TREATMENT PROGRAMS GRADUATE 16

URBANA - Jesus T. Martinez never thought he'd be excited about
getting up every morning to clean apartments.

"I never thought about working. It was just something I never did,"
said the 27-year-old Urbana man whose lifestyle was more centered on
drinking alcohol, smoking weed, and selling drugs.

Having completed his thirteenth month of drug treatment, Martinez is
liking the regular paycheck.

"I live for that – to get up and go to work, to say good
morning, and do something productive on a daily basis," he said.

Martinez was among five people who "graduated" Friday from Prairie
Center's "Day Treatment" program. Another 11 women graduated from
Prairie Center's "New Beginnings" program.

Prairie Center Director of Development Betty Seidel said Day
Treatment is an intensive outpatient program aimed at getting those
with more severe addictions into appropriate treatment faster. It was
launched two years ago in recognition of the long waiting lists for
inpatient beds at residential treatment centers in Illinois.

People with severe addictions to high intensity drugs need more than
the typical nine hours a week of outpatient treatment, she said.
Prairie Center worked with state funders and local legislators to get
money to develop the program with an eye toward providing 15 to 20
hours of outpatient services per week. The average stay in the
program is four to six months.

The $200,000 that has been used annually for that program was
recently line-item vetoed by Gov. Rod Blagojevich, meaning Prairie
Center will have to scale back the services it offers, like driving
people to appointments. Seidel said the agency is working with local
legislators in hopes of restoring the funding.

"New Beginnings," is an outpatient program providing about 10 hours
of education a week for women with children. Founded 12 years ago,
its funding comes from the Department of Children and Family Services
and the Division of Substance Abuse of the Illinois Department of
Human Services. The majority of women in the program are referred to
it by DCFS because there has been a finding that they have neglected
their children due to substance abuse.

The women take classes on parenting, codependency, domestic violence,
healthy relationships and self-discovery. They also do volunteer work
in the community before they graduate.

Martinez graduated from Lincoln's Challenge in 1997 and attended
Parkland College some, but never had a real job, he said.

Having been arrested in August 2005 for selling drugs, Martinez said
he began to drink even more heavily from the stress of his legal
problems. In the fall of 2006, he decided he was tired.

"I was just tired of living the way I was living, not necessarily
just the drugs and alcohol, but the whole lifestyle I was living. I
knew there was something better," he said.

Martinez said that he went on his own to Prairie Center in October
2006 and called it "the best decision I ever made."

Like many of the other graduates who spoke Friday, Martinez admitted
he entered "arrogant" and with the feeling that he didn't really have
a problem because he just drank and smoked marijuana. But after
talking and sharing with others addicted to even worse drugs, he
realized they shared the same problems.

The program, he said, has given him the tools to "change the actions,
the way of thinking, the people, places, and things you're around."

He's been clean and sober since Jan. 10, 2007, the day after he was
sentenced in his drug case to four years of probation and continued
drug treatment.

"The scariest thing is not prison. It's change, leaving everything
that is familiar," he said. "If you don't have a strong foundation,
no matter how pretty a building you build on it, it's going to crumble."

New Beginnings graduate Angela Miles, 36, of Urbana, had a similar
success story. Toting her 4-week-old twins in carriers to the
ceremony, the mother of six children said she spent a lot of time
"blaming everybody else for something I (have) done to put my kids
in this predicament."

"This place helped me let go of the past because I lived in the past
a long time," she said.

Nancy Roberts, coordinator of the two treatment programs, gave
glowing testimonials about all the graduates' successes but said
Miles had come so far in her 11 months of treatment that DCFS did not
take protective custody of her twins when they were born. Miles is
hopeful that her 2-year-old daughter will be returned to her in March
at her next court date. Her three older boys live in Ohio with their
father.