Spirit in Action

Drugs, Mental Health, & Healing Justice

Part 2 of interviews about treatment courts which achieve impressive results and save lots of money. Today we visit with participants of the local Drug & Mental Health Courts - Mike Gumulauskas & Rob Bergeron.

Duration:: 55m
Broadcast on:: 19 Oct 2014
Audio Format:: other

[music] Let us sing this song for the healing of the world That we may hear as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing [music] Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpes Me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world That we may dream as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along Last week, for Spirit in Action, we introduce you to treatment courts, alternatives to the ineffective and unwise policies Of locking certain people up, people who can, with proper support, be productive members of our communities. We've already spoken with treatment courts supervisor Melissa Ives and AIM court participant Rachel Schromick. We continue today by visiting with participants of Eau Claire's drug and mental health courts. We'll start by going to the phone right now to speak with Michael Kamalouskas of the drug court. Mike, thanks for joining me today for Spirit in Action. Thank you for having me, Mike. I found out that you graduated from the drug court back in 2008. How long have you been involved with the legal system in general? When did that start? It started at 15 for me. I committed my first crime and I was put on juvenile probation at the age of 15. I got off of parole probation at the age of 32. That's 17 years in the system. What good did the system do you before you got to drug court? We have a broken system in our country and in our state, I should say. I've set pictures and prisons and jails and obviously I needed to serve some time for the crimes I committed. Some of my crimes are violent, some of my crimes are always a drug dealer. I deserve to fit some times, but one of the things that I didn't get out of seeing all those times is they called rehabilitation. I was never rehabilitated or taught any life skills that my parents failed to give me because I'm a prison child. So when they tried to rehabilitate you in a prison system, they don't want to do a good job. Right now it's all about harboring. They finally got a treatment prison in Wisconsin to help them with a little bit. But the prisons are so overcrowded that it's just they can't reach everybody's needs. So could you flush in for me a little bit of what it was like to be in the system again before drug court? What was it like? It was a harbor. It was a place where they harbored people or they harbored souls to set out a set amount of time in which a judge and a DA agreed that you would sit. That's about it. Especially when it came to the prison, in the county jail you were given a little bit of more rehabilitation, kind of. At the end of my time sitting in jails and prisons, but it was just a harbor in me and to keep them on a society. It was to keep us away. And I'm sure it's because of Tommy Thompson in the top on crime. I mean he preached for a long time. You commit this time and you go to jail and society needs to move on. That's what my experience is with it. So you had 17 years of experience with the legal system and only some small portion of that is with drug court. And before that, you had experience of the system that was, you know, take you to court, arrest you. Did parents go with you? Did you have friends? Did your time in jail make you better or worse? What happened? So my parents, I love my parents, but they weren't the best teachers. They didn't teach me any life skills. I was more a citizen child and then I broke my hip as a child, so I just figured for 20 years of my life. So I went to a place where I found solace and I was alcohol. So I went to alcohol and drugs as a young child. But the lack of parenting from my parents eventually just got put into a system where they were watching me and protesting me in treatments or sticking me in jails. My experience with pre-drug courts were, I became a violent. I became a better criminal. I learned nothing of life skills. My faith, which was, I've always kind of believed in something greater than myself because I just believe that the surface is too perfect. But I never searched for that because I was so worried about protecting myself and, especially in prison, I had to be strong. I didn't have time for God. I just needed to think about myself, which is wrong. When I finally did get into a treatment in prison, I was smoking marijuana. I mean, there was tons of marijuana and meth and salamines and cocaine in prison and alcohol. I dulled pain by using drugs or alcohol and I continued to do that while I was in prison. It didn't make sense if I was in and out. And that's just how I did my time and I did 30 years of my life. I killed the pain by using and mocking myself up so I wouldn't hurt anybody else. And when you got out of prison, did you recommit crimes? Did you go right back to things? Was it an in and out system or did you only have to do one long stretch? I was in and out the whole time. I would do three years, get out, do two years, get out. Always on probation. From the time I was 16, from the time I was 32, 32 or 30, I had to look back on it. So I got into jail for 28. That's 31 and a half I got off paper. And I was never off probation. I would get out of prison or jail. I would go back to doing drugs or using drugs. I would get caught. I never got caught on nothing, but I've always been mucky. I guess you call it. They would always catch me with a little bit or when I would get rated for distribution of drugs. I would have my stuff. I had a price as I've always been mucky, but they would always find something. So put me on probation. Give me a conspiracy charge of distribution of methamphetamine and marijuana. And I would get put on probation and I could never make probation. I couldn't accept anything from anybody else. I couldn't accept a probation officer telling me this is where I had to be to be a constructive citizen. In a society, I would just blow it off and do what I want to do. You were a felon, right? I was a good time felon. Six time felon. Okay. But somehow something changed. Again, you graduated from drug court back in 2008. Tell us what drug courts like. How does this differ from your previous experience of legal system? Before drug court, the change that happened was I had a child. So I had a daughter. That happened at 27. I had a child and I had to quit. So I quit using drugs. I just had to stop. But I couldn't put down the alcohol. I moved from my old county, Ben County, to old Claire County, to get away from the old team. You know, there's got to be time in your life when you're essay enough enough. I had to get away from most people. For them and for me, I just had to get away. I moved to old Claire County. I had 50-50 custody of a child, which was amazing all on its own. And I got pulled over for DWI. I got pulled over for the DWI. I was on parole for distribution of methamphetamine. I'm looking 10 to the other. My first probation officer ever had at the age of 17, adult probation officer. I ever had, I was 17 years old, Gina Jarr. She was now the head probation and parole for this area. She seen me in the thing. She seen me in the jail records and she said, "This guy has got potential. Let's get him in the drug court." You know, she remembered me from when I was 17. It was like 12 years ago. 13 years ago, she remembered me. She said, "He's got potential. He's whatever intelligent if you don't call it." And they offered me drug court. I didn't even ask for drug court. They just offered it to me. A drug court was by a high risk, highly reward. So I am high risk. If I use or anything like that, the risk of society isn't there. This trouble could happen. It will happen. I am also high reward that I'm a ticulate. I'm smart. I have a great work ethic. You know, like I've always been employed. I've always been a taxpayer. Even though I've been in trouble. I have a high reward. I have a high shop. I'm a decent dad. I try anyway. I think we don't try. So they put me into a drug court program. And then they made me a combo for my actions. So they made me ask for help. So the drug court program made me ask for help. They made me a combo for everything I did for two years. Almost two and a half years, actually. Everything I did, I had to get a combo for. I had to go to treatments. I had to go to take UAs and bufferizers. I had to be with the probation officer once a week for a long time. I had to be with a counselor. And I had to go to groups with other like-minded people. I had to talk about a past. And a lot of us hadn't dealt with it. You really need to deal with those scars to get past them. A lot of that was important to me. They just taught me a lot of life skills. And my parents didn't teach me the basics. And my parents just didn't teach me. Are you saying that you got counseling therapy, that kind of thing? Or is this more concrete kind of hands-on dealing with your past? One-on-one counseling with a counselor. An AODA counselor, my work mostly with an AODA counselor, but it was one-on-one. I had to see him three times a week and two times for groups, one times with one-on-ones. So there'd be a group of like six of us and a group and we would talk about our past. And, you know, what should it was us to do the things we're doing, all that stuff. And then once a week we did one-on-one personal stuff. What we need to work on, just be one-on-one time, and that'd be one-on-one week. And then after that's phase one, phase two, you might see them twice a month. Phase three, you might see them once a month. There's three phases to that drug court program. So that's one part of it. You also said that they hold you accountable. Accountable for what? What did you have to do and what were the consequences? You must have screwed up once or twice or ten times. Absolutely. I drove a couple times. I didn't have a license. I hadn't had a license in 2018. I would get a driving after a vacation. It's not considered a criminal offense. At that time, it was considered just a ticket. I saw it's not worthy of any jail time, but they would make me sit some jail time. They would just stick me in jail for three days or later. Over the weekend, so I wouldn't lose my job, but to let me know if this is unacceptable behavior. Or I would have to go to three meetings or groups a week. So whether it be groups with other people like myself, or it would be an AA and NA group, or it would be church. It could be a church group. You have to do three a week. And if you make them a stake and you don't make your three a week, you have to do five a week. So if you don't do your three a week, then you have to do five a week. So that's like one of us. If you don't do it, you have to do more until you get it in your head that this is what you need to do. You have to pay for the next year on analysis, and you have to go out of your day to take your analysis. They consider a next year on analysis a positive test, and that could put you in jail. And that could put you in need back in prison. And for those of us who haven't been in the drug system, whatever, you a urinary analysis, be a breath analysis, I assume? That is correct. Do they get more, I guess you'd say, kind of arbitrary control power over you than the regular system. The regular system has cut and dried rules. You do this, you go to jail. And it's kind of simple black and white. Did you feel an increased amount of control that they had over you? They have a lot of control. The DA, the judge, the drug court coordinator, your current probation officer, and your counselor, they're assigned to you. And the public defender, make up a team that go over your case each week and talk about the good things or the bad things that you're doing. Either you, if you do good for the week, you just continue on until the next week. If you do bad, that team of people will give you the consequence of that for what you've done. So like your probation officer, you might see the probation officer once a month. If you're a high-risk, you might see them month every other week. With the drug court team, you have to check in with your counselor, with your coordinator, with your PL on a weekly basis. So the power there is, I mean they are on you. They're really controlling what you're doing and they're trying to form you into a productive citizen and show you what insanity doesn't look like. How we live that like prior to learning these life skills was really quite insane. If you're an alcoholic or you're an addict, you're not living in a reality. That is true. It's just false. They're trying to get you to that point of realizing that what you're doing is wrong. And they do that with strict control or volume for a while. How does this compare to being under the thumb of your parole officer? Aren't you tempted to do the same BS line with all of these people in drug court that you are with the parole officer? I'm not trying to besmirch your integrity here, Mike. I'm just saying, isn't this how it works? It doesn't work the same in both cases. It does. The P.O. is that more power? If the P.O. will not probation approve, the P.O. is the one that will send you to prison. The recommendation is what you typically get. But if you get to the point where you're in drug court with the voluntary program, you have to be, if they ask you if you want to join and you're accepted, you voluntarily go into this program. So you voluntarily go into this program knowing that they're going to work you for a year and a half to two and a half years. And you have to be at a point in your life where you really can make some changes in it. I was willing to make some changes because I had a beautiful daughter who needed a father to stop drinking, and I didn't know how to do that. I couldn't do that going into jail as a prison. It would have made no sense. It just didn't make any sense to me. What made sense to me at the time was getting a treatment court to help me learn how to stop this drinking problem. So they both had the same amount of power at the P.O. It's the same thing, but it's the willingness of each individual to do the job they need to do, to live a happy life, to have that life that I believe God prompted us if we just submit to it. So I hear at least three different factors that are involved in your current success. And I want to hear about what your success is like now, but there are three things. One, you have a daughter. If you didn't have a daughter, would you have ever taken that step? Two, there's drug court, which became available to you, which you got recommended to. If that hadn't been available, would you have gotten there? And you just spoke of God being a part of this. Somehow that played some role in it. How important are those various factors and are there others that we should know about? If I go by daughter first, in the beginning that was all I needed was my daughter. Drug court is where I needed to learn my skills and teach me that I was in jail and that I needed help. God, I wish I had a phone God in the beginning. It would have made all made sense to me. I was showing them some minutes of the fact that I believe there's a bad, a long time ago. But I went backwards. Absolutely. I wanted it for my daughter. Drug court was something that could just tell me so much. I could be around people like me who wanted to get help. I can't ever remember a time in prison talking to anybody, smoking weed, or getting in a fight. They wanted to get help for their problems. When I finally came to a realization that there was a God, my life has been changed forever. I mean, I go into the jails. I administer the people in jail. I have been for three times in the last year. I mean, loving I'm kids who are dying in front of you and they're just happy to see you. I mentor men and women. I am a Sunday school teacher at my church since inviting that into my life and submitting to him. My life has changed forever. It's just changed forever. I'm a non-denomination Christian, so I believe that Jesus is who he says he is. I don't go with any of the denominational stuff. I don't want to hug you with anybody. I don't want to pick a political side about it. I just believe he is who he says he is and I work with that. That seems to live for me. Did you have some religious background growing up? I went to Catholic school in Kenosha, Wisconsin. I was in third grade. Didn't stick. I was getting swatted by nuns all the time. I was in the right to get schooled all the time. It didn't stick. It just didn't stick. Where are you today? Your daughter is 10 now. What are you doing in your life? You are high reward possibility. Where have you gone with your life since then? I have been self-employed for the last couple of years. Construction is self-employed. Making good money. I'm married. I got married last year. I was a beautiful woman. She was a master's in counseling. She was at the clinic for Christian counseling. I'm going to have a facade here in November. I'm a college student at the university in tech school. I'm splitting. There's cheaper to do some classes here than over there. I've been to Africa three times. I've done a lot lately. My high reward is that I'm doing a lot with my life that's helping other individuals to have a better life. Unfortunately, I didn't have one out of the child. Me and my brothers didn't have the best parents in the world. I loved my mom. When she died, I loved her. I'd still love her. My father left me at six months old, so I never met him. He died when I was 11, but my stepdad, who we're taking care of now, and my brothers, who's dying of emphysema, COPD. You know what? If you were to ask me 10 years ago if I'd be taking care of anybody for dying, now, you know, I would have to know. At that time, I'd take care of people, especially somebody who was one of my abusers. That's not today. I believe I need to love everybody. I try to do that for the best of my ability. It sounds like you're doing a great job. I'm so happy to hear that at the right time, the right things came in your life to produce a transformation. I know that it's better for us in Eau Claire and in Wisconsin, in the USA, that you've been able to make this transition. How do you feel about the proposed cuts in the spending that there's going to be for these alternative courts? It's scary because there's a waiting list just to get into these treatment courts, and this is for every county. And the people that don't get into these courts, I tend to need to be a productive member of society. The individuals who are willing to do the work to become a productive member in society. It's super unfortunate that it's come to this type of stuff in our society where we have to pick and choose what's best for our community. I wish we could do more. I wish the statistics themselves would just show people that this is something we need to invest in. But it's just one that's not there yet, and we're getting there. So I think sometimes maybe you do need to stick a step back to make a leap forward, but I'm hoping that we can't fit too much of a step back that we're going to hurt so many people, that kids aren't going to be with other parents. A lot of fathers are with their children, and that's one of the problems with what's going on out there is these kids, they're with their mothers, but they're with our fathers. A lot of men need to be with their children, so that's teach them. It's just unfortunate that it's going to sound like this, but we might be losing some of this. We might be losing some employees. We take hand time clients that it's just really unfortunate. I hope that we can figure out a way to make this work out. I really hope so too. Well, we've been speaking with Michael Gamalauskas. He was in drug court here in Eau Claire County in Wisconsin. He graduated from 2008 and is a shining example of what we need to do to make this country go in a good direction, to empty the prisons and put people in productive society. Mike, thank you so much for caring enough about your daughter to take the first steps and progressing on doing the work in drug court, finding God at your center to make you strong in this work, and especially for joining me today for Spirit in Action. You're welcome. No problem anytime. That was Michael Gamalauskas of Eau Claire's drug court, the first of two guests for today's Spirit in Action program. Spirit in Action is a Northern spirit radio production. Find us on the web at northernspiritradio.org with all kinds of world healing topics and guests from the past nine plus years, free for listening and download. Find links to and info about the many guests on the site, a place to view and post comments, keep that two-way communication coming, and a donate button so you can easily support the full-time world healing work of northernspiritradio.org. Start, though, by supporting your local community radio station where this program is syndicated, bringing you invaluable and rare news and music that you get nowhere else on the American media cast spectrum. Three down, one to go, we'll finish our visit to the inside of treatment courts with a talk with Rob Bergeron, a participant of the mental health court here in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Rob, I'm really so happy you could join me today for Spirit in Action. Hi, thank you, Mark. Thank you for having me. It's a privilege to have you. I understand that you've been in mental health court for some 19 months now and that your graduation is coming up in March. Tell me what mental health court is, your experience. Well, mental health court, as I began to go in, I was a very confused individual with a lot of emotional mental disorders. The process of, there's four different phases, but the first phases and second phase is very intensive. It's mental health court of a bunch of members that is called the team and each person has their own job description and authority in that position, along with mental health court judge. And the first couple of months were very hard. I had to deal with a lot of issues that I had surround child and everything and being referred to different treatment providers for these cares and services that an ordinary in the community, they really do not offer. It does the criminal penal code offer at all, so it's very intense in the beginning. My experience has been struggles at times in the beginning because, you know, I've failed and fell down a couple of times, but I take myself back up and carry down. So it's been a long, long journey for me, Mark. In the 19 months you've been in, you say there's four phases. First is real intense. Is each phase, they just kind of loosen it up a little bit, get you closer to what life and the outside world without the support of mental health court is? Is that what happens? Yes, the first phase is usually two, three to four months of what they do is you get your initial diagnosis, you see a psychologist and you get evaluated and diagnosed upon the conclusion of that diagnosis. There are treatment opportunities through the mental health court, which are end drugs, which is men's trauma group. They have DBT, which is dialectical behavioral therapy. There's also matrix program, which has to deal with alcohol, and/or drug addiction. And they also have co-dependency groups thinking for a change, which is another thing, which is to deal with changing the criminal mind and criminal behavior and mental illness behavior of changing the thought pattern over, and able to create a new life. And mental health court goes by a mission statement. And the mission statement of the mental health court, the mission of all criminal health court is to increase community safety and restore productive and law-abiding citizens to the community by breaking the cycle of criminal behavior through effective, long-term behavioral health treatment and intensive court supervision. To mark this, this thing is totally different than a criminal court. A criminal court, you go, of course, you know, there'd be a crime committed and there'd be a treatment of either jail, prison, and/or probation or a fine. And mental health court deals with people who have a mental illness or they feel as suspect of a person having a mental illness. And by the way, there's this specific show that there are a lot of people going through the justice system that do have a mental illness that's not being treated or undiagnosed. So there's a wide variety of people that are going through the system that I truly believe in incarceration is not just the answer. I truly believe there are underlying issues in each individual's life and they do deserve chances in life in order to recover from whatever they're dealing with. So the different phases and the mission statement, that was the first phase of it. Phase one, you go to court every Friday. You're required mandatory. You call in a UA number line and you're given a number. We have to go and provide it. And UA is your analysis. Let's say that a lot of us have never had them. Correct. So it's mandatory that a person wants their numbers called that you have to go to a treatment center down here in Oakdale County and provide that sample. If you fail to, then there's a sanction put against you. It could be, you know, 48 hours in jail. It could be seven days in a row of your analysis reporting every day. And there's also a probation agent on a team which meets with you every two weeks besides meeting in court. There's a recovery coach aspect to it. I have a female recovery coach, Sarah, and a gentleman recovery coach. This is my recovery coach, Sam, who's been very inspirational to me and helped me through my recovery and my mental illness and my alcoholism. And along with the referrals to either the matrix program or the other programs that I've mentioned to you, that's on a weekly basis. Then in phase two, it's still another three to four months. You need so many, I believe it's 90 days requirement of sobriety in order to get into phase two. You have to complete your obligations, no pre-incarcerations for 60 days or 90 days before you go into phase advancement. So it's basically individualized, progressional growth to where you have to really show and prove yourself that you're willing to make and that I'm willing to make a necessary change in my life to be a productive community member and a society to make a change in a difference in other people. You know, I'm tempted to go forward in there, but I think actually going backwards might be necessary at this time, Rob. You're 47 now, and you've been in this for coming up on two years. So at 45, roughly, you got into mental health court. What were you doing before that? Were you diagnosed with mental health, living out alcoholism, involved in various criminal enterprises? What were you doing before that led up to mental health court? And did they just pick you for mental health court because you were the most promising person to go into the court? Well, Mark, that's a shit net you asked at. How are you getting in mental health court? I come into the state of Wisconsin approximately around 11 years ago. I got off a Greyhound bus, no place to go, homeless, full-blown in my drinking of my alcoholism, and starting living underneath bridges, eating out of garbage cans, and doing whatever I had to do this July, which had included criminal activity. I had started going into the county jail here constantly and noticed that it was an issue for me, but I couldn't change it because I knew there was something wrong. And then I was drinking two overcome these feelings that I was feeling because I didn't feel like talking to anyone because of the things that I've been through. I can say that it began at the age of 13 with me. With my sister had passed away from cystic fibrosis. And at some point thereafter, all around there, I was introduced to a Catholic priest and what happened was I'm not being sexually assaulted by this priest. And I had lay away from home to live with my sister out of the state. And being young and scared, I didn't know how to explain to anyone and was threatened if I were to tell anyone that he would kill me and my family. So I intended being that young. I was kind of scared. So the FBI came and knocked on my sister's door and asked to speak with my sister and me. And I got called down and got transported from one state to another and took a lot of attention test and went through several interviews. And in any event, it was a big traumatic experience for me. And I had the two attorneys at running the state. John Mountabono, an attorney. Tom McNamara, Tom McNamara was the attorney representing that case. And it was very, very hard on me. I attended suicide on different occasions, probably four times. I tried overdose on medications, found on responsive, put my risk before. In order to alleviate the pain to get rid of it, I did not want to be. In this life, I didn't want no part of it because I was just so hurt, so confused, and so mixed to where I couldn't trust anyone. So what happened was, out of 11 years I've been here, I've spent probably a little bit over eight years in county jail alone. So I got sick and tired of being sick and tired and said, you know, there has to be some other way out of this. Drink is not working for me. I've been found in response, been brought to the hospital with very high and toxic levels, over 5.0 to where someone's supposed to at that point have wet brain. And I've been hospitalized several times, pancreatitis, and was told if I continue to drink or I would die. A couple of years ago, there was an arson case involved that I was involved in, and what had happened was, I finally got sick and tired of being sick and tired, and as I was sitting in that cell, I said, you know, there has to be a different way. There has to be some type of help for me. What it was, I did not know. So I was working through my attorney, and I said, you know, I have an alcohol problem. But there's an underlying problems that I have in my life that I don't know how to live life without drinking because I don't know how to deal with these issues. So that's how a mark on mental health court was mentioned to me. I never knew anything about it, did not know it existed. And I asked my attorney, well, it sounds like something that I could benefit from. So could you refer me? So the referral was made initially through me through asking questions, through my attorney representing me at the time. And the referral was made, the evaluation process to screening, it does take some time. It's completed, the screening is completed by Department of Human Services staff, an attorney, which is a defense or prosecuting. It can be by a family member, the offender, a judge, or a correctional staff. So it can be by different people, but it is a program that now in Eau Claire County has been going on for almost two and a half years now. I'm one of the first group of people or the second group of people that are going through it now. So that's how initially I got involved with mental health court. You went to mental health court, and there's also drug court, and I've interviewed someone from there as well. Why did you go to mental health court when alcohol was validly your problem? We'll see what it is. There are actually a few different types of courts. There is a veterans court for veterans of the United States military. There's also an AIM court, and that's alternative incarcerated mothers, mothers who have children. There is a drug court, and there's a mental health court. And the question that you ask is, the difference is this. Drug court deals with participants that specifically has just a loan and an alcohol and a drug addiction. Mental health court realized that there were people in drug court that's been going on along with a mental health court that were having an underlying issue of a mental health illness that's been untreated or undiagnosed. So mental health court is a dual diagnosis. It deals with the mental health court issues. I mean, the mental health treatment issues underlying the drinking, because in my life, I believe that drinking just was not the problem. The problem was the underlying issues that were not being dealt with, and that drinking for me relieved at numb my pain and numb my feelings. I drank to get drunk, and I just didn't want to feel nothing. I didn't want to know nothing. So mental health court, you're provided a psychiatrist. You're a medication. You're monitored to make sure you're taking medications as prescribed and being consistent with them. For some people that have a problem taking meds, they have a med delivery system. They come to your home twice a day, or if you're on meds three times a day, they deliver them to your place three times a day, or if you're taking them, then they leave. Along with that, you have a case manager of mental health court, which is Sheila Malick, and the other team members have certain responsibilities, and they follow up on that. So it's very, very rigorous as far as the treatment goes, and it has to be self-willing. I wanted it desperately, because I wanted to change. I just didn't know how, and I didn't want to die anymore. So I had to change my thought process, and that's when me, myself, I went through thinking for a change for 50 hours. It's a training course. So if you get in a train in your mind to think differently, then just thinking negatively and acting out the negative thoughts. It's training the mind to think positive things in role-playing and doing skits for like everyday problems that normal people even incur. I truly believe that mental health court, that process in system alone, has saved my life and has been told beneficial for me. And the other aspect of the recovery coach, Sam, who is my recovery coach, has been very inspirational and very motivating to me to want me to change my life and move forward on a daily basis. It's one thing to be a mental health court and to go through all these things, and I would like to speak out of recovery coach aspect because that person's saying he's a follow-up person. He's outside of the box. He's outside of the scenes, and it's interested in what goals. There's an SRS form, an ORS form, and what those two different forms are. It's a scale of services and goals that I personally want to meet throughout that week, and I would fill out the goal sheet, and it would be activity, you know, what I want to do to achieve that goal. And then I'd go throughout the weekend and we'd meet again at the end of the week and express how I made them goals. If I didn't make them, why didn't I make them in what obstacles I encounter and what can we do differently so I can meet them. So it's pretty rigorous. Did you have any diagnoses before you got connected with the mental health court? Yes, I did, Mark. When I was younger, I got diagnosed as attention deficit disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder due to the sexual abuse by the priest. And I had stopped the process because it was just so painful, and I was in a juvenile detention center because I was running away from home because I was being not particularly involved in my family. I grew up in a very dysfunctional family. I was a father of an alcoholic who was now deceased. I was bought up singly just by my mother with my brother and sister and mental illness ran into family, so it's something that was constantly around. My sister passed away, assisted fibrosis, really threw me for a loop because she was a very inspirational part of my life, and I dealt with trauma and death throughout my whole life, and I avoided it not to get away from the subject, but just recently, two years ago, I lost seven friends in one year due to mental illness and addiction that was left untreated and undiagnosed. So there is a lot of people allowing the community that people are not even knowing who they're really talking to, besides just knowing a person's name, it's getting to know a person and their struggles in their life and what's available in the community that's able to help that person through their struggles in life. Are there other diagnoses that you have now? Yes, I have bipolar. I have schizoaffective disorder. I have post-traumatic stress disorder. I have anxiety disorder. I have personality, a borderline trait disorder to where I intend to isolate. This was a lot more relevant when I was first getting into mental health court, but due to the services and my willingness to outreach to other communities available, you know, resources in the community, I've been able to get away from that, but there are a lot of several different -- I have nightmares on a constant basis due to the trauma that I've been through. I am currently on medications that now I do not have them delivered anymore. It is -- I took on the initiative and the responsibility, which has been granted to me for me to be able to take my own meds, but I take them faithfully. So along with those diagnoses, there's sleep apnea disorder, not sleep apnea, but a sleep disturbance disorder. And like I said, there's schizoaffective. I get paranoid at times. I have a very hard trust issue with people. It's very hard for me to trust someone because I feel in my life when I was growing up that everyone that I would love to look cared for was either taken away from me. But the majority of the reason was just because they had died. So as a child, I would hide it in my mother's closet, wearing a doorbell ring or the telephone ring, because I felt if I got to know you, to like you or to love you, that you were going to be taking out of my life. So I basically shut myself down emotionally, mentally and physically, and it had a big impact. And until recently, a couple of years ago, I started opening up and letting other people in. And that's where I have to want to come in from the person themselves also. You can have these resources available to you. If the person is not willing or wanting to change, then that change will not happen. Me, I was desperate. I was out of hope, had no reason to live. But yeah, my spiritual principle is, I believe in a God. And I truly believe that God has brought me through these things for a reason, to experience the things that I had to experience, to make me for a stronger person, for who I am today, to help individuals going through with what I've been through, or can understand or see and have empathy for the person that's going through something in their own personal life work. And that's really important. I mean, talk about a transformation. Now, you said there are about 11 years you were here in the Eau Claire area, about eight of it was spent in jail. You were homeless for the time. Do you think it costs more to do the mental health court with you or to put you in jail? I mean, which is cheaper? Well, from my experience and statistics, I have spoken at the Capitol of Madison, Wisconsin at the full hearing of senators, judges, and politicians in order to get sants and grants, and to add grants that fund these treatment courts. I can say that financially-wise, on a taxpayer, it costs almost twice as much more money to incarcerate a homeless person, or to not offer treatment to a homeless person, because incarceration, to me, is basically like an industry. And incarceration does not work. I do believe, from what I understand, it's around $45,000 to incarcerate a person for each year. Now, I have heard that the thing is, and it's once you go and say, I get you that, it's six-month sentence. They received that year payment of latted federal down to the government to the justice criminal system. And if you go out in six months, they're ready to pay, say, if you're out on the streets for a month and you re-offend, then you go through that whole billing cycle all over again. So, to the taxpayers, I can say for myself that it costs the taxpayers enormously more, not treating or helping an individual, and just incarcerating a person does not solve any problems at all, because without treatment, whether it be alcohol, drugs, and/or mental illness, there's not a lot of treatment available in prisons. And what happens is, with me, for instance, going through prison and in jail, is leaving a person with an illness or an addiction untreated and getting released, you're dealing with that same person in a community. So, say, for instance, a person is a violent offender who has mental illness and drug and alcohol addiction. Left untreated being in prison, not just alone does that person come out not knowing anything but still the same thing, but they pick up other additional behaviors while being in the criminal justice system. For some reason, survival mode to survive while being incarcerated, and it's known that 85% of people are reoccurring offenders. I can say that through mental health court, through these grants that I am an active spokesperson for, statistically, it is cheaper to have a grant available for people in treatment courts, from my instance, mental health court, to treating illness, because not alone is just incarceration. All that happened was, along with these incarcerations, I was hospitalized on several different occasions. I just received a bill and mail the other day that went back, and I had to re-account and make adjustments, too, but it was over $60,000 alone. That's just for my mental health stays on a psychiatric ward, behavioral health modification units, detoxing, ambulance calls. So, that's $60,000 alone. That's just the end result of an illness not being treated and not being properly taken care of. So, along with being in the community and doing damage to the community, one of the person has no other way to survive and knows no other way, there's a lot of other factors that come into it is way, way more expensive to incarcerate a person and just to lead them in the community doing the damage that they only know what to do. You've been 19 months in the system. You said it's only like two and a half years or something. We've had the mental health court. I guess we don't have firm statistics about recidivism. You probably have impressions about it, though. What could you say about recidivism? Eighty-five percent without treatment. With treatment does that look different? Well, from what I understood by my case manager, and I could be wrong, but when I went to the Capitol, the number around that time, and this was a couple few months ago, I believe it's 25 percent recidivism or 20 percent of reoccurring offenders. And the only reason that statistic is here is because the person does not want to help, does not want to change, and was just looking for a layout. So, it's kind of so good. It's just been built as you all, and they generally help the people that want it. I do believe currently there is 12 or 13 or 14 members of the mental health court, and each person is actively involved. And it's not easy. Things need changing. Things need to change in order to progress through. And I currently just went through a meeting last week with Melissa, who is a coordinator of the treatment courts at the Old Prairie County Courthouse. I had a meeting also. She was there. Sam Bilo was there. And a reporter to document the minutes, but I hadn't met and said, you know, there's a little avenue that I'm struggling with, and that's a health court right now, because I've progressed so far. As you progress market, and the levels in phases, when they feel a person is able not to start taking more responsibility on their life, they phase out a little bit of the treatment. So, as per se, once a week now, you have started going every other week. So, they start phasing that out. The success rate that I have seen has been transformation of seeing someone coming in, broken, downtrodden, no hope, despair. Everybody has given up on them. When I went in, that was it for me. The prosecutor had me written off for prison. The jail members and the sergeants and the tenants would actually make comments. I'll make it. They'll be here three days or five days. And this was an ongoing thing for eight years. I currently was going to church last year and had seen a sergeant there, and he could not believe the transformation because he noticed something was different and he thought I was dead because I was not reoccurring and going back in jail. So, I had come across all these people now that seen me in my active addiction and untreated mental illness. And it's been a big, big improvement in my life and an impact. And not alone, have I gone to the Capitol? I've been on the local WEA U13 news in regards to treatment courts. And I just want to let the politicians know that aren't aware of this or who don't support this, that it's going against the grain. The community is benefiting overall in general by allowing these grants to be available for people who, like I said, don't have this hope or want to change and don't know how to. And these grants specifically attached to these different treatment courts, so these services can be provided for the politicians that do support it. I just want to thank them because it had made a big impact on my life. I was at 130 pounds in my mental illness active without using medication and not being coherent and actively drinking to being 170 now. I'm healthy, I'm stable, I am free from all the trauma hood that I have been through. And there's one thing I learned through this process that's very important to me more. You see, when a person has been abused as I have or domestic abuse, domestic violence, rape, incest, whatever it may be, there's two different things a person goes to in your stages. And one of them is being a victim. The other one is being a survivor. I live my life being a victim for most of all my life. And what happens is I work through that and I became a survivor. So I'm able to look back and see the struggles. And when you remain in that victim's status, you continue to be a victim on an ongoing basis because it's just a process that how that disease is. So I had survived all the trauma that I had been through and made it through it. And I just want to let the people know that they're out there, that they're holding back and don't believe that, you know, things that they have been through, that there's no one out there that does not understand. That's not true. There is. And there is help. However, Congress and the Senators and everybody have to realize that there is a big need for this type of help and without the bills being passed to through legislation for these grants that people like me to save one life is a miracle alone. But there are many people's lives being changed throughout these court systems, here in Wisconsin and in Oakland County alone, to where a person is more than just their name. There is a face behind that name. There is that person's individual life. There is their experience, strength and hope for that person to help others. And there's a saying that said, you can't keep what you have unless you give it away. So what I intend to do and what I do on a daily basis is I interact with people and give what I have and show that hope that I didn't have to help another person. Because to me, in my past life, I've seen it's easier to kick a person while they're down than it is to lend them a hand to help them up. The treatment courts are that lending hand to help that person up. And I truly believe the justice system is the one that's there to put the foot to them. And that's the difference to me, Mark. And, you know, without it, to be honest, I probably wouldn't be in prison or in jail. I wouldn't have to be alive today. You know, another thing is just amazing, Rob. You talk about your social anxiety or anxiety disorder that you had at the beginning. You don't sound like a socially anxious person. You speak so well, so compellingly involved with other people. Someone took the old Rob and replaced him with a new Rob. Yeah. How did that happen? And is there a role for religion, spirituality, morality, or something in this? Yes. The spiritual foundation that I believe in is that there is a guy who understands what I go through and what each individual goes through. And there is an answer to each and every person. What happens is when is trauma from the sexual abuse crisis that happened? I initially blamed God because I've seen a person behind the collar in that position. So I rebelled. I blamed God for a long time. And when my sister passed away, that was an additional thing. I would always say, "I hated God. I did everything against what had happened." But it was kind of amazing how I started going through all this trauma. And recently, I'd say up until like five years ago, I started seeing a spiritual factor because people around me were dying one after another. As I mentioned, there were seven people one year that I had lost. And it was going on every other month basis. And you see, I was living homeless out in the street in the woods by the river with these people. And I would wake up and they would be gone. So my question was I started questioning God. Why am I still alive? Why are you keeping me alive? Why isn't it me next time? So I started getting that connection. And I said, "You know, God has to have a purpose and a reason for my life. There's a reason why I'm going through this. And there's a reason why I'm alive." So my spiritual foundation, I had to go back as a child and go back to the fundamental basis of believing that there is another power out there who I choose to call God that is in control and that has the answers. And it took a lot of self-will and help by the organizations that I have been speaking about to reconnect my faith with God as my higher power, as I understand Him. To me, what a person believes in is what they believe in. I personally believe in the God because there's no way this was done on my own free will to where I had made it through what I had been through. I have been stabbed, I have been shot at, I have been in several fights, I have been hospitalized. So there's a lot of aspects going through this book. I thank God on a daily basis and I ask God to put people in my life that I can socialize with and maybe turn around and give them a lending hand to help them off. And as you mentioned about the social anxiety disorder, it's kind of amazing that you mention that because this is a third time a person the last month has mentioned that to me. And to be honest, what helped me overcome this is my fundamental belief is that I'm not doing this just for me. It does help me to do this what I'm doing, but I'm doing this for people that are suffering, that are being untreated, that don't know that there's another way of life, that don't know how to live life outside of alcohol and drug addiction and/or mental illness. And the only way I can do that is get through to the people. So what I do is I go to the higher up people, people in positions, and such as you mark being a radio talk show host. And I want to let the world out and let people know that it would be a disgrace and it would be detrimental to the community if these treatment courts were cut out. Because number one, the jails and prisons are overcrowded as it is. And this is a big reduction factor in treating people with their illness. There's over 60% chance difference of not reoccurring and not being reoccurring offender. So what I do is I call getting outside my box. When I'm feeling comfortable all the time, it's kind of like a little warning sign because, see, I don't want to be comfortable all the time. I want to be a spokesperson to let my life and my life from me shine on to other people and let them know that there's nothing that you haven't been through that someone else hasn't also. And in order to connect with that person, you need to find that one person that you have some sort of trust in or belief in or your belief or your spirits or belief or whatever it may be. And there is help, but you just have to connect to that type of assistance. And that's what I've been doing throughout my almost two years of being in the court. There's a difference between being a participant and an active participant. That's basically what I do. And so every chance I have the ability and communication with people in positions, I like to let it know what I've been through and what I've been because it's one thing for legislation and congressional members at the House and the committee boards and the Senate hearings to know of a statistics number or a person's name. But it's another hearing someone's experience, strength and hope of what changes are being made behind these financial decisions, Mark. Well, it sounds like an amazing transformation you've been through, Rob. I'm grateful that you have carried that forward in advocacy for others. It's one thing to feel satisfied with one's own personal progress, but to change that into a blessing for the world. Really, it's a great testimony to what the mental health courts are doing for you and what these special advocacy courts are doing for so many people who could break the chain of incarceration and the chain of dysfunction. So I want to thank you for being that kind of advocate that you're doing, for taking charge with God's help of your transformation. And especially, Rob, I want to thank you for being with me here today for Spirit in Action. Thank you very much, Mark. That wraps up our visit with the insides of the treatment courts here in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. We've got links on the NortonSpiritRadio.org site where you can follow up and please support and encourage these kinds of programs in your area. Save people and save money at the same time. We'll see you next week for Spirit in Action. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. ♪ With every voice, with every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ With every voice, with every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ You