Cook Co. Sheriff's Program Helps Recovering Drug Addicts Stay Sober

Four decades after his recovery, Benny Lee, a former street hustler and gang member, still attends weekly meetings to help him stay sober.

“I'm sitting where you're sitting,” he told more than 40 people Tuesday at Ready 4 Recovery, a Cook County Sheriff's Department program for people — mostly court participants County Drug Abuse Center – who have completed drug and/or alcohol treatment and are in need of ongoing treatment. support.

Attendees at a recent meeting at the Third Municipal District Courthouse in Rolling Meadows included a woman in her 20s celebrating four months without alcohol, and a middle-aged man who celebrated eight months that day of sobriety. A 19-year-old heroin addict who appeared to be in his 30s announced that he had not used heroin in more than four years. Gloria Branch, 72, released a few days earlier, proudly proclaimed 15 months of abstinence.

They were among several dozen recovering addicts — along with judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys and social workers — listening attentively and periodically applauding the dapper Lee, 70, who encouraged them to seek help. helping the recovery community.

“You can't do this alone,” said Lee, a former addict turned substance abuse counselor and high school dropout who earned bachelor's and master's degrees and now works as an assistant professor at Northeastern Illinois University.

Marty Cook, community recovery specialist with the Cook County Sheriff's Department, agrees with Lee.

“The cure for addiction is community,” he said of Ready 4 Recovery, which Sheriff Tom Dart created in 2021 at the Skokie Second Municipal District Courthouse.

Meetings — held weekly in Skokie, twice monthly in Rolling Meadows and monthly at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse in Chicago — attract drug court defendants as well as recovering drug addicts who don't have pending trials. The meetings typically attract 30 to 40 people ranging in age from their late teens to their seventies, Cook said.

The program does not replace residential treatment or groups like Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous, he said. Rather, it is an extension of these services.

Whether they begin their recovery journey in the back of a police car, in a jail cell or in a courtroom, everyone takes it one day at a time, Cook said.

“They fight every day,” he said. “Even if they stumble, they come back and try again. »

Like everyone else in the event, Lee's fight continues.

“I always have a sponsor. I still go to meetings,” said Lee, who told the crowd that he struggled with negative thoughts that led him to a life of crime and landed him in prison in the late 1960s to early 1980s.

His incarceration included a stint on death row following the 1978 riot at the Pontiac Correctional Center in which three correctional officers were killed. Lee and 15 co-defendants were ultimately acquitted.

Just as they were socialized to become addicts, former addicts must “socialize themselves into recovery,” he said, and that means accepting help.

“Change is possible. Recovery is a gift,” he said. “Give it.”

For Lee, “giving it back” means sharing his story with others to keep his feet on the ground.

“I am the message I bring,” he said.

Sober for five years, Vernon Saunders, 58, a drug court graduate, says he learned to persevere, “to be responsible and not to blame others, not to be afraid to ask for help.”

The recently released Branch said she stole when she was young to help care for her nine younger siblings. In her 20s, she began using cocaine. Last year, she appeared before Cook County Judge Joseph Cataldo, who presides over the Rolling Meadows Drug Court, and asked him for help.

She thought he would order her to undergo treatment. He sent her to prison instead and that saved her life.

“He saw something in me that I hadn’t seen in myself,” Branch said. “It made me feel like someone cares about me.”

As Lee concluded his speech, the eight-month sober attendee thanked him for sharing his inspiring story.

“I’ve struggled with addiction my whole life,” he said. “I can do this. I may not be where I want to be, but I'm not where I was.

Those interested in participating in Ready 4 Recovery email the Cook County Sheriff's Department at [email protected].