By GARRET JAROS/YachatsNews
NEWPORT – Daniel Neustel died five years ago in Eugene from an overdose of Xanax and methadone. A friend found him on the couch and called 911 before rolling him to the floor and administering CPR until paramedics arrived.
Paramedics used Naloxone, a medicine that rapidly reverses an opioid overdose, to resuscitate him.
“I was dead, basically, I was dead,” Neustel said. “And then they brought me back. But that didn’t scare me enough and I was using the next day.”
On Tuesday, Neustel, 43, will graduate from one of Lincoln County’s six specialty courts. This week he was one of nearly 200 people filling a seat inside the Newport Performing Arts Center to celebrate National Treatment Court Month.
Lincoln County Circuit Judge Sheryl Bachart has led the push establishing specialty courts designed to help people on the road to recovery and opened the event Tuesday by asking for a moment of silence.
“For those lost to addiction and suicide … ” Bachart began, her voice catching with emotion “who should be in the empty seats.”
Specialty courts in the United States began in Florida in 1989 with a “drug court” as an alternative to jail to help offenders tackle substance abuse and mental health issues.
The first Lincoln County drug court was established in 2006. Today, the county has six specialty courts, which along with the number of participants and graduates, is more than any other county in Oregon with comparable populations.
“The opposite of addiction is community, and there is strength in community,” Bachart told Tuesday’s audience, which included participants past and present, friends and family, recovery specialists, judges, lawyers, law enforcement, and a county commissioner and state representative.
“I talk to other judges throughout the state, and this just doesn’t happen in other communities,” Bachart said.
The county’s six specialty courts are drug, hope, mental health and wellness, family support, domestic violence and aid and assist. The four main courts – drug, hope, mental health and wellness, and family support – range from 12- to 18-months in duration, although they can run longer if a participant is struggling.
There are currently 65 participants and there have been 28 graduates since last May. Of the more than 540 who have entered the program since in 2006, 288 have graduated.
Bachart does not sugar coat the challenges for people going through the program, who she tells “Don’t expect perfection, you will stumble.”
Seventy-eight-percent of this year’s participants were headed to jail or prison had they not been given a chance at redemption by participating in the program. The courts are designed to give people in the criminal justice or child welfare system who suffer from substance abuse or mental health disorders an opportunity to achieve sobriety and make positive life changes.
The specialty court programs are optional for certain offenses. But someone already incarcerated or facing charges must apply via their defense attorney and then be vetted by the district attorney, the court’s program manager, treatment providers, probation officers and a judge. The scrutiny is to determine whether someone is motivated to embrace recovery or just motivated to get out of jail.
Participants advance through four phases with each phase having base and individual requirements – including the amount of treatment, time in a phase, meetings with probation officers, attending court weekly, and random weekly substance testing.
The first phase on detoxification and changing abusive habits and routines to achieve a baseline of sobriety. Graduation is based on sobriety and all-around lifestyle changes, having a high school diploma or GED, having stable drug-free long-term housing, full employment or enrollment in school or getting on Social Security, and completing a parenting class if the person has children or is a caregiver.
The goal is to provide support and focus on individual needs to promote physical and mental well-being by addressing the root causes of underlying issues with evidence-based treatment. The programs combine treatment, community support, court obligations and supervision to help people live substance-free.
Success stories
Several past participants shared their stories Tuesday – stories of struggle and recovery and stories of inspiration.
“Drug court didn’t save my life but it gave me the structure, guidance and support to save my own life,” said Kimmia Whittlinger, whose success reunited her with her daughter and inspired her family, who also struggle with addition, to follow her lead.
Henry Woodard’s addiction started at age 15. He turned 18 in juvenile detention and went on to spend “a lot of time in jail.” He finally thought he was free and clear when he was next released from jail. And then he used again – thinking it would just be a one-time deal. It wasn’t.
“In three weeks, I lost 40 pounds and was back in jail,” he said. “Then I heard about drug court. The other inmates said ‘Don’t do it.’ ”
Woodard, a fisherman like his father, had been through more than 20 treatment programs. The hole he dug was so deep, he said, and the mountain he would need to climb to get out was so high it seemed nearly impossible. But he had to try.
“It blew me away how quickly it happened,” Woodard said. “May 11th will be three years clean and sober. Recovery changes lives and I am a miracle and it’s thanks to this program and giving it my all.”
Jason Chewning had become habituated to jail, so much so that when he moved from Florida to Newport where he hoped for a fresh start, he asked around to find out what the jail food was like, what could be purchased at the commissary and other particulars of local jail life.
It was not long before he was back to the drugs, back to stealing and back to jail.
Chewning said he was one of those junkies that lead their families to change the locks on the doors. A guy with a backpack full of worthless stuff and a bike he would have ridden from Newport to Portland in order to get drugs. “I’m not kidding.”
He did joke with Lincoln County Sheriff Curtis Landers and deputies attending the event, saying it was good to see them, without their guns drawn and pointed at him.
A turning point for him was when a victim of his thievery, a friend’s dad, testified at his trial to say that Chewning would never change.
“And I almost believed it,” said Chewning, who used it as motivation to eventually graduate from Hope Court. He now runs a successful business and says it is “because someone took a chance on me.”
Specialty courts and recriminalization
Landers is an avid proponent of the county’s specialty courts.
“It’s the success stories that make it all worthwhile to us,” Landers said. “That’s why we do what we do, to see this happen and see people get help and move forward and specialty courts are definitely one of the main reasons that people are doing that.”
Landers also believes that with the recent recriminalization of some drug crimes “all these things will lead to the success of the people trying to get into recovery.”
The Oregon Legislature passed HB 4002 earlier this year, which recriminalized the possession of small amounts of certain drugs that were decriminalized when voters passed Measure 110 four years ago.
“The idea behind the measure and the way it was sold to the voters, was to get people out of the criminal justice system and just engage in treatment,” Bachart told the YachatsNews last year. “Unfortunately, drug use has just exploded because of that, because people in their addiction don’t necessarily recognize that they need the help or have the resources to engage in treatment. And there’s no incentive for them to do it if they are not intersecting with the criminal justice system.”
The change affected drug courts across the state because people no longer faced the drug charges that often filled those courts. Lincoln County made up for the loss by pivoting to accept different types of criminal cases — theft for example — whose underlying motivation was substance abuse.
Bachart agrees HB 4002 will impact specialty courts and says the discussion surrounding it has been geared toward implementing a “deflection” program to divert people from the criminal justice system.
“This is still in the very early planning stages and I, along with a number of community partners, are meeting regularly to have a deflection program in place by September,” Bachart said in an email to YachatsNews.
The focus has been on admitting people into specialty courts who have a substance abuse disorder, are motivated to engage in treatment and facing a presumptive prison sentence. If those people can be diverted from the prison system and become productive members of the community, everyone benefits and that will continue to be the priority moving forward, Bachart said.
The recriminalization makes it an unclassified misdemeanor and HB 4002 emphasizes treatment with several “off ramps” that will not result in a criminal conviction.
“For most people who may enter the criminal justice system on misdemeanor drug charges, I do not believe the level of intense supervision offered through drug court aligns with best practices,” Bachart said. “However, we will continue to look at the individual and his (or) her needs in assessing whether a specialty court is appropriate and what is the best use of our resources.”
Hope, faith, road to recovery
The road to recovery for Neustel has roots that reach way back.
“I was a mad kid,” he said. “I was mad all the time. There was lots of fighting.”
He was kicked out of several high schools before finally getting sent to a court-ordered school facility. Ages 18 to 22 were punctuated by assault charges and jail time. Then he found work in a cabinet shop, attended classes at Lane Community College and eventually played semi-pro football with a Eugene based-team.
And that is where he hurt his back. The doctor prescribed opioids for the pain.
“I experimented with drugs before then, but when I got put on those pain medications, I started taking advantage of it, abusing them,” Neustel said. “That got the pills rolling and then I just manipulated doctors into giving me more and just abused it. And throughout that whole time, I was barely holding on to jobs.”
He still held out hope of starting his own cabinetry business, but amidst his struggle with pills a recession hit, the doctors got wise and stopped his prescriptions and any hope was replaced with a downward spiral into drugs.
“I was so sick from not having my pills and everyone in Eugene and Springfield was using heroin so I just went right into that,” Neustel said. “Then I introduced meth, I was smoking heroin and meth and fentanyl.”
He describes his life between the ages of 33 and 40 as wasted time. The overdose happened at 38. He was 40 when he stole a car and headed to Newport to help a girlfriend. He fell asleep at the wheel a couple of times before finally crashing near Toledo.
He was in the Lincoln County jail on litany of charges. It was then, facing 40 months in prison, that Neustel caught a break. Because he had kept free from criminal charges since his younger years, he was released on probation. But he never checked in with his probation officer.
“I just went back to Eugene and I was on the run for nine months,” he said. “I was arrested four or five times for some crimes out there, trespassing and theft charges.”
It was not until the final arrest that the Lincoln County warrant caught up with him and was returned to Newport. He was expecting prison when his lawyer came to him and said he would be a perfect candidate for Hope Court.
Neustel was admitted to the court but got off to a rocky start. He was kicked out of the first rehab. The second rehab struck a chord. Treatment began to strip away the layers. He learned about triggers and retraining the pathways in the brain.
“They help you identify it from the root and then you got the trauma from your childhood,” Neustel said. “It’s just tons of counseling.”
Neustel was back in Newport and well underway with Hope Court a year ago when he first spoke with YachatsNews.
“If I can do it anybody can do it,” he said at the time. “I know everyone says that, but it’s true, I’ve seen it. People get sober. Everybody suffers from the same things and some of us use drugs to deal with those things. But there is hope. That’s why they call this program Hope Court.”
When Neustel graduates Tuesday from Hope Court, he will also celebrate being clean and sober for 692 days.
“I feel like I’m dreaming sometimes,” he said of his completely changed life. “I’m really happy to accomplish something and this is a big accomplishment.”
Bachart describes Neustel as another “amazing story of recovery.”
“He invested in his recovery from day one, and his community,” Bachart said. “I’m so confident that when he graduates this program, it will just be a part of his journey, because he is amazing.”
Neustel now works the front desk at a Newport hotel, fills his free time with golf, softball games and Bible studies.
“It’s more of a spiritual awakening type of thing for me,” he said. “I’m identifying God’s will versus my will and just understanding how that works. I just base it all off God, Jesus and the Bible to tell you the truth. That’s the biggest thing that’s happened to me through this whole thing.”
His career plan, which is already in motion, is to work in recovery to help others.
“This whole experience is amazing and it’s not what I expected,” he said. “I didn’t expect to find Jesus. I didn’t know I was going to make this new life for myself. I’m kind of surprised really. I’m super proud of myself and super happy that my life is what it is today. I feel like I’m dreaming sometimes.”
- Garret Jaros is YachatsNews’ full-time reporter and can be reached at GJaros@YachatsNews.com