VALDOSTA — Daniel Springer’s addiction to opioids started more than a decade ago with an injured knee. 

The 25-year-old was given a prescription for hydrocodone with six months of refills. But after just a few days, he began taking them more often than was prescribed.

When the pills ran out, he began to feel like he was coming down with the flu. 

“I felt terrible, just absolutely awful,” Springer said. “I found somebody else who had some painkillers. I took them, and I felt better.

“I eventually started doctor shopping,” he said, which led him to oxycodone. “When even that didn’t work, I started buying drugs on the street.”

The north Georgia resident said his attempts to quit on his own – including checking himself into a rehabilitation center – went nowhere. 

Now, he’s about a year and half into the Conasauga drug court program, which serves Whitfield and Murray counties. He has another year to go.

He says he thinks drug court, with the classes and one-on-one counseling, has finally made a difference.

“I came into the program after seven months in jail, and even after seven months in jail, I don’t know that I would have stayed clean without someone behind me,” he said.

Growing footprint

Drug courts have been popping up across the state since 1994, when the first one convened in Macon. The programs are part of an expanding accountability courts network that features prominently in Gov. Nathan Deal’s criminal justice reform efforts. 

As part of those continued efforts, state lawmakers set aside about $1.5 million in this year’s budget to keep adding more adult felony drug courts.

How the individual programs are run may vary, but they all generally offer nonviolent offenders a chance to avoid incarceration, which in turn saves the state money. 

By now, most counties are served by a drug court. They exist in nearly all of the SunLight Project coverage areas, which includes Thomasville, Valdosta, Moultrie, Tifton, Milledgeville and Dalton. 

Only the Thomasville area is currently without one. Defendants there can be referred to Georgia Pines, which is the area’s state-funded community service board and local safety net agency. Successful treatment may lead to dismissed charges or a suspended sentence. 

Conasauga drug court in Dalton, which started in 2002, is one of the older drug courts in the state and usually serves about 90 participants.

Tift County is one of the newest, with its program starting in January. The county’s program includes an 18-month adult felony drug court program and a drug/DUI court, which is a 12-month program. 

In Milledgeville, a family dependency treatment court targets parents struggling with substance abuse who have lost custody of their children. In its four years of existence, 21 parents have graduated and about 39 are currently enrolled. About one quarter of them are addicted to opiates.

A chance for change

The drug tests are frequent and unannounced. Participants must show up for court – and be on time. The threat of incarceration is always looming. 

It’s a rigorous program, to be sure. But there’s also a softer side. Friendly check-in calls from program supervisors. Help with housing and finding work. Sometimes there are even skydiving trips and other new experiences possible through private donations. 

“We are a treatment program,” said Don Hoffmeyer, coordinator of the Conasauga drug court, where the staffers – including Hoffmeyer – are also in recovery from addiction. 

“It’s not just about sobriety,” he added. “It’s about changing who you are inside. We have to change their way of thinking in order to change them as a person.” 

Participants must plead guilty to their felony charge to enter the program, essentially putting them on a special kind of probation. In the Conasauga drug court, most of them are hooked on meth or opioids. 

Once in, there are two ways out: successfully complete the program or go to prison.

Completing the program can be grueling, taking some participants as long as five years to succeed. But most do, Hoffmeyer said. The program’s graduation rate is about 85 percent. 

A good bit of candidates rebuff the program when they hear what all is required – the daily check-ins, the homework, the work requirement, the weekly meetings.

In return, participants receive treatment services, such as in-house counseling, and other aid, such as nutritional guidance and physicals. They pay a $27 weekly fee.

By the time most of the participants enroll in drug court, they have already survived the withdrawals in jail. The program’s goal, Hoffmeyer said, is to help them make mental, spiritual and environmental changes to keep them from going back to drugs or alcohol. 

“There are thousands of people who need our services, but they have to be ready to do the work required to be successful in this program,” Hoffmeyer said. 

“More people turn us down than we turn down,” he added. “A lot of people just don’t want to do it and say, ‘I’d rather spend time in prison. It’s easier.’ And it’s true, I agree with them – it is easier.”

Different ballgame

Amy Crumley, treatment provider for Lowndes County’s accountability court, which is still relatively new, said opioids are a different ball game when it comes to substance abuse. 

Crumley said she has been pushing for the county to begin a medication-assisted treatment program to provide people with Vivitrol, an opioid antagonist that can help people avoid relapse. 

She said the drug can cost $1,500 and is not covered under insurance. Crumley said that most of the people she sees in drug court are using methamphetamine to get over the detoxification from opioids.

“I have people tell me all the time that they switched to meth because they couldn’t afford to buy pills anymore,” Crumley said. 

Stephen Goss, superior court judge in Albany and chairman of the Council of Accountability Court Judges of Georgia, said at a meeting last month that stakeholders are being encouraged to have a more open mind about medication-assisted treatment.

“We’re faced with new challenges with this opioid addiction crisis, and we’re having to rethink what are the prudent, safe and deliverable approaches to this,” Goss said in an interview this week.

As part of that, a state-funded pilot program in northeast Georgia is giving Vivitrol injections to drug court participants. If effective, the program could be rolled out statewide, Goss said.

But the shot alone won’t be enough, he said.

“The medical treatment for the opiate addiction is huge, but it’s part of an overarching approach to it,” Goss said. “You have to have the counseling piece, the court supervision piece, the accountability piece.

“It’s a package,” he said.

More resources needed

Judge Herbert Benson, who presides over Tift County’s drug and DUI court, said that the only way the program is going to work long term is if the addicts acknowledges their problem and want to get better.

Even then it is a long process and one with very few, if any, local resources. Many programs rely on community service board clinics for treatment services. 

“In a lot of places in Georgia, particularly in rural areas, that’s just about all there is available,” Goss said. 

There are no medical detox centers in the Tifton area, and the closest ones usually cannot help those addicted to opiates, Benson said. 

“They’ll admit you for alcohol, other drugs,” Benson said. “But they won’t for opiates because the withdrawal won’t kill you. It’ll make you wish you were dead, but it won’t kill you.”

After the initial detox, there are no rehab clinics anywhere near Tift County, and the ones in North Georgia are prohibitively expensive, even if the patient has insurance.

“We just don’t think people should have to get arrested to get help,” said Neil Campbell, executive director of the Georgia Council on Substance Abuse. 

“We keep widening that net, making it wider and wider because that is where the treatment capacity is going,” Campbell said, referring to drug courts. “I just think we should have (treatment) sooner and make it OK for people to ask for help.” 

Campbell’s group is advocating for the restoration of state funding for preventive and treatment services that was cut during the recession. The council is also focused on developing what are called recovery community organizations, which Benson, the judge, is pushing for back in Tifton as a place for people at risk of relapsing. 

“It takes more than a 30-day stint in rehab with opiates,” Benson said. “Rehab is just the beginning. People need ongoing support to stay away from old habits.” 

Benson, who was elected in 2014, said he didn’t realize the extent of the local drug problem until he became a state court judge. 

He said he hopes educating people about addiction will erase some of the stigma and enable Tift County to bring in more resources to treat people locally.

“We’re not going to have the resources we need unless people know what a big problem it is,” Benson said. “Our biggest goal is not only to treat those individuals that are going and coming through the program, we’ve got to get the publicity out about the drug problem and that it actually exists. 

“The general public likes to turn their head and say that we don’t have a drug problem in Tift County,” he added. “Well, we do. We have an alcohol and a drug problem in Tift County.”

The SunLight Project team of journalists who contributed to this report includes Thomas Lynn, Patti Dozier, Alan Mauldin, Will Woolever and Jordan Barela. Editors are Jim Zachary and Dean Poling. To contact the team, email sunlightproject@gaflnews.com.