Even with treatment, drunken drivers must help themselves

Chris Dumond / Lynchburg News & Advance
Published: March 3, 2008

About four months ago, David Pippin ran into a DUI checkpoint. In the first half-second, Pippin said, his heart skipped a beat.

He has three DUI convictions and a record that goes along with more than 16 years living life as an alcoholic.

On that day, though, the Lynchburg man was sober, as he's been since April 20, 2006.

"It felt so good, I turned around and went back through it again," he said.

Pippin said he got his life together after his last DUI stop on New Year's Eve 2005. At that point, he said, he was drinking constantly to ward off withdrawal and hangovers.

"It gets to the point, you're drinking against your will and I was," he said. "I drank the night before and I'd get up the next morning and feel so bad. In the later stages you drink because you have to do it. It becomes something you do every day not because you want to. You drink just to feel better."

Although making his way through life drunk became a way of living, he knew that if he ever hurt someone while he was driving drunk, he wouldn't be able to deal with it.

So, when he was ordered into

treatment after his most recent DUI conviction and was still struggling to stop drinking, he took the advice of a friend and counselor at Central Virginia Community Services and enrolled in ARISE, community services' intensive 28-day residential program.

Pippin still participates in a 12-step program to maintain his sobriety, but ARISE helped break his addiction.

"I made the decision," he said. "If you're not going to do what you need to do, nothing is going to help.

"My life is totally different today than it was two years ago."

Like it or not, if you're convicted of drunk driving in Virginia, you're going to get some kind of treatment once you get out of jail.

First and second-time offenders are ordered by law to participate in Virginia's Alcohol Safety Action Program.

Dating back to 1975, the program offers court-mandated education and treatment services in the hope of cutting down on repeat offenses.

Once clients are enrolled in the program at a cost of $375, counselors interview them to determine what kind of treatment is best, Central Virginia Alcohol Safety Program Director Mary Reed Gillespie said.

"There are three parts -education, intensive education or treatment," Gillespie said. "We make that determination based on information they give us and based on their driving record and arrest information such as their blood-alcohol level.

"They have a case manager who essentially serves very much like a probation officer in making sure the individual complies with court orders."

The education programs last for a total of 20 hours, once a week for 10 weeks. During these sessions, counselors provide drug and alcohol information, she said.

The intensive education programs are similar, also lasting a total of 20 hours, but are conducted in more group-oriented settings.

For treatment, clients are referred to Central Virginia Community Services, she said. Clients could take part in an outpatient counseling group, intensive outpatient treatment or a residential program such as the one Pippin attended. Participants are tested for drugs and alcohol at all VASAP meetings. If someone tests positive, he or she is automatically sent for treatment, Gillespie said.

For first-time offenders, classification is up to that person's counselor, she said.

"Repeat offenders are going to treatment, period," she said.

In terms of cutting back on the number of people who show back up in court on drunk-driving charges, VASAP has worked, she said. Locally and at the state level, five years after completing a VASAP program 11 percent end up getting charged again.

"That's way too many, obviously," she said. "We don't want anyone to repeat."

Felicia Prescott, director of adult and family services at the Central Virginia Community Services office on Court Street, said her office works with as many as 48 VASAP referrals per 10-week period.

"We work with them to help them understand the implications of DUI on their jobs, legally and on their self-esteem," Prescott said. "We also help them identify the difference between addiction and substance abuse."

Substance abuse, she said, could be a bad decision to drink too much and get behind the wheel of a car. Addiction, though, is when that substance abuse starts interfering with a person's daily life, she said. Intensive outpatient care offers nine-hour sessions. For those with addiction problems, a client can opt to live in a home supervised by community services counselors for around-the-clock treatment.

"Addiction is a disease," she said. "They cannot change the consequences of that without some support, and even then there's a chance of relapse. Just because a person goes through treatment one time, doesn't mean a person will respond."

Once a person hits the felony level, more than two DUI convictions in 10 years, the probation and parole office takes over.

Mary Baston, the chief probation and parole officer for Lynchburg and for Amherst, Campbell and Nelson counties, said felony DUI convicts undergo risk assessment.

"We have a pretty sophisticated screening tool we've been using that is predictive of one's likelihood of a reoccurrence of certain behavior tendencies," Baston said. "Substance abuse is a subset of that."

From there, she said, it's up to a probation officer's interaction with the person to determine, like the VASAP program, what level of treatment is necessary.

One technique that seems to be working, she said, is motivational interviewing.

In motivational interviewing, a probation officer tries to address a repeat offender's thought partners and behavior patterns that could trigger the decision to drink and drive.

"What has proven not to work is programs and treatment approaches that are not cognitive-based," she said. "That's versus an educational approach, which would be showing a film and lecturing to them versus trying to have them have some insight into what's leading them to do what they're doing."

However, she said, responsibility must go back to that repeat offender to be motivated to change.

"It's very difficult to effect change unless that motivation is there," she said. "That's what we hope we can tap through this new approach.

"It's time consuming, but I think the benefits are certainly there."