Speaking at the MADCP Convention

I got an opportunity to be the closing speaker at the Missouri Association of Drug Court Professionals (MADCP) annual conference that was this past week. I was not supposed to speak. The closing speaker's mother had a heart attack on Thursday and was in intensive care. He could not make it, so on Thursday morning I was asked if I could speak Friday afternoon to close out the conference.

I said yes, and then began to work on what I would say. The conference was attended by a lot of probation officers, prosecuting attorneys, counselors, drug court judges and drug court administrators. Even the chief justice of the Missouri Supreme Court was in attendance. I knew that I needed to share about me, but also about how they are the catalysts behind the changes we make.

The conference was entitled "A Generation of Transformation" because it has been 20 years since the first drug court began in the state of Missouri. I looked back 20 years and realized that I was incarcerated in Booneville Correctional Center 20 years ago. That is where I would begin what I had to say.

The more I pieced together what I was going to say, the more a theme came to me. I do not mean to call out programs, but I am going to do that in this blog and I did it in my speech. Not because they are bad programs, but because there is a huge disservice they are doing to people who are in them. I also called out counselors because one had impacted me at one time. I am sure if that happened to me, it happens to others as well.

I started by discussing who I am today and what I am identified by. I am David Stoecker and sometimes that is followed by LCSW (Licensed Clinical Social Worker) or RASAC II (Registered Associate Substance Abuse Counselor). Twenty years prior I was identified as David Stoecker 190415. Those were the numbers the state used to identify me once I got into the prison system.

Then I discussed the first generation of my life. I talked about physical and sexual abuse from various people in my life. I discussed having an alcoholic father and divorced parents and how all of that turned to violence. I got into marijuana use at 12 followed by alcohol and other drugs. I also talked about dying in a car wreck, overdosing, attempting suicide, prison and shooting up methamphetamine.

Then I had a probation officer that saw something in me I did not see in myself. Because she saw something, she offered me residential treatment instead of revoking my probation and sending me back to prison. Than I relapsed, but eventually I began doing outpatient and getting into college.

I don’t know if you know this, but as addicts we are great criminal thinkers. I was working in a restaurant and saw my counselor come in and sit at the bar. After running up a $50 tab he left inebriated. This is the same guy who told me a drug is a drug, and that alcohol was a drug period. My criminal thinking kicked in, and I reasoned that if he could drink so could I. That started my 8 year stint with alcoholism.

In  college I found recovery by giving God a try. After using jail, house arrest, scared straight, prison, suicide, medication for a myriad of diagnosis over the years as well as counselors, psychologists, psychiatrists, inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation and anonymous meetings and not finding success I turned it over to God once and for all. It worked. I stopped using, drinking, smoking cigarettes, getting into fights and having premarital sex while beginning to attend church full time.

Several things enabled that change:

·         Converting from an Agnostic to a Christian.

·         Changing playgrounds and playmates.

·         No longer being ashamed of my past and hiding it from everyone.

·         Sharing my recovery with everyone who will listen and anywhere that will have me.

·         Realizing that community service was not something the judge ordered.

·         Knowing all that I represent and wanting to represent them well.

I realized I needed hope and was not finding it through Agnosticism or Atheism. If I was to have a positive life, I needed to be around positive people who had goals and dreams they were chasing. In sharing my past struggles and the positive choices I make now with everybody I have been able to chase my own dreams and begin to see them come to fruition.

I could work through my s hame about the past, build self-esteem and self-respect by beginning to see that I was a part of the community. I did not have to hide who I used to be, because I am not that person today.If not for what I went through and the choices I made in the past, I would not be able to make the same impact on the people around me. Thankfully, I do make an impact and I credit my past for allowing that.

The final piece of recovery was stepping out of anonymity while owning and sharing my past. I have found that I can speak more freely and be a bigger part of the community by representing recovery and doing it well (we will talk about that more next Saturday in my next blog). We need to take our recovery into the community and display it with pride.

We need to build up alumni groups that go out into the community and help benefit local, national and worldwide causes. This is how we educate the public and remove the stigma associated with addiction and recovery. We put ourselves out there as people in recovery and show the world what we can do. That helps remove the stigma and destroy people's preconceived notions of addiction.

The amazing thing is that this is beginning to happen. It is happening because the drug courts are giving people better tools and holding them accountable when they don’t use them. It is occurring because the drug courts are giving people chances to become part of society that they never would have had in the past. It just needs to happen more and be talked about more so the message of positive things the recovery community is doing spreads.

I am blessed to be a part of the drug court/recovery community. I have seen how far the legal and recovery systems have come in the past 20 years, and I can’t wait to see how much further developed they will be 20 more.