Terry is the Clinical Director for Drug Free, part of the University of Alabama’s substance abuse service system which also includes a methadone clinic and TASC, a federally supported program which provides alternatives to incarceration for low-level offenders with substance abuse issues.

Q: How many clients do you have in a given year?

In a given year… I can tell you now, we have about 90 adults and… about 30 adolescents.

Q: What was your position before you became clinical director here?

I was at TASC from ’92 until a month ago. I did a whole bunch of things there. I started as a case manager. I am in recovery, too. I had two years clean when I started as a case mgr and I did administrative functions. We got a big fed grant in ’96 called Breaking the Cycle, it was designed to change how the criminal justice system worked. I did supervision and staff trainings, quality assurance. So I’ve been here officially fifteen days.

Q: Breaking the Cycle, that was a nationwide effort to support alternatives to incarceration?

There were several goals. One was to make, to use the arrest event as a time of intervention. So how TASC used to function, how the criminal justice system here in Jefferson Co. functioned, when people would get referred to us when applying for probation, Breaking the Cycle moved that up so they were referred to us at arrest, so we could start doing treatment intervention, drug testing, to use the arrest as the point of intervention.

That was one of the goals. For the judges to have information about how the client was doing at every court appearance instead of just the probation hearing. To use the leverage of the criminal justice system to propel people into recovery.

One of the points in the project was to connect all of the players, treatment system, criminal justice, probation, judges, all of the components, so that we were all on the same page moving in the same direction.

Q: How did your own drug use begin?

I started drinking when I was 15 at a party in high school. It made everything be okay. I was a functional addict. Graduated from college. My addiction progressed throughout college really. I smoked marijuana and drank in high school, but I didn’t experiment with other drugs until I got to college when they were much more available. It kept progressing until 1988 when I started shooting narcotics, using IV-narcotics. I had actually graduated. I shot dope for 14 months. It didn’t take very long to hit a bottom with that.

Q: What do you mean? How did you know when hit the bottom?

I weighed 90 lbs. I was living in an apt we were being evicted from without electricity. I couldn’t keep a job- and I had always worked. I worked 2 or 3 jobs all through college. I wouldn’t have gone to college if it hadn’t of been for federal. In the 80’s you could get Pell Grants. But I still had to work 2 or 3 work-study jobs. I’ve always had a real strong work ethic. But it got to the point where I couldn’t keep a job. I had gotten married the year before to my using buddy and the relationship was physically abusive.

The main thing that happened was that I stole stuff from my family and it was not… hmm…I guess cause it was the first time it had happened, they were real devastated. Trust, everything, it’s kind of blown out of the water with addiction. So because I was doing narcotics, I called a methadone clinic- ironically, our methadone clinic. They asked how much I was doing and they said don’t do methadone, go to treatment.

I was not a good treatment client. I didn’t want to do what they told me to do, but I got real hooked in with NA, 12-steps. I was volunteering. They suggest 90 meetings in 90 days. I probably went to 140. I went twice a day sometimes to quit using.

Q: How did you progress into shooting dope in ’88?

I had gotten a federal job after I got out of college that moved me to Ft. Lauderdale. I was real lonely, I had never lived anywhere else. There were a lot of drugs in south Florida. It was really escalating. Things got real crazy down there. I quit, came home, got married. A disaster.

The person I was around that I married, I knew he had done it before. I was real curious. I wanted to try just for once. Of course, it was wonderful. It made me totally numb, very fast. I didn’t have to wait 20 minutes! It was a weekend thing at first and then it was three times a week, four times a week, everyday, twice a day, until it was it. Until it was the center… of my life.

Q: Why do you think you needed to be numb?

… Gosh. That’s a real loaded question. I didn’t get… for whatever reason, I didn’t learn coping skills in my family. I didn’t know how to deal with life. I didn’t know how to deal with adolescents, I had all these feelings, which I now know all adolescents have. I didn’t have, I didn’t know how to do any of it. When I drank when I was 15 I felt like what I thought everybody else felt- relaxed, everything was kind of at bay. One of the things that happened for me with addiction, because you learn to rely on chemicals to do life, you don’t mature. You don’t deal with anything going on in your life. You’re not processing stuff, you’re not learning from your mistakes. You just do the same things and when stuff goes awry, you use. I used almost 11 years until I got clean before my 25 th birthday. After 11 years of not doing life, there’s a bunch of stuff. It just builds.

I didn’t know how to do life without getting high, that just became the way to do it. It was painful.

Q: Are you from Birmingham?

I am.

Q: What did you do for clean syringes?

There was a pharmacy in West Henry that would sell clean syringes.

Q: Strictly illegal or was at their discretion?

They were packaged for junkies. Five in a bag for three bucks.

We tried to buy syringes other places because that was a 30 minute drive. But people wouldn’t sell them to you.

Q: Did that help you keep from getting certain diseases?

Well… I have Hepatitis C.

Q: How have your views changed from client to pro perspective around these issues?

I can’t save anybody. When I first started working at TASC, I really thought I could. I can show people what worked for me, give people the tools, but it’s up to them whether they use them. Some people will die because of addiction. Intellectually knowing what to do, doesn’t mean people will do it. We have clients that have been in treatment eight times, they could teach treatment literally, and they don’t stop. They don’t stop using. Prison doesn’t deter drug use! I’ve learned that.

I have a second job where I work with people who’ve been to prison and – they get high as much after prison as they did before. It doesn’t stop anything.

Q: Why do you think someone who has gone through treatment so many times would keep using?

I don’t know. I wish I knew. I mean, from a personal standpoint, I mean, recovery is hard. You have to be willing to go to any length to stay clean. It’s choices. It’s not one choice, it’s a gazillion choices. You have to decide one hundred times a day whether to use or not. At first, that might not even be the decision. You might decide whether to get in a relationship, or socialize with people using drugs, or stop going to meetings. The people I have been close to who have relapsed, it’s such a process. The actual drug use as an event is the end of the process, it starts way back and it starts with not doing, not working steps, not practicing spiritual steps, getting closed minded, thinking they know the answers and don’t need anybody else.

I don’t really believe that, I mean I really come from a standpoint personally and professionally that addiction is the issue, drugs are a symptom of the problem. Addiction, it exists in me whether I am getting high or not. It’s how I think. That is why 12-steps has been so helpful for me, it gives me a venue to look at my behavior and what my thoguths are, change the things that aren’t working instead of to keep doing the same thing and think something different will come from it.

Q: Have you ever had trouble with the law?

I had a misdemeanor check case before I got clean, but I never got a felony. I was doing things I could have gotten a felony for of course. Just possession is a felony…

Q: What is the difference between working with adolescents and adults in a treatment setting?

Fear and consequences. Most adolescents haven’t had as many consequences as adults. They still have that air of invincibleness, they think they’re immortal, that’s just part of adolescence. I mean, there are some good differences, they usually don’t have as long a drug history, maybe they aren’t as entrenched as somebody who is 35 with 20 years under him instead of three. Family is probably more of an issue with adolescents. Because they live with them. Whereas as an adult you have that choice- whether to be around your family.

Q: Most of the adolescents you work with, have most of their parents had problems with addiction?

I don’t know that. I don’t know. I know generally most of the clients have somebody in their family. Now neither of my parents were addicts, but it was in my grandparents. Of course, they didn’t call it that.

Q: Most of the folks you work with, what are the general demographics of the people over here?

Most of the adults are TASC clients, TASC is the main referral source for adult intensive out patient. Working class folks. No insurance. No medical insurance to pay for treatment.

Q: Do you have a rough estimate for the white, black percentages, Hispanic.

I think out adult is pretty even. I don’t know about the adolescent group. The Hispanic population in Birmingham has really just started growing in the last couple of years. I was involved in an ADAM Research project. It was low, the number of Hispanic clients we would interview here. In the county, where all of the felonies are transferred, it was maybe three or four percent. Now there is a Hispanic AA meeting that we have now as a referral source. But very few treatment centers have bilingual counselors.

Q: The AA meeting, when did that start up?

I don’t know.

Q: Why do some people have problems with addiction and others don’t?

…I was trying to think about the people that I knew personally that were addicts…. I mean, we all seemed to share some traits, not developing coping skills is a big one. It’s hard to know what comes first though. Maybe they didn’t develop coping skills because they were using drugs. It’s a hard question. I mean, certainly if you grow up- one of my clients, both his parents are addicts and he grew up on his own pretty much. But neither of my parents were addicts, I was never around it. Maybe people have a need to change how they feel. It’s not very scientific is it?

When I went to treatment I remember they were talking about how they had isolated a gene they think we all possess. It certainly cuts across all socio-economic, racial and religious- there is nobody that’s immune.

My siblings have used drugs recreationally and they aren’t addicts. They don’thave it. They’ve stopped. We see that at TASC, people get arrested and it’s like this thought process, “Oh, this is causing problems for me, I don’t want to do this…” and they stop using. Our research showed 60-65% could stop their use. But then the ones that aren’t- it kind of shakes out through urines. But I don’t know what makes them addicts. I would guess it’s not just one thing, but the stage gets set and they start using and it works for them…. Until it doesn’t anymore.

Most people who get clean, get clean because it quits working, it’s not numbing them, or the consequences get greater and greater until it’s more than the relief they’re getting… I felt like my soul was dying.

Q: What at this point needs to be done that isn’t being done?

Treatment spaces! When I went to treatment in ’90, I started in an out-patient on a Thursday. I used that weekend and when I went that Monday they had me in a bed the next day. Now, even as an IV-drug user you are going to be waiting four to six weeks for a bed. There is only one facility in Birmingham that does detox. Yeah- spaces. When there is somebody who wants to get clean, you have a window. A window. The disease is so powerful people start backpedaling if it takes too long.

And probably, education in the system about decriminalizing- that’s a political word- the same folks who get theft cases are the ones getting possession cases- they are stealing to support their habit. Most of the people who are clean now that I know who sold drugs, sold drugs to support their habit. I haven’t met many drug dealers- I mean, most of them use, too.

It’s a really weird thing because we say, “this is a disease,” and then we send people to prison for this… It’s kind of messed up.