ADDICTION UNCOVERED

Neal’s Story

Our Society: Addiction and More Uncovered Ch 47

A mutual friend recommended for me to reach out and talk to Neal Lemery. We arranged our meeting via e-mail, and I met Neal Lemery in Seaside, Oregon in a coffee shop. We had a wonderful conversation. It was a nice summer day. When I walked into the coffee shop and looked around, I knew exactly that it has to be him. He was having breakfast at a small table reading a book. Neal Lemery has a very kind and friendly face.

After introductions, we moved to a little quieter place in the coffee shop by the windows. We talked for an hour about the plan for this book, we also talked about, him, his books and some world views, then decided to move to the library, the coffee shop got busy. At the library, we talked for another 2–3 hours. Neal Lemery is a writer himself; he wrote multiple books one of which is about mentoring boys and men. Neal Lemery has been working in the court systems for a long time. He is a mentor, support, and father figure for young men in trouble. He is a wonderful person to be around. We need a lot of people like Neal Lemery in this world.

Neal Lemerytells me about his experiences in addiction and his life. He grew up in Tillamook, Oregon, his father was a physician. He had talked with his father about a lot of situations and medical, and psychological problems that people had in the community. He helped out in the office for the while and met different patients who had medical and mental health problems. This was in the 1960s before Tillamook had a mental health clinic, AA, and NA in the community. Neal felt that his dad’s office was kind of a mental health clinic. He studied psychology in school and got a degree in political science. He decided to go toward a law degree, and while in school he become a resident assistant and counselor in the dorms. He took some more psychology and sociology classes. During college, he had seen a lot of drug and alcohol abuse. During law school, he ended up being a counselor in his class. Students in the class would come to him and talk to him about their problems. Neal is very easy to talk to. He helped some people to get into counseling and treatment and did some suicide interventions. Once he got his degree he moved back to Tillamook and opened up his practice. He noticed that his clients had other things going on like depression, alcoholism, family problems like divorce, and addiction. He noticed a trend in the families as well. Neal did a lot of networking with the social workers, the counselors in his community, and the mental health clinic to help his clients.

He ended up specializing in working with clients in the legal community who had an addiction, mental health, and psychological problems. It is a small community, he adds. He learned about mental disorders and diagnoses. After about 5 years Neal becomes the district attorney. He tried to focus on how to get people into treatment and what are the things that are going to work. He collaborated with the sheriff, the jail, and the mental health clinic to improve services. There was a struggle personally and professionally trying to help people with addiction and mental health problems. I ask Neal why he thinks there was a struggle. He tells me that he was supposed to be this mean prosecutor.

He tells me: “I am supposed to be Mr. Law and Order”.

Instead, he was trying to help people and not throwing them into jail or prison. He was trying to get them help and treatment. He wanted to help the people change their lives around. This become politically controversial. There was a lot of resistance to this way of trying to help people. Neal tells me that there was also a lot of struggle to try to get the support people needed like counseling and therapy. He had dealt a lot with sex offenders and there was no program in the county. People had to go to Portland to get help. Neal wanted them to go to treatment, he felt just throwing them in jail without treatment is not going to help, without treatment, they will just go out and re-offend once they get out of jail. Neal got defeated by another prosecutor in the office and he went back to private practice. He became a traffic court judge for Tillamook and Clatsop counties for a while. Later he got a full-time judgeship in Tillamook. Neal tells me that running for judicial office, people are not supposed to be political, but he was in a sense of advocating for people with mental health and addiction problems to get services. He was on the board of the women’s crisis center, the board of AA, and the mental health clinic.

As a judge, he had a lot of diversion programs and referred people to get help.

He had worked with a lot of minors who had possession of alcohol and marijuana. He created workshops for first-time offenders. He describes Tillamook at that time as a logging, fishing community with a lot of drinking that was part of the culture. He was trying to change the culture. He was advocating for change. Working as a judge and working in the community people turned to Neal for help with their kids.

He was a resource for: “I got trouble with my kid what do I do”.

I asked Neal what he talked to the kids and parents about? He talked about unconditional love, compassion, empathy, and healthy father figure in their lives. He was active in men’s groups. Neal realized that in our society we do not do a celebration for adulthood like in some other cultures. In some cultures, a whole village might come together to celebrate. Neal feels those transitions are important to make young people feel valued, celebrated, and honored. A lot of adolescents today don’t have a place and a role in society. Neal thinks this ritual and coming of age ceremonies for youth are important.

Neal tells me a story about a young boy who was 14 years old and had been involved in small crimes before. He was sitting in his room with a pistol and was threatening to kill himself.

His mom called Neal. He was trying to get mental health support from the local mental health entity to go to his house, but no one was available. Neal decided to go over. He was not sure what to do. Neal had a choice to go or not to go. He thought if he does not go, he might kill himself, if he does maybe he won’t. He knew this boy from before and they had a trusting relationship. He kind of turned into being a crisis worker. It resolved favorably, he was just angry, and at the end of his rope Neal explains, he did not know what else to do. He still had the gun in his hand when Neal got there after a few minutes Neal told him he felt uncomfortable with the gun, the boy pointed it away and then gave it to Neal after a few more minutes. He did not want to use it. Neal unloaded the gun and put it away. It was all about anger for his dad who called him worthless, he was also lost and self-medicated with drugs and alcohol. Neal was able to take him to the counseling after and he talked to a counselor. Neal was sitting in on the sessions, he would not talk to the counselor without Neal being present. Neal feels that just like that youth, others also need some adults who support them in their lives besides their parents. Someone who creates a positive influence who can tell them that they are important, have potential, they are worthy. we have a conversation about fragmented society. Neal thinks that people are isolated, and they think that they don’t matter or that they are not important.

Neal is passionate about helping young people to start a better life, knowing that someone cares for them, to know that they matter.

Neal also had two foster sons and helped guide their lives. Neal tells me that when people feel that someone cares about them then they might switch their thinking from, I don’t matter to I do matter. Neal feels that then people can move on and start talking about what is going on. The story with the boy and the gun ends well. He went back to school, did counseling, and called Neal a few years later and told him he met the woman of his dreams and was asking Neal to officiate at his wedding. Of course, Neal did. Neal felt like he cried more than anyone else. This made me chuckle. I can hear in his voice he was very proud. It is like one of his little ducklings now all grown up and ready to be on his own in the world. He is still friends with him and talks to him occasionally. What a wonderful story of being able to turn someone’s life around. He was there for this young boy.

The substance abuse went away once he realized that he is angry and depressed he got therapy and once the rejection, depression, and anger were worked out he realized he does not need alcohol and marijuana and other stuff.

He figured out he was self-medicating. He was able to work through it. He had some great insight, and a desire to change his life. That experience changed Neal. He felt that we need to do a lot better in society and need to get to kids before they have a gun in their hand. Neal talked in schools and talked to counselors, and the police to get the community more engaged. Neal worked on connecting the police officers with counseling to share information and skills like emphatic listening. 20 years ago, it was not a part of training now it is. Back then the police officers were not trained on how to deal with mental health or suicide or substance abuse problems, just put people in jail if they caused a disturbance. Neal feels like he was influenced a lot by his wife who was a teacher at that time to educate and affect people that way.

Neal had a friend who invited him to go out to the youth prison and work with youth who did not have families or fathers to help with socialization and to teach them about friendship. Neal started to go and listen to their stories. Neal did this for about 8 years. He would go 3 times a week. There was a little canteen where he would get coffee and a candy bar for them and listen to their stories, play cards, and play the guitar. Most of these young boys did not know how to have a conversation or play a game. It was a lot to take in what happened to some of these boys and Neal had to figure out how to process this at 8:30 pm when going home. It was really heavy stuff, horrific stories of neglect and cruelty.

He would go home and write down the stories. This is how the book about mentoring young men comes about.

You can read more about Neal Lemery in this previous article

His wife would read the stories and cry. Then they would talk about how others don’t know what these boys went through. Neal expressed that many people might just think, well they are just a bunch of sex offenders, lock them up and throw away the key. He felt that the world needs to hear their stories. Now people can read about them. Neal feels reading these stories could help others who went through bad experiences. Neal would share some of his own stories with the boys, and be there for them, he did different exercises and he tells me about one that is called the trust walk.

The trust walk: You go out of the backyard. You tell the person: I want you to know I care about you and you are important to me. I want you to blindfold me and lead me around the backyard. I will trust you. Neal did this with his foster son who enjoyed it. Then they switched roles and have positive affirmations and supportive sentences. His son loved it. It took about 20 minutes. — Neal

Neal tells me a story of how his foster sons come into his life. I heard the story before when we were sitting in the coffee, I asked him to please tell it again. Neal’s wife was a teacher and she thought an improvisational drama English class. She had their future son in her class, he was very verbal and very bright. He was struggling. One week he was just crashing and awful depressed. She talked to him to find out that his mom kicked him out of the house, the only thing she gave him was a toothbrush, he had a friend who was working at the gas station and he was sleeping there on the floor. He did not have breakfast maybe some school lunch, no dinner, no place to be. She asked him where he would live, he had no one. That night she went home and asked Neal:” Do you want a kid?” He said this with such a great voice that we both busted out laughing. It was a sad situation for this young boy and laughter was a good release. His mom was bipolar. The stepdad he had was abusive to his mom and physically and sexually abusive to him.

Neal found out from one of his new mentees that one night the boyfriend of his mom took him crabbing to the bay. He realized that there were no crab pots on the boat. He got alarmed. The guy made him get out of the boat, he told him: “I don’t want you anymore, I want you to drown tonight”. In the middle of the bay, he pushed him out of the boat. He started his boat, went back to the land, and left him in the water in the middle of the bay. The tide was coming in. He was a good swimmer. It took him about 2 hours, but he swam back to shore. This was about 10 miles from Tillamook in Netarts bay. A young boy in the middle of the night left in the water to die. No words, just emotions that are screaming. How can someone do something so awful to a child whom they are supposed to protect? Luckily, he was a good swimmer. He swam back to the shore and had to walk 10 miles back to the house soaking wet. The guy never got charged.

Neal’s young mentee never believed that anyone would believe in him that this happened, and he felt worthless.

He felt that he is disposable if someone can just do this throw him off the boat.

He kept what happened inside of him for about a year before he told Neal. He went back to the house after this, he also had a younger brother and he was worried about his brother. In a way, he was kind of relieved when mom kicked him out of the house because this way he was away from the abusive boyfriend as well. He did not have a choice where to live and had nowhere else to go home even after a horrific attempt to drown him. We had a conversation about this person who attempted to drown Neal’s young mentee. He is still around Tillamook and was never charged, the young boy just wanted to forget him and now it is too late anyway. It is difficult for Neal to see this person around Tillamook and know what he had done. The boy is doing very well now. He works in California and has a very nice girlfriend. He teaches others and, he has his own business.

Neal’s son’s younger brother also eventually comes to live with them. He got involved in the criminal justice system and went to jail for 2 years. He had problems with Alcohol. Neal would go to AA meetings with him. Neal was the sober ‘dad”. He is doing well now, he is married, he is a dad, and he has a good job. After he was released and on parole, he did not know what to do. He loved to cook. Neal hooked him up with a culinary school in Portland and he went through the school and graduated. They are still close. Neal is very proud of how well he has done. Neal enjoyed going to the AA meetings with him and enjoyed the process and the support they received. Neal’s 2 adopted sons motivated him to keep on with things and help others, he saw the value of having someone in their life who shows up and cares. He tells me this sounds simple and Pollyanna, yet it is incredibly important for someone to show up in our lives. Sometimes the simplest things can be the most meaningful. Being there for someone when they need it is extremely important. Building basic trust is the beginning of everything.

I ask Neal if he is willing to share some more details from his work experience. He does. He tells me that a lot of people went to his court and it is a small community, there is a criminal court, family court, juvenile court, and traffic court. In a small town, Neal tells me it is all mixed up. He saw people with different problems and the same fundamental issues including lack of education, and deep psychological wounds that were not getting addressed. Alcohol, drugs, and violence are all mixed up. Neal saw all this happening in the courtroom and started to think about how to address these issues and work on improving them.

The idea was to try to do something that helps and supports people, so they don’t repeat the cycle and keep ending up in court. Neal feels that a lot of people go out, commit crimes and mess up so they can go back to jail. Jail is safe, clean, secure, there is medical care, the jailers care about them in some way, there are 3 meals a day, no drama. It is a better place than what they have normally on the outside, they don’t have to struggle to get a job. There are a lot of reasons to go back to jail Neal asserts and if people are desperate jail can be pretty compelling. It is kind of a safe place. Many people told Neal it is the best place they ever lived. Neal was trying to figure out how to break this cycle and how not to spend the jail resources on someone again and again and again. Neal found it helpful to share some of his own experiences and to plug in some resources. Tillamook county is one of the ones in the state that still does not have a drug and mental health court.

No treatment at the county jail.

He is telling me about the huge heroin, methamphetamine, and opiate problem now, and how to break the cycle with the resources the county has? 60% of jail inmates are on mental health medications. Neal feels like we have to figure out a different way to do what we are doing now. No halfway house after someone gets out of jail, no safe residential program, no job placement program, no GED program in jail, no literacy. He feels those things are needed to help break the cycle and be successful. Neal is retired now; he still goes out and mentors people in different ways. He is involved in several nonprofits, he is a band, monthly open mike, and the grange to get together, one of Neal’s visions is to have a healthy place for people to get together to have a healthy sober community. A place to get together instead of a bar. We certainly need more of those sober, healthy places in our society. Neal is trying to make this happen in his community.

Neal feels this is kind of radical. He asks the question how do we build a community without having it surrounded by a bar?

All the fraternities in his town have bars. Big community events have alcohol. Neal tells me that he drinks occasionally, and it should not be the center of life and the center of socializing. There is a huge misconception and cultural norm about this. People feel that when they go out and do something they have to drink. Neal agrees. Why do we do that- Neal asks? Why do we sell alcohol at almost every event? Can’t people just go out and have a good time without drinking?

Neal tells me that in his professional life he dealt with a lot of this. 90% of his caseload was alcohol and drug-related. I asked Neal based on his experience what addiction means to him, and how he would define it. Neal feels addiction is a response to something inside of people that is very close to our soul. Neal is looking for the right words for a second and trying to define what addiction means to him. Then, Neal tells me that he has wounds inside of him. Some of the wounds are from childhood, some are from adulthood. He feels that some of it are genetic, and he is interested in the trauma studies that have been coming out now. I ask him if he is thinking of the ACE studies. Yes, he was referring to those.

Neal feels that trauma and the wounds people experienced, and the wounds of people’s parents’ and grandparents’ experiences stay with the individual. It is an infected gaping wound. Neal feels that one of our tasks in life is to recognize those wounds and start healing them. We are all interconnected and the closer we are to somebody the more we can feel their pain. Neal feels that until we heal those wounds through love and compassion and other tools it is tempting to self-medicate. It is so psychologically painful to people. It is hard to bear the hurt and the agony. People want to feel better, so society says, have a drink or smoke a joint, have a toxic relationship, or whatever it is. It will mask the wound, it will make it feel better, yet it will not go away. The addiction will be there until the wound is cleaned and can start healing. As a nurse, I have seen many wounds and some heal slowly, some heal fast depending on how deep it is, how big it is, how good is the person’s immune system, how the person is supported in the healing process.

Many times it needs a whole team, individual, family, nurses, doctors, and specialists to help heal a complex would.

Just as with addiction, people cannot do it alone. Most people need help. Neal feels that addiction is this tension and drive to medicate so people don’t feel the pain. To help heal people have to go and find the source of their pain and heal that source. Neal had his moments when he self-medicated too. He has been destructive before. He is not proud of it. It is real. Neal feels this probably happens to all of us. He tells me: “Then I have to get my ego out of the way and go deal with this stuff”. Neal repressed some things in his life, just like many people. He is thinking about this, it is like a self-discovery happening at this moment right in front of my eyes. He tells me it is like just too much happening at this moment if he locks it up for a while, it is in a box. It was interesting we both said this at the same time. It is in the box. He tells me he can deal with the box in the basement, it is just a locked-up box. If he opens it up, oh my God, now I have to deal with it.

It is like pandora’s box, right? Yeah, he said.

In college, in law school, he tells me he drank way too much, and he had been vicious, and angry in some of his relationships with others. He struggled in his marriage with this. His wife struggled with this too. They both had childhood issues that they ignored and placed in the box in the basement. He felt this was one of the reasons they found each other. They helped each other deal with it. Neal gets emotional here and tells me that he realized in the last couple of years one of his wounds. He tells me a story about a male relative that was physically violent with him when he was a teenager. He also had a classmate when he was 10 years old who sexually abused him. Neal put those experiences in a box in the basement. Then he tried to ignore the box in the basement.

Neal tells me about his male relative, he was like cherished in his community, and everybody thought he was a wonderfully kind person. He was, yet he also beat Neal. The rest of the community did not know that side of him. This created a conflict. I asked him how often it happened. It happened 3–4 times. He was angry at Neal. Neal talked back about when he was a teenager. He punished him by beating him. When Neal was raising his stepson and foster sons, he wanted to be a very good parent. Neal describes that when his sons would act out, he had the “old tape” from childhood on how to take care of a kid if they misbehave. It was to take off his belt and beat them. He almost found himself falling into that pattern too. Then he realized:” Holy crap, no”.

He realized it is not the right way to go, and that was the programing in his brain. That is what he learned from the male relative. It was terrifying for him. He realized he wanted to change and wanted to do things differently. He wanted to be a good dad. He did not want to be like that relative of his. He broke the cycle. We discussed behavior and actions that are learned in families from generation to generation and how people can break that cycle. How do we realize that it is not the right thing to do when it is what we learned? When it is what someone saw and learned from their parents? Behavior change is very difficult. Neal asks me how does this work? He is still thinking about this process. How do we break the cycle?

When it comes to our individual and societal responsibilities Neal thinks: “get it out on the table, here is the topic, here is the issue”. We need to talk about them the solutions, the remedies, and the issues. Have conversations. Talk about how we parent a kid, we don’t teach parenting he tells me we don’t talk about parenting. Neal thinks that it is not only the parent’s responsibility to parent a child. It takes a whole village. we should all look out for each other and everyone’s kids, they are the future generation. This was a motivator for Neal to go out and help mentor others, he felt like the people who live in his community, and he wanted them to be healthy. Neal then tells me a story about a murder case where a child saw her mother murdered. He was 9 years old.

Neal recognized right away that this kid needs support and counseling and contacted a counselor. The kid got the therapy that he needed, and Neal received a bill. The county declined to pay the bill, he had to find money through a grant to pay this counselor. The kid grew up to be a wonderful young man, Neal saw him recently. It was great to see the good outcome. Neal never understood the commissioners not feeling this child important enough to spend money on. He tells me that society and our attitude need to change on what is important. The struggle he tells me to pay the counselor? I ask him about healthcare, and he started to laugh. Neal believes that healthcare especially preventative healthcare is a fundamental human right, we should have a single-payer system and just do it. He tells me about a meeting he went to yesterday. He found out that 90% of healthcare costs are for preventable conditions. We talk about prevention, treating the whole body by doing preventative testing like checking A1c levels for diabetes. Neal compares it to an oil change. Focusing on prevention not treating the disease. This would help the population be healthy. We talk about the concept of getting paid if the population is healthy not when they are sick. He would increase the prevention efforts. Neal believes in preventative healthcare and educating kids about trauma, addiction, mental health, and depression, making it a universal educational goal. Provide knowledge. Neal tells me about a person in his community who come out and told people on social media about his depression. He made himself vulnerable to help others. I ask Neal about the government’s role. He lets out a big sigh, then he tells me it is a public health crisis.

He feels that the government should be able to get involved and be a leader in public health. Not this administration he tells me. Obama’s administration, quite a bit. Neal feels that government should provide leadership. We are all in this together, we are all affected by this, here are some words of wisdom, sympathy, and encouragement. He recalls Reagan’s promise when mental health hospitals were closed that we will have community mental health. We don’t have that he said, it is grossly underfunded. Neal feels we need to commit to that. He feels the mental health clinic in his community is the jail. People with drug addiction get hauled off to jail, which is not a very effective method. Neal feels that there is a public demand for change and to do things better.

We as a society do not know how to deal with anger and rage.

He feels society needs to address this and the role of government can be to convey to people to address solutions. Have a nationwide conference and let’s talk about this, addiction is a spiritual and human crisis as well. He tells me about empathy, compassion, listening, and caring. He tells me he feels my book is very timely and highly needed.

Previous Addiction Uncovered book chapters can be found here

If you like my writing please follow me here, Subscribe to the Medium platform using my link here, Buy me a coffee here . My Books are available on my website here, Amazon here and on Barnes and Nobles here

This book is dedicated to the memory of Bagóczky József my uncle who died at age 19 — alcohol-related car accident and to everyone else who has been hurt or lost related to addiction

Many people had been supportive and inspiring to me so I could create this book. Both of my wonderful children told me, just write that book, mom. My mom. I could have not done this without all the stories provided and the encouragement love and caring from my family and friends, nurses, doctors, counselors, teachers, professors, friends who are dealing with addiction and staying sober; and children, wives, husbands, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers of people who are dealing with addiction currently. Thank you for speaking up, sharing your stories and life experiences. Thank you to all the people who read this book while in progress to provide feedback, ideas, and encouragement for me to continue writing. I would like to say special thanks to my friends and family for believing me and encouraging me to go on.

Our Society: Addiction and More Uncovered. Hear the voices of everyday people — a collection of stories and experiences.

Copyright @ 2020. 1st addition on Amazon KDP. 2nd addition Jan 2021 Barnes & Noble. Gumroad December 2021. By Dr. Gabriella Kőrösi. All rights reserved. Dancing Elephants Press.