21 graduate from drug court
Anderson County Drug Court allowed Amy Everett, left, the opportunity to re-establish a relationship with her daughter, Emily Robinson. “I need my mother,” Robinson said at the graduation ceremony.
Sometimes those downfalls looked fatal, as if an alien being had taken possession of their lives and was bent on destroying them.
Anderson County Drug Court is not a happy place.
Not in the beginning.
Because it takes a special “something” in a person to wind up in that position where Drug Court is the only thing keeping someone from going to prison.
Because it takes a special “something” in a person to wind up in that position where Drug Court is the only thing that may save their lives.
But when an addict — and there is no sugar-coating what brings a person to Drug Court — completes the course, gets control of their addiction and sheds the anger and self-loathing and pain, Drug Court can offer a glimpse at how a life should be lived.
Anderson County Drug Court celebrated twice Tuesday night: The program was re-certified and it celebrated the accomplishments of three people.
“Drug Court is not easy,” Anderson County Criminal Court Judge Don Elledge said Tuesday night.
“There is the course, which is pretty demanding, but there is also the aspect of the individual being addicted and confronting that as well,” he said.
Add to that mix the stressors involved with someone pulling their life together — the challenges associated with those tasks — and Drug Court is, indeed, a test.
Amber Rose, Anthony “Tony” Hargett, and Amy Everett were the most recent graduates of Drug Court, completing the course in two years and rebuilding their lives.
Tuesday night was celebration night.
While each have a story to share about their addiction, about their downfalls, all had one thing common: The bottom — each had reached it in their own lives.
“I was sitting in jail and looking around me and ... I saw where I was. I prayed to God and said, ‘There has to be more than this,’” Hargett said.
At one time he was a professional, a manager, a person who was trusted to oversee the workings of others.
At his lowest point he had lost his job, his family, he self-esteem.
“I was told I was going to prison … For a long time,” Hargett said. “And I told God, ‘Just get me away from what I was doing,’” Hargett said.
Instead of prison, he got Drug Court.
“I stood in this courtroom and was told I had Drug Court, and man, I was scared,” he said.
“Tony came in at the beginning and just ramrodded his way through,” Winnie Gadd, who coordinates Drug Court said. “He just grabbed it and took off with it.”
But Gadd said she didn’t know if Hargett would make it — not because of the program, but because of the physical affects his addiction had taken on his body.
“If you look at his mug shots, at one point he was so thin … I thought he wouldn’t make it. I thought we’d lost him,” she said.
Hargett shared how, through Drug Court, he has rebuilt his life. He has a job with responsibilities, a place to live, and he has his family back.
“I’m a father and a husband,” he said. “I have that back.”
Amber Rose’s story is similar, but one theme kept coming back for her Tuesday: The loss of her family and her family’s trust.
“I’m so grateful for Drug Court … I was just so tired of the pain,” she said in an emotional testimony.
She has re-established a relationship with her brother and her mother no longer has “to hide everything in the house.”
Amber Rose is welcomed home these days.
“Amber has changed considerably … In a good way,” Elledge laughed. “She has literally gone from having nothing and now she has passed her HVAC tests and is ready to be certified. She has her family back. She has a future now.”
Gadd said that Rose, just like Hargett, entered the program and ran with it. “Even after her parole was over she came back voluntarily. She didn’t have to. She could been through with it, but she came back.”
Rose said she just kept coming and showing up. “And I started listening to suggestions from people who knew more than I did,” she said.
“I am so happy to have a life now, my life … The life I was supposed to have.”
Amy Everett was different.
“A lot of people come before me,” Elledge said. “You get to know them, know about their situation, learn about them as a person.
“And when Amy first came to Drug Court I thought, ‘She’s not going to make it,’” he said.
“And then, it just clicked with her,” he said. “I don’t know what caused it, but she really turned it around.”
Everett turned it around so much she will become a counselor for those with addictions.
“I don’t know when it clicked in, but I know I started out with an attitude. There were rules and I didn’t like them so I wasn’t going to follow them. I didn’t like something, I wasn’t going to do it,” she said.
And like the others — once it clicked in — when she started taking back control her life …
“It wasn’t easy for Amy,” Elledge said. “There was Drug Court, her addiction, and a lot of personal stressors — and I won’t go into those — that confronted her.
“But she found resources, others she could reach out to, and came through.”
Like Hargett and Rose, reconnecting with her family is the best side affect of Drug Court.
“I am so grateful to have my mother back,” a tearful Emily Robinson, Everett’s daughter, said. “I need my mother.”
Elledge summed up Drug Court earlier in the proceedings: Before the testimony of the graduates, before the families stood and said how much they missed their loved ones and how happy they are to have them back.
Before cake and handshakes and well wishes.
“When we see the people and how this has changed their lives … That’s what this is all about,” he said.
Tuesday night’s Drug Court celebration was not the first time the program had three graduates. But it is the first time all three graduates received a “Golden Cup” award — the award given to those completing the course without failing a drug test.
That’s no easy feat when you are testing recovering addicts not just once or twice, but a total of 651 times in a span of two years.