‘It is the true hero story.’ Ada drug court turns around lives, inspires grads to mentor

BOISE – In the early 2000s, Paul Nydegger was in a dark place. He’d been arrested on drug charges. His family members thought he was homeless in Portland; they hadn’t heard from him in four years. He’d been evicted from nearly every house he ever lived in.

He’d been using since 1976, when his older brother died by suicide.

“I used as much drugs and alcohol as I possibly could, every single night for the next 30 years, until one of two things happened: either I ran out or passed out,” he said.

In 2006, he was admitted into Ada County Drug Court, a county treatment program for people charged with drug-related felonies who are struggling with addiction. Led by Ada County judges, the program focuses on giving “high-risk, high-need” people structure and stability, helping them find a job, pay their bills, reconnect with loved ones and stay sober, said Ada County District Judge Nancy Baskin, who presides over drug court.

Nydegger resisted the program at first and was stuck in its initial phase for months but eventually “surrendered” to the program, he said.

Nearly 20 years later, he graduated from the program in 2007, he has been sober since, and is now a drug court counselor. He estimates that he’s counseled hundreds of people, teaching them healthier coping skills and working with them to confront the emotions and experiences underlying their substance abuse.

Nydegger’s story is striking, but he’s not alone. There have been three other counselors who went through a drug court program. Graduates of the Ada County program told the Statesman they were staying involved beyond their own two-year participation to serve as mentors. One recent grad plans to go back to school to become a counselor.

There’s no way to know how many of the program’s graduates stay connected to the program, Baskin said, but there are more than 500 members of a Facebook group devoted to drug court graduates, and program leaders regularly hear from grads when they hit a new milestone. When the treatment center moved into a new facility this year, several graduates showed up to help with the move.

Graduates and program leaders said staying involved helps keep graduates sober and on track by giving them hope and a sense of purpose, as they teach newcomers what they learned the hard way.

Ian Castle, who graduated from drug court in July, mentors and sponsors current participants and visits local schools with Alcoholics Anonymous to speak with students about his experience with addiction.

“It gives me more accountability,” he said. “I started seeing that I’m actually doing something with my life by giving it back to other people, instead of taking, taking, taking from people when I was drinking.”

Drug court participants find stability, healthy coping mechanisms

Started in 1999, Ada County’s drug court was part of a national movement to try to treat addiction, rather than punishing it. Today, there are more than 2,600 drug courts operating nationwide, cutting recidivism rates by about 40% and saving tens of thousands of dollars per participant on incarceration, according to Stanford University’s Network on Addiction Policy.

“Punishment alone is a futile and ineffective response to drug abuse,” according to the Stanford network. “Drug courts reduce drug use and re-arrest for non-violent, drug-involved offenders.”

In Ada County, drug court participants plead guilty to a felony charge and then spend about two years in the program attending counseling groups, 12-step meetings and case management sessions, according to the county’s website. If the participant graduates from the program, a judge dismisses their criminal charges.

For this program, judges target people with complex cases who need more intense case management, Baskin said. Often, they’ve been in and out of jail or lower-level treatment programs without success.

“If we keep sending people who fail probation because of their disease back to prison and expect a different result, that seems nonsensical to me,” she said. Drug court “may be the program that turns this person’s life around.”

She emphasized that the program is voluntary – but that for it to work, participants have to be ready to make a change.

Participants need to be “finally ready to say: ‘I’m tired of this revolving door of going to jail. I’m tired of my family not speaking to me,’ ” she said.

The program isn’t meant to be easy, leaders said. The first phase of the program, in which participants have to get a job, attend hours of classes and meet with counselors and case managers, is all-consuming – especially for those recovering from years or decades of addiction.

“Almost all of us don’t have that sense of stability, or never have,” said Haley Spiker, a 27-year-old participant who hadn’t been sober since she was 13. “Being sober for the first time in so long, and also having all these responsibilities as well as consequences … that kind of weight on your shoulders is just a lot all at once.”

It doesn’t always go smoothly. Recent graduate Terra Haskins said she and members of her cohort faced hurdles that sometimes felt unnecessary: trying to make it to all of their required meetings using buses that don’t run frequently or reliably, or trying to stay sober in a halfway house near roommates who were still using drugs. Haskins said she was fired from one job after a meeting with her probation officer ran long.

But at least some of the challenges are by design, leaders and graduates said. The goal is to keep participants occupied and away from drugs – or friends who are still using drugs – as they adjust to sobriety.

Over and over, participants and graduates said they faced an inflection point in the program where they experienced a “mindset shift.” Instead of “trying to work the system,” Castle decided to open up, becoming more honest with himself and his counselors about his experiences and any mistakes he made along the way in his recovery.

Nydegger said that shift is the key to the program. Many participants have used drugs to cope with difficult emotions, so the program teaches them other strategies – but it takes time to let go of the only coping mechanisms some have known for years, and to trust the program’s alternatives, he said.

“Nothing changes if nothing changes. Nobody comes into this program on a winning streak,” he said. “The way I explain it to my guys is like: ‘Listen. Your best ideas, the best you could do, got you into drug court. Maybe just try our way.’ ”

Connections with family ‘gives me a push,’ grad says

A September drug court graduation at the Ada County Courthouse was an emotional affair. Seven graduates teared up as they listed milestones they never thought they’d hit: friends and family with whom they’d reconnected after years of estrangements, new jobs, stable housing – and for some, a newfound will to live.

Those graduates joined more than 1,500 others who completed Ada County’s program in ceremonies like these: a moment of optimism and new beginning.

But graduation is just a moment – and it’s the months and years that come after that can cement a recovering addict’s fate, Baskin said. Former addicts who make it to five years of sobriety have a less-than-15% chance of relapsing, according to a 2007 study of nearly 1,200 people.

For many in Ada County’s program, it’s the ongoing connection with their counselors, cohort members and new participants that keeps them on track, they said.

“I want to stay engaged because it helps me be sober and stay sober,” said Jenisce Mendoza, Spiker’s mentor. “And it gives other people that are just coming into the program inspiration, and it gives them hope, and it (shows) them all of the good things that come with sobriety with time.”

Haskins, who credits drug court with pushing her to rekindle ties with her family, credits those same connections with moving forward. Because of drug court, she was able to keep her newborn son and reconnect with her grandparents.

“In my addiction, I literally used to die because I didn’t think I was wanted or loved,” she said. “Drug court gave me life again, and my son gives me a push every day.”

Nydegger knows firsthand how stark the difference can be before and after recovery.

He keeps a photo of himself before he started drug court on his refrigerator and looks at it every day to remind himself what might have been.

“I look into those eyes, and there’s nothing – it’s empty. I have an empty soul,” he said.

For Nydegger, the pull of helping others transform their lives as he did is strong. He retired to Oregon in 2023, but when he came back to Boise in April to speak at a drug court graduation, he realized he wasn’t done. He came back out of retirement to continue his work.

“As long as I’m in Boise, I’ll work here,” he said. “Just to watch people come in, broken, helpless, and watch them transform their lives.

“There’s no greater story than an addict in recovery. It is the true hero story.”