From addict to amazing

COEUR d’ALENE — Recovering from addiction sometimes takes years, or working through multiple programs before it sticks.

Pile a mental health condition on top, and recovery can seem insurmountable.

Steve McComb, a peer support specialist with the county's Mental Health Court program since 2014, knows firsthand.

“One of the things we like to say, and one of the things I’ve learned from Steve, is that just because someone fails the program doesn’t mean we didn’t help them,” said Mary Wolfinger, coordinator of the program since 2009.

Now with a decade of sobriety behind him, McComb went through six different recovery programs before he found long-term success. The first was in Seattle, 38 years ago.

“We were told that 80% of us wouldn’t make it,” McComb said.

While McComb didn’t go through Mental Health Court personally, he is familiar with what works.

The big difference is that MHC takes “the whole person approach," rather than solely doling out punishment, Wolfinger said.

“The others were just drug and alcohol (-focused). There was no co-occurring or mental health treatment,” McComb said. “It’s my belief that most everybody that’s an addict in recovery has a mental health issue.”

From a numbers standpoint, Mental Health Court is a highly effective program. A 2016 study found that 65% of those who completed the program avoided recidivism, Wolfinger said.

McComb is one of two full-time peer support specialists and the first to fill the position.

The program is intense and highly structured, Wolfinger said. Completion takes a minimum of 18 months.

Weekly meetings with the judge, frequent urine analysis, individual therapy, group sessions, meeting with their probation officer, sober support classes and meeting with their peer support person are all part of the process.

“It’s about 20 hours per week when they first start out,” Wolfinger said. “I think any client would tell you, we take over their life. They have not been able to successfully run their own life for a long time, typically.”

Participants are on a GPS tracker, under strict curfew and every aspect of their lives must be approved by MHC staff. As they progress, freedoms are earned back.

“What we have found from our graduates is that it is exactly what they needed,” Wolfinger said. “At the end they say that ‘I needed you to take over because I wasn’t able to do it myself.’”

Participants need to change absolutely everything, McComb said.

“Because our best thinking got us here,” McComb said. “There’s always a reaction to every choice, is what I tell these guys. Whether it be a good choice, or a bad choice, if you make a bad choice there’s not going to be a good outcome — I always tell them to play the tape until the end.”

McComb is married with a son, a daughter and six grandchildren whom his recovery has allowed him to reconnect with. It was a long road to reach this point, he said.

“And Steve’s wife is an amazing woman. She has said many times, ‘Thank you for letting Steve do what he is doing,’” Wolfinger said. “Steve now has a good relationship with his children and grandchildren and he hasn’t always had that, but has been able to make amends.”

Heavily tattooed with a history of addiction and jail time, McComb never expected to work for a recovery program. A friend who was a counselor recommended him for the position.

“I said, ‘Really? It’s me. I have no schooling and you know my history,’” McComb said. “He goes, ‘And that’s what qualifies you.’”

McComb flew to Boise for a week of training and accepted the position. Still attentive to his own ongoing recovery, McComb attends sober living support groups and believes that those he helps help him just as much.

“The biggest part of my recovery is giving away what’s been given to me,” McComb said. “Which is my life.”

McComb walks alongside program participants, starting the moment they're released from jail.

“When I pick them up, I tell them that it’s a lot,” McComb said. “And that they will be surrounded by support from an amazing group of people.

“Basically what my job is is to share what works and what doesn’t, and to give them hope and encouragement. Our big thing is: Change the thinking and that will change the behavior.”

Wolfinger’s husband, Ben, a former Kootenai County Sheriff, “teases me all the time,” McComb said. “I’ve been to barbecues at (the Wolfingers’) house and I’ve been to a Christmas party at a judge’s house."

“It’s just such an incredible thing to watch people recover,” Wolfinger said.