Healing happens at Funny Farm

MARY’S CORNER, Wash. – There are many ways to end up on the proverbial funny farm, that place people are sent when society has no other option for them but a secure, padded room. Call it a morbid sense of humor, but that’s what Harvey Brooks named his south Lewis County emu and llama farm, also an unofficial halfway house for recovering methamphetamine and alcohol addicts.

Each temporary resident has a story about their path to Brooks’ Funny Farm, which is clearly, perhaps proudly, marked with a sign on the side of Zandecki Road southeast of Chehalis. The addicts-turned-farmers made their own sordid way to the stoop of the red house.

One woman showed up after being involved with a makeshift drug cartel, “growing crystals” for methamphetamine by chemically crafting the drug inside fish aquariums. When she was busted, her apartment was quarantined. She lost the respect of her family and the right to raise her daughter.

Another woman got tied up with drugs through her boyfriend.

“My baby’s daddy was selling it, and I thought he loved me but he didn’t,” she said, simply.

A severely meth-addled man had been inexplicably building cardboard cities under the Harrison Street Bridge, where he was living and panhandling the passing cars.

One night, he fell 30 feet headfirst from a tree in Fort Borst Park. When he woke up on the ground, he said he saw the “tree people” or “tree narcs,” a common paranoid hallucination for meth addicts who think harmful people are coming after them with flashlights through the trees.

“The funny thing is, I’m scared of heights,” he said, “and the first thing I do when I get high is climb a tree. You should have seen it, I looked like the passions of the Christ.”

When they get there, the first few days are rough, says Jayne Brooks, Harvey’s ex-wife, who lives at the farm.

“When they first come in the doors, they’re pretty beaten down,” Jayne said. “They just sleep for days, and they finally eat something. After a few years or months, they realize they are people.”

Brooks sat in his living room on a recent afternoon, the smell of brewing coffee in the air, mixed with wafts of cigarette smoke from the constant opening and closing of the front door. He waved around his giant green plastic travel mug, expressing his frustration with a county notice requiring him to remove two trailers from the property and reminding him that no more than six unrelated people are allowed to live in county residences.

Earlier that day at the regular meeting of the county commissioners, dozens of Funny Farm supporters, sensitive to the possibility Brooks was being run out of his place, turned out to vouch for his cause. He is doing an irreplaceable service, they said, by opening his home to local addicts who would otherwise have to pay hundreds of dollars in monthly rent at more traditional sobriety homes.

“That’s one of the big hurdles in drug court,” Brooks said. “You have to find a place to live, and often they have nowhere to go but back to their old friends, who are not clean. You also have to understand that many of these people have alienated their families, so they can’t go back there, either.”

Brooks said the anonymous complaint to the county materialized from someone who was turned away from the home because he or she was high on meth.

“They said they thought we were a cult,” Brooks explained. “This is not a cult – this is a last chance. I tell people, this is not a rest stop on the highway to hell. It’s an off-ramp.”

He is back in compliance now, as far as he knows.

The 17-acre parcel is always active, with the 11 residents of the house coming and going and animals wandering fenced areas. Dogs and cats show up around corners, hoping for someone to throw the Frisbee or scratch their heads.

Everyone on the farm has chores – feeding the chickens or the llamas, or cooking large communal dinners for when people return from their jobs, drug court appointments and frequent 12-step meetings.

Brooks said the daily goings-on at the farm teach a little discipline and allow recovering addicts to focus on something more than themselves.

“There is structure here,” said Brooks, as he pointed to the Funny Farm rules posted in the kitchen. “It gives us a chance to give of ourselves. It’s just a little thing, feeding the animals, but it’s not normal for a tweaker or an alcoholic. We’re all about ourselves.”

Brooks was referring to his own past struggles with substance abuse. He grew up drinking in his hometown of Napavine, and discovered meth after he returned in 1987 from his duty with the Navy.

“I got my practice as a kid in Lewis County,” Brooks said. “In the Navy, I perfected it.”

He was pulled over for two DUIs in 1993, both by sheriff’s office Sgt. Rob Snaza.

“He basically saved my life,” Brooks said. “He might not see it that way, but that’s what he did.”

Brooks describes Snaza as a friend, and said the sergeant and drug court Judge Nelson Hunt are helping to direct certain cases to the Funny Farm. Since 2002, Brooks said, 57 people have come to live there, with only a few of them turning back to substance abuse.

Although rare, relapses do happen, Brooks said, with another unfortunate occurrence just last month.

“I let everybody here know, and they see it,” Brooks said. “This is a deadly, sneaky disease and if you don’t go to meetings and stay active in your recovery, it’ll beat you.”

Brooks said he’s glad that relapses are the exception, and not the rule. The current residents of the Funny Farm seemed to suggest their recovery is going well.

“It’s the first time in my life I have been clean without being in jail,” said Justyn DiMeo.

The 26-year-old is trying to get her daughter back through Child Protective Services, and that would be especially good for her now, considering the Funny Farm is CPS certified.

Rebecca Galvan, 27, also has a child torn away from her by drug addiction. Without the Funny Farm, she might have gone back to her old life, she said.

“You just go straight for your addiction,” Galvan said. “My son, I would go six months without talking to him or seeing him. Now that I’m at the Funny Farm, I see him every weekend.”

Nights at the farm actually are sort of funny. Parrots fly around the house and people watch the turtle who recently got a new cage in the living room. Eggs from the emu and geese are set on the kitchen table in an incubator, providing something to nurture, and look forward to when they hatch.

Old friends stop in after meetings, giving some semblance of a positive family environment.

Brooks said the drug problem in the county remains daunting, but little by little, one addict at a time, things slowly get better.

“As long as they stay sober, that’s 90 percent of the problem right there,” Brooks said. “Once that’s achieved, it’s amazing what people do on their own. It’s just a matter of giving them that chance.”