Derek Shaughnessy came to a fork in the road in 2021.
Soon after joining the Lewis County Drug Court program, the Washington state Supreme Court found that the state's law against drug possession was unconstitutional, a ruling commonly known as the Blake decision.
“All of my felonies were possession charges, so they were dismissed,” Shaughnessy said Tuesday. “So I was faced with a decision. The Drug Court team brought me in and said, ‘You can stay in, we will find a way for you to stay in if you want to, but we have no authority to hold you here. Like, you’re free to go.’”
A voluntary program for those struggling with addiction and charged with a felony, Shaughnessy said he had found “a lot of happiness and success” during the six months he had been in the program before the decision came.
“I was like, ‘I’ve never finished anything in my life,’ and that's, I think, one of the behaviors I need to change in order to have a full and happy life,” Shaughnessy said. “So I decided I wanted to finish the program because it was beneficial to me and I didn’t want to give up like I’ve always done.”
As of Tuesday, Shaughnessy has been sober for four years, five months and 27 days.
Several of the program’s success stories, including Shaughnessy, were in the audience of the Lewis County Commissioners meeting Tuesday as the program celebrated its 20th anniversary.
But success wasn’t always a guarantee, with the reaction among some community officials ranging from skepticism to doubt when the idea was first proposed.
“I was sort of shocked and amazed at some of the people who were allowed into Drug Court. These are people that I had prosecuted for several years,” said Lewis County Superior Court Judge J. Andrew Toynbee, who has overseen the program in recent years. “And I became a believer when I saw that these people had truly changed and were no longer in the revolving door of the criminal justice system.”
The program, Toynbee said, was “kind of a life changer” as a judge.
“One of the things that I tell our participants is that nobody on the team is there because they were assigned to be there,” Toynbee said. “We’re all there because we believe in this work, we believe this is successful and helps our community. We want to be there.”
Shaughnessy’s road to addiction began early, drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana around the age of 13, which he attributes to a combination of seeking acceptance from others and pleasure.
“I tried it because the people around me were doing that, and I was like ‘I want to be part of this group,’” Shaughnessy said. “And it wasn’t like pressure. It was just like, ‘OK, I’ll try that, why not?’ And then I liked it, and so it just continued.”
By 20, he had moved on to opioids and heroin, slowly becoming less and less functional as he became more dependent on substances.
As the addiction progressed, the consequences grew. Shaughnessy lost custody of his daughter, and a search of his name in The Chronicle's archives shows arrests for a slew of charges ranging from possession of heroin to suspicion of third-degree assault, among others.
Homeless, Shaughnessy sold drugs to get by.
“When I was getting loaded, I used to feel sorry for people who had gotten into Drug Court,” Shaughnessy said. “And I used to be like, ‘Oh, those poor guys.’ Such a perspective shift.”
He found himself in the Drug Court, a program that typically lasts between 16 and 22 months, where successful graduates have their criminal charges dismissed.
“I was like, ‘I need to change something,’ I just didn’t know how. I didn’t have the tools, and I didn’t even know where to begin,” Shaughnessy said of the program. “And it gave me a hard reset.”
While in the program, he stayed in the Drug Court house — he considers it a lifesaver — which is offered to participants in the program’s early phases.
“If I didn’t have a place to go when I was released from jail … I’m not going to say it would have been impossible for me to succeed, but it would have been much more difficult,” Shaughnessy said.
In an interview last fall, Drug Court Manager Stephanie Miller said roughly two-thirds of the current participants in the program accessed the house when they first started, with the average stay being between six and nine months.
“I didn’t have anywhere safe. Everyone I knew used,” Shaughnessy said. “So that was really, really useful from the get-go.”
While in the program, Shaughnessy obtained a driver’s license for the first time, one of the “small miracles” Toynbee said the program offers, the small changes he sees on a week-to-week basis.
“Somebody who gets their driver’s license and is insured, that’s big. We don’t have people who are uninsured motorists anymore,” Toynbee said. “We also have people who come to court and they are so excited because they have a job and they are paying taxes. These mundane things that we take for granted, and actually unusually resent, we have people who are actually taking pride in the fact that they are doing these things.”
As he progressed in Drug Court, Shaughnessy also grew closer with his daughter, after not seeing her in the six years before entering the program. Fearful of becoming a transient father, Shaughnessy waited until he was about eight months into the program before he reestablished the relationship.
“I was able to reestablish that relationship,” Shaughnessy said. “And that was scary.”
Since graduating, Shaughnessy remains active in the Drug Court alumni group, a connection he said “helps keep him clean.”
The alumni group, Toynbee said, is “very active and very supportive.”
“If the team can’t provide it, the alumni can. And oftentimes they can do things that we just can’t do,” Toynbee said. “They’ve walked this walk. Most of us on the team have not. So when they speak, when they offer advice, it’s really meaningful.”
Shaughnessy also serves as vice president of the Drug Court Foundation.
“The people that I surround myself with offer a form of accountability to me,” he said.
In the 20 years since it was established, more than 560 participants have entered the Drug Court program. Of those, 282, or just about half, have successfully graduated.
But even those who don’t fully complete the program see benefits, Kevin Dickey, a former Drug Court compliance officer, told the commissioners.
“Drug Court helps people even that aren’t successful during the program,” Dickey said. “And I think that’s truly the difference between Drug Court and other programs, is that even the people who don’t graduate and get a certificate, those people are still doing better today because of drug court.”
The program, Dickey said, has long-lasting benefits for both the county and participants, gains that compound over time with each new member. According to data provided by Miller, 88% of Drug Court participants in Washington have no new felonies at their 36-month followup and 77% have no new crimes at any level, including misdemeanors.
“It’s more about that than just the Drug Court’s success,” Dickey said.
As he reflected on the program’s impact, Shaughnessy paused.
“Four and a half years ago, I was homeless with no teeth and hadn’t seen my daughter in six years,” Shaughnessy said. “It's been a pretty cool journey.”
