Why did I work for a drug court? Well...I needed a job, for one, and most jobs related to drug treatment are regrettably tied in with the justice system. After I left drug court I worked at a treatment program...and still had all clients in the justice system. However...

It was 2007, sort of peak drug court era. A lot of drug treatment and other social service places were not using any model or evidence base. It was a very religious charity oriented landscape, still. I had done housing first work but burned out on it. Court seemed interesting.

So I figured, this is supposedly evidence based. I'm in recovery and helping other people out of jail and into recovery seemed noble enough. I heard Marlowe talk about his theories of behavioral change. I was very positive about the whole thing, initially.

But day one it was like, here's your caseload. *flipping through files*

"There doesn't seem like a lot of addiction history."

"No, there is."

"Is there? I'm not seeing it."

"We deal mostly with marijuana addiction."

"Oh boy."

So I did what I could to make it work, because I was broke. There was quite a bit of mental illness, and I had that work history so I helped design a separate dual diagnosis docket with its own court day.

The gun violence I mentioned; I read up on what Cure Violence does and started applying that to my kids I knew messed with guns. So I did some good work; I know for a fact that I prevented homicides, because kids told me that, straight up. But...

To think of spending 6 years "fighting marijuana addiction"...ooof. I could not strain hard enough to see the information in front of me in that light, or feel that is any kind of worthy mission considering everything else these kids had going on. Weed was THE LEAST concern.

Because when your kid whose been pissing clean of weed for 9 months turns up with a bullet in his head on a corner in North Philly where he's still hustling...did you really help him out by compelling "treatment of his marijuana addiction?"

You gotta sleep at night. And if I just sat back talking about recovery from addiction with a kid I know doesn't have one while the clock is ticking on his life, I wouldn't be able to. So suffice it to say I soured on drug court and long since stop supporting them.