Rotary introduced to 12 Step program in CC jail

Sarah Ein­se­len — Staff

John Mad­dox, Jeremy Lewis, Michelle Webb and Margie Mad­dox spoke to the Galion Rotary club at the club’s weekly meet­ing Jan. 11. The Mad­doxes teach a 12 Step pro­gram in the county jail, where Lewis and Webb were incarcerated.

By Sarah Einselen

Inquirer Reporter

The Galion Rotary club learned at its Wednes­day, Jan. 11, meet­ing about a new addic­tion recov­ery pro­gram that local pas­tor Margie Mad­dox launched in the Craw­ford County Jail.

Mad­dox, who also coun­sels recov­er­ing addicts and vol­un­teers in the jail as the com­mu­nity chap­lain, started teach­ing the cur­ricu­lum “Walk­ing the 12 Steps with Jesus” in the sum­mer and grad­u­ated the first class in Octo­ber. Her hus­band John also teaches and sup­ports Margie’s out­reach. The pro­gram is based on prin­ci­ples in the Alco­holics Anony­mous program.

“It is AA prin­ci­ples because when you do any pro­grams inside the jails, you have to use AA prin­ci­ples because a lot of them won’t take faith-based pro­grams,” Margie said. She teaches in eight or nine cor­rec­tional facil­i­ties, she said, includ­ing some for juve­niles. Out­side of the jails, par­tic­i­pants meet in one of a few churches in the area that host 12 Step meetings.

The pro­gram teaches par­tic­i­pants, whether alco­hol or drug addicts, that they are sick peo­ple try­ing to get well rather than bad peo­ple try­ing to be good, Margie said. “It’s more than just being sober,” she added. “We teach them a new way of life.”

Margie esti­mated that she and her hus­band sup­plied about 300 work­books last year in addi­tion to Life Recov­ery Bibles, jour­nals, high­lighters and pens. “Some of them can barely read and write but we give them hope,” Margie said.

Two grad­u­ates from the pro­gram in the Craw­ford County Jail also addressed the Rotar­i­ans. Michelle Webb, one of the grad­u­ates, abused sub­stances for 15 years, going in and out of jail dur­ing that time. She landed in jail again in March 2011, where four months after­ward she started attend­ing the 12 Step meetings.

“Since then I real­ized I couldn’t strug­gle with addic­tion on my own,” Webb said. “I had to turn to God for help.” She grad­u­ated in Octo­ber from the pro­gram and has been clean 10 months.

Jeremy Lewis, the other grad­u­ate to speak to Rotar­i­ans, said he had used drugs since he was 10 years old. “With­out this pro­gram I’d never have made it,” he said. “I grew up in facil­i­ties, pris­ons. I always wanted to get well but I couldn’t find a way.”

Lewis and Webb are in train­ing to facil­i­tate other groups and Lewis par­tic­i­pates in a new set of meet­ings being held at the Bucyrus United Methodist Church.

Lewis empha­sized the role and other vol­un­teers have in demon­strat­ing healthy liv­ing to cur­rent and for­mer addicts. “These peo­ple really depend on us to show them,” he said. “They think that if I’ve done it, then they can.

“I can finally be the father and provider that I should be,” Lewis said. “I’m just proud to be here today, clean, sober and a Christian.”

Attend­ing 12 Step meet­ings after get­ting out of jail allows for­mer addicts to lift each other up and sup­port each other, Margie said. Oth­er­wise, they stand a greater chance of falling back into old ways. It’s impor­tant for pro­gram grads to stay busy and in touch with oth­ers try­ing to stay out of addic­tion, said Margie, so they can keep mov­ing for­ward and not revert to old habits in idle time. It’s a chal­lenge since many of them don’t have their driver’s license, she said. She ends up fer­ry­ing sev­eral to and from meet­ings and com­mu­nity ser­vice projects, log­ging about 800 miles a week between that and the classes she dri­ves to for teaching.

But Margie has no doubt that the pro­gram is worth all the effort.

“If I can change the way they feel about them­selves and the pain, I can change the way they think about them­selves,” she said. “I know the pro­gram works. I’ve seen it work­ing in the jails.”

Posted by Sarah Einselen on Jan 16 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.