PROFILES IN RECOVERY: Jailhouse intervention led woman to success in drug court

Stories about addiction and recovery rarely focus on the work it takes to get and stay sober. Salem Reporter spoke with three people who have gone through drug treatment about their journey to sobriety, what helped them and the challenges along the way. This is the first in a three-part series, Profiles in Recovery.

Brianna Hatchell stepped out of the Marion County Jail with no money, phone, car or place to go.

It was September 2018, and she’d spent three days behind bars after police arrested her for selling heroin and methamphetamine. She left jail with a court date to face drug charges.

Hatchell, then 25, met another woman getting out of jail who was also a dealer and got in a car with her planning to use again. As the women were leaving, a man stepped in front of the car and pointed straight at Hatchell.

It was Josh Lair, a navigator for Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion, a Marion County recovery program. As Lair pointed at her, Hatchell said, he told her to get out of the car.

“The driver was like, ‘Does anyone know this guy?’ and I was like, ‘No,’ and as I was saying no, I opened the door and just got out,” Hatchell said. “I just instinctively knew that I needed to go with this man … I’m glad he did (it) because I’ve been clean ever since.”

Leading up to her arrest, she’d been dating her drug dealer who she moved in with after being evicted from her apartment due to her addiction. She helped him sell drugs to pay for rent and support her drug use.

She later learned that Lair had seen her in court the day before. He knew her mom through working with her at Bridgeway Community Health, Salem’s largest drug treatment provider.

Lair was visiting a client at the jail when Hatchell’s mom called to tell him her daughter was being released. Lair said her mom asked him to help Hatchell.

He said he’s given people the same intervention he gave Hatchell. Sometimes, he stands in front of cars. Other times, it’s outside of trap houses where drugs are sold and used.

Last September, Hatchell, 32, celebrated six years clean from heroin. She credits it to Lair, who brought her into Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion, at the time a new Marion County effort.

The program offers people charged with drug and low level property crimes the chance to avoid prison time in exchange for completing court-ordered treatment. Hatchell said she faced at least six years in prison and that Lair told her the LEAD program was a chance to start bettering her life.

She agreed.

“Bri has truly grabbed ahold of the opportunity and ran with it,” Lair said. “There’s just not enough I could say about Bri.”

Injury and abuse

Hatchell was born in Salem and attended South Salem High School as a teenager. Her mom has been a drug and alcohol counselor for most of Hatchell’s life and her dad was a police officer in Dallas.

In high school, Hatchell was a competitive cheerleader and traveled often for competitions. The sport led to a back injury and a doctor prescribed her oxycodone. It was her first time using painkillers, she said.

From ages 19 to 22, she was in a physically abusive relationship with a man she met shortly after graduating high school. During the years of domestic violence, Hatchell said, she struggled with her faith and anger towards God.

Around 11 years ago on a rainy night on State Street, Hatchell’s ex-boyfriend pushed her to the ground outside of their house.

She laid on the sidewalk and stared up at the sky, wondering why the God she believed in would leave her in an abusive relationship.

“Dude, I have been telling you to get me out of this situation,” Hatchell remembers thinking at the moment. “I’ve been praying and I’ve been praying, and you’re still leaving me here. You forgot about me.”

She began to use painkillers to numb the pain of the abuse, she said. That continued intermittently until she started using heroin in 2017, two years after leaving the relationship.

Recovery

Before Hatchell started treatment, Lair took her to Bridgeway Community Health to medically detox for a week.

Hatchell said she felt extremely sick due to the amount of meth she had been using. Since she’d spent three days in jail, she was already in withdrawal when she arrived. 

“It was miserable, throwing up a lot, in bed, the shakes, nightmares. It was not fun, and you have no energy,” Hatchell said. Until the last two days of detox, she said, she couldn’t muster the strength to shower or eat. 

After one week at Bridgeway, Hatchell moved into Her Place, a government-funded recovery housing program operated by Marion County. 

She also started treatment through a county center, where she was prescribed methadone, one of the medications used to target parts of the brain altered by opioid use.

“I was super scared,” she said. “It’s a lot of change really quick.”

Hatchell went from spending most of her time sleeping and relaxing in detox to a full-day routine of chores and recovery meetings. 

At Her Place, she said, she and the other women got up early to get chores done by 7 or 8 a.m. before being driven to Narcotics Anonymous meetings. Each day was spent attending recovery meetings and groups.

Although the services were helpful for Hatchell, she said she was not yet ready to face the structure the program required. During her four months at Her Place, Hatchell said, she spent most of her time at the house alone in her room.

“I had so much healing to do,” she said. She started processing the trauma of her abusive relationship after moving out of Her Place and into her mom’s house.

“I hadn’t really allowed myself to grieve,” Hatchell said.

At the same time, Hatchell faced an ultimatum in her criminal case: if she did not start drug court she would be sent to prison. She entered drug court in 2019, which meant regular check-ins with a judge, addiction treatment and drug testing.

As part of drug court, she continued taking doses of methadone through Marion County. Early in her recovery she did well on the medication, Hatchell said. Once she began processing the abusive relationship, she started abusing methadone.

Methadone is more addictive than other treatment medications, like Suboxone, and during the Covid pandemic, when Hatchell took methadone, Marion County supplied one month’s dose at a time.

“That was the worst thing that could have ever happened to me, because of all that, in my mind, (was) drugs at my disposal,” she said.

Shortly after she started abusing her methadone prescription, Marion County’s treatment services found out and stopped sending her the medication. Hatchell detoxed from methadone through a clinic in Portland and took small doses of Subutex, a treatment medication that prevents withdrawal symptoms.

Hatchell said her mom noticed a “180 difference” in her behavior on the new medication. She laughed more and stopped spending full days in bed.

Since she was still in drug court, she continued treatment at Ideal Option, a local clinic, where she started taking Suboxone, another treatment medication. Lair has since left the county LEAD program and now works at Ideal Option as director of community development.

She soon completed the LEAD program, the third person to do so, and graduated from drug court in 2021 without any “dirty” urine analyses.

From the day he stepped in front of the car, Hatchell said, Lair has been her mentor.

“Without Josh, without my mom, without drug court, or Her Place, all these different community partners there, I would be either dead or in prison,” she said.

Throughout recovery and after graduating drug court, Hatchell volunteered locally at warming shelters and became a victim’s advocate with the Center for Hope and Safety, a nonprofit supporting victims of domestic violence, abuse and stalking.

She’s now able to focus on raising her two children who are in sixth grade and preschool. She also does weekly Bible study after reconnecting with Christianity during her recovery.

Two years after graduating from drug court, Hatchell went to Lair and said she was ready to have a job where she gave back to others. He referred her to Victoria Meredith, a founder of Soaring Heights Recovery Homes, a transitional housing program for men and women recovering from substance use.

One week after the job interview, Meredith hired Hatchell to be a peer mentor for people in the program.

“I’m giving that hope back that Josh gave me, and I get to walk with people through the hardest times in their lives,” Hatchell said.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story inaccurately included that Hatchell used heroin and meth. She used heroin. Salem Reporter apologizes for the error.

THE SERIES:

Local musician carries music and faith in his sobriety

For self-proclaimed outlaw, recovery from addiction is a coming of age journey

Contact reporter Madeleine Moore: [email protected].

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