A Court Ordered Rehab Center, Full of Crack Cocaine
Our latest Lioness story.
Dear Reader, a Lioness story out today:
A man who has spent decades in and out of jail gets a second chance from a judge and is sent to a rehab facility to avoid jail time. The only problem is, the center is a glorified homeless shelter. There is no group therapy, no Narcotics or Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, no psychological help.
People who have done 15, 17, 22 years jail time are turned loose after six months with a certificate declaring they’ve received treatment. But they are instead returning to society addicted to drugs, with untreated mental illness.
What do you think will happen next?
Court-Ordered Drug Rehab Sounded Like a Second Chance. It’s Jail by Another Name.
Court-ordered programs taking government funds to rehabilitate people and keep them out of jail have, in some cases, become part of the prison pipeline.
By Timothy Eric Ayers
I cannot be certain whether I started using drugs because of my mental health issues or whether my mental health deteriorated when I started using drugs. Either way, I've been in psychiatric wards more than 50 times in my 51 years. I've attempted suicide 11 times: twice by hanging, three times with a knife, and five times by intentional drug overdose. After my latest arrest, within the first month of incarceration, I tried hanging myself and free-fell off my bunk head first onto the concrete floor.
This history has led me to 25 inpatient programs and numerous halfway houses. Since my first exposure to the Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous community at age 14, I’ve attended thousands of such meetings. In 2017, during a time of abstinence, I took classes and received a peer recovery specialist certificate. That resume does not qualify me for much in this world, but it does give me the authority to speak on these topics.
My name is Timothy Eric Ayers, and I am a substance abuser in recovery. As I write this, I have been free of drugs and alcohol for just over 18 months. Since July 30, 2021, I’ve been living in a drug, alcohol, and mental health treatment facility called Gaudenzia Park Heights in Baltimore, Maryland. I was sent here by court order after breaching my probation. The hope was that by allowing me to get help with my addictions and mental health, I could avoid returning to prison.
Many of my fellow residents were also sent here as a “last chance” to avoid jail time. Centers like this one are largely government-funded by the state, Medicaid reimbursements, and federal grants (95.1 percent of Gaudenzia’s funding is state and federal money). In exchange, the center is tasked with overseeing our recovery. If we can be rehabilitated, the thinking goes, we will get out of the prison pipeline, breaking the cycle of incarceration.
On my first day at Gaudenzia, I was housed in a room with three other gentlemen, two of whom had been released from 12 years’ incarceration into this treatment program. Very quickly, I could tell that something wasn’t quite right…
(Read the rest of the story here.)