A second chance at Drug Court saved Marsha Patton's life.
Patton, 51, started taking prescription pills for pain and stress and, within a period of five years, ended up a heroin junkie.
The suburban grandmother of two worked in banking and catering before drugs took over her life and landed her in prison. Addiction was never part of her life plan.
The implementation of community sentencing courts during the past decade have helped thousands of nonviolent Oklahoman offenders get treatment and stay out of prison.
Patton has been clean for 2 1/2 years now, but she struggled with addiction over the past 20 years. It was the five or six years before she got sober that were the worst.
She was always an addict, but it was a messy divorce that served as her trigger, she said.
In the past, she'd worked as an assistant vice president of a Tulsa bank. But she wanted a change, so she started working in restaurants, something she had done when she was younger. Her doctor had prescribed pain pills for her, and she liked taking them.
Some of her younger co-workers at the restaurant suggested that she might like the pills even better if she crushed them and injected them, scoring a faster, more direct high.
The pills already owned her brain. They told her: "Why not? What fun!"
She bartended, but alcohol was never her drug of choice. She preferred opiates and benzodiazapenes.
Recent reports by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services place Oklahoma among the top states for use of pain relievers for nonmedical purposes. For 2008-09, Oklahoma had the highest percentage of residents age 12 or older using pain relievers for nonmedical purposes.
Addicts who prefer to crush and inject the pain pills soon learn that it can be an expensive habit. Prescription pills are more expensive on the street, so over time, heroin became a cheaper option for Patton.
She was hooked.
She sold her condo and most of her possessions to fund her drug habit. She lived in a house with a guy who dealt drugs.
She didn't see much of her daughter, a nurse, or any other family members. She missed the birth of one of her grandchildren.
"I stayed completely away from my family," she said. "Pretty much when you get in that world, you drop off."
She hit bottom in 2009 when she was arrested twice in a period of a few months. She was awaiting trial on one set of drug possession charges when she was arrested again.
A Tulsa County judge gave her one last shot at Drug Court. Her attorney said she had better take it unless she wanted to spend some serious time in prison.
Oklahoma has 60 operational community sentencing courts in 73 counties, according to the Oklahoma Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services.
The state has 45 adult drug courts - three of those have a veteran's docket - 10 juvenile courts and five family courts. As of January, there are 4,090 active participants.
Counties without any alternative courts are Pawnee, Beaver, Texas and Cimarron.
The cost of incarcerating a person is about $19,000 a year, compared with $5,000 per year for a participant in drug court, according to the mental health and substance abuse agency.
Although she had no health insurance, Tulsa drug court secured Patton a bed at a facility called 12 & 12 for detox and substance abuse treatment. Family & Children's Services provided her with addiction counseling, and she now has about six months left on her plea agreement.
She still has to take drug tests about six to eight times per month, and if she completes the program successfully, she has a chance at getting her felony convictions expunged from her record, which would improve her future job prospects.
Her family has been supportive since she entered rehab, and Patton is looking at going back to school because she'd like to consider becoming a counselor to help other addicts.
"The hardest part has been my guilt," she said.
She regrets hurting her daughter and not being there for her grandchildren when they were born. She lives with them now. She's talked about moving out on her own, but her daughter is afraid she might start using again.
"I don't think you can ever earn back someone's trust 100 percent," Patton said.
Being a junkie was actually quite lonely, she said.
"I had no friends, no social life. I had to let go of everything I had known for five to six years," she said.
Tulsa County Drug Court
The program was started in May 1996 and involves five phases taking from 18 months to three years. It has sanctions for not making progress, and includes frequent random drug tests, community service, increased treatment, or court appearance or jail time. Failure to complete the program means the suspended prison sentence imposed when entering goes into effect. Graduation means cases are dismissed, reduced or withdrawn.
Since 2001, about 50 percent of participants have graduated. As of 2010, about 38 percent of those graduates have been women.
Statewide, the capacity of drug courts has grown from 1,503 in 2005 to 4,090 in January, with a completion rate of about 50 percent, said officials from the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services.
The re-arrest rate of drug court graduates within four years of finishing the program is 24 percent, compared with 38 percent of those completing probation and 54 percent of released inmates, according to state agency.
Public health impact of prescription drug abuse
Over the past decade in Oklahoma, the number of deaths annually because of accidental overdose of prescription drugs has nearly tripled, according to state Medical Examiner's Office records.
Since the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control began tracking nonfatal overdoses in November 2010, at least eight nonfatal overdoses have occurred per day in Oklahoma. They most frequently involve alprazolam (one common brand is Xanax), alcohol or the opioid pain pill hydrocodone. Hydrocodone is the No. 1 most commonly prescribed drug in Oklahoma and the nation.
For every one prescription drug overdose death in the United States, there are:
- 9 abuse treatment admissions
- 35 emergency room visits for misuse or abuse
- 161 people with abuse/dependence
- 461 nonmedical users
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
This is the fifth part of a series exploring drug addiction in Oklahoma.
It is produced by the staffs of the Tulsa World, The Oklahoman, Oklahoma Watch, State Impact Oklahoma, OETA, and Griffin Communications
The project reporting on addiction seeks to uncover reasons leading to Oklahoma's top ranking in prescription drug abuse and high use of other substances, current efforts to address the problem and possible solutions.
SATURDAY: Find out how many criminal charges filed in one day in the state's largest counties had a connection to alcohol or drug use.
Cary Aspinwall 918-581-8477
cary.aspinwall@tulsaworld.com
Original Print Headline: Drug problem meant isolation
