agree to complete it meet twice monthly with a judge, undergo regular drug testing, attend Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous meetings and are encouraged to maintain a job.
“Rather than warehouse these folks – jails are overcrowded – we’re trying to get to the root of their problem, hopefully turn their lives around and make them productive citizens,” said President Judge John DiSalle, who presided over the graduation ceremony. “It’s all voluntary. They have to want to do it. We have a very high success rate: more than two-thirds of the folks graduate successfully and do not recidivate.”
Graduates gathered in the jury box Thursday while their family members, friends and other supporters crowded into the courtroom for a celebration not only of successful treatment program completion, but of the start of a new chapter.
Before receiving their diploma, graduates read aloud petitions, sharing before peers, counselors, family members and friends their experiences, struggles and triumphs along roads to recoveries.
“I stumbled in the beginning. I didn’t understand what this side of sobriety looked like,” said Lana Blue, who graduated from the restrictive treatment program and will soon be 19 months clean. “I could not see this far ahead. I was very chaotic. I wasn’t focused on anything but my kids and getting high, which isn’t a good mix. Here I am today; this is a special moment. I’m very grateful for the program; they set this process up for a reason, and gratefully I can say it works. I spend my time very differently these days. I spend my time in the sunshine.”
Blue took her first drink at age 11, she said, and since then hadn’t spent more than three consecutive months sober (“Because of jail, it was forced clean time,” she said).
“I just ran through this town, getting high. I had so many possession charges and I had made my fifth or sixth trip to jail in one year, all over drugs. I can remember being in my cell, talking to one of my friends. I was like, I don’t know if I can do this (problem solving court). She was like, you have to give yourself a chance, because look at what you keep doing.”
Blue is where Moses was two years ago, on the cusp of a beautiful life, and both they and their fellow grads represent the other side of addiction.
“We see the bad things on the news, the overdoses, the crime. These folks are successful. They graduated, they’re in recovery. It is attainable. These folks are living proof,” said DiSalle.
Some graduates, like Blue, are finally living their best lives – and, Moses encouraged, it’ll only get better.
Blue believes that.
“I succeeded at something in my life. This is me doing what I want to do,” she said. “I went from being a career bartender, getting high and drunk every night, to machine mechanic in a huge, huge foundry. It’s a huge jump. Thank God, I changed. And thank God, at the end of the day, thank God that I got in the trouble I did, because I would’ve just kept going until I died. Death, in addiction, does not have to be the end result.”