Welcome to Austin DWI charges with Charlie Roadman, Austin criminal defense attorney.

Charlie Roadman:

Hi, Charlie here, and today's interview is with my good friend John Andrews. He's a counselor who teaches the intensive outpatient program, and he graciously agreed to come talk with me, because he and I both want to explain the program in a way that reduces people's anxiety about making that step. So enjoy my chat with John.

So can you tell me, well, let's just start with sort of how you got to start teaching this program.

John Andrews:

Yeah, so I've actually been doing these IOP groups, which is an intensive outpatient program, for almost 20 years now. I actually did my first IOP group in February of 2003. No, I'm sorry, February of 2004. Yeah.

Charlie Roadman:

So has it changed, or is it just one structure that's been the same way for 20 years?

John Andrews:

It's been pretty much the same. An intensive outpatient program is supposed to be 60 hours. So some programs, they'll do six weeks, 10 hours a week. Some do five weeks, 12 hours a week, and there's other variations of that. But it's basically supposed to be 60 hours to be an official intensive outpatient program.

Charlie Roadman:

And if you do the official program at the end, you get a certificate saying you completed it?

John Andrews:

That's right. Either a certificate or a letter that says you completed the program. And the times can be in the evenings. Four nights a week, 6:00 to 9:00 PM. There's even morning groups like 9:00 to noon Monday through Thursday. There's some programs that are on the weekends.

Charlie Roadman:

Well, that's actually really what my clients want to know, and I don't know the answer to this. If someone enters a program, are they with the same group of people through the six weeks, or is it sort of a revolving door of people?

John Andrews:

Yeah, it's people coming and going. You could be there... Your first day is someone's last day, which adds an interesting dynamic to it, because you get there your first day and you get to see someone who's gone through the program and they're finishing up. And then you go through the program and you get to see people come in along the way, and then you finish up, and it might be somebody else's first day on your last day.

Charlie Roadman:

I've been sending people to IOPs for 20 years as well, and I always say that even my most difficult clients who don't want to do anything, who don't think they need anything, and we finally get them into a program, and they text me three weeks later and say it's the greatest thing they've ever done.

John Andrews:

Oh yeah. It's great to see. And it's usually pretty common that people when they first come, they're resistant. They don't want to do it. They don't know what to expect. And then they actually show up that first day, and then they can't wait to get back the second day. That's usually how it almost always goes.

Charlie Roadman:

And that's my experience too. And so why do you think that is?

John Andrews:

Yeah, I think when they get there and see that there's other people going through what they're going through, and they hear the stories... And it's interesting. They get interested in the other people that are in the group. And you learn a lot from the other people that are going through the program.

The person that I learned a lot from, he was an old doctor that had a treatment center many years ago. And he used to say that, "In treatment you'll learn more from the other patients than you will from anybody else." And I found that to be true.

Charlie Roadman:

It seems when you hear someone else say nonsense, right? There's a justification that's kind of nonsense and it's different. You're like, "That's something I say sometimes."

John Andrews:

Yeah. And somebody that they've gone through the similar type of thing, maybe even worse than they've gone through. Or not as bad, but they're able to relate to it in some way.

Charlie Roadman:

Right. I taught the 15 hour DOEP class, the Drug Offender Education Program, which is five classes of three hours each time. And there were moments in there where somebody would say something about their past or about something they're going through. And you just knew that was the first time in their entire life they'd been able to communicate that to anyone that was listening.

John Andrews:

Yeah.

Charlie Roadman:

It's pretty astonishing how that... And it's wonderful to see. So let me... Okay, someone comes into the program. Are there different stages that they go through? What is the structure of the IOP?

John Andrews:

Yeah. So a usual experience would be on your first day, you tell everyone what brought you there. In my groups, that's how it works. They will share their experience of what led them to treatment. And then we'll go around, and everybody who's there will share their experience again. You get used to telling your story a lot as you're there. And your first night you may not say a whole lot, and that's okay. The more comfortable you get, more comes out. And that's something I hear all the time. Somebody going through the experience will say later on that at first... Or they observed it in someone else. They said, "I saw you when you first got here and you hardly said a whole lot. But as you've gone through this, we've learned a lot more about you as you've gone through this." And that's usually how it goes. People get more comfortable. They open up a lot more as they go through the program.

Charlie Roadman:

I have that same executive experience, even with a three-day class. I know my clients that have gone through it, and I know they're planning on saying nothing. They just want to get that certificate. But by the end of the day too, they're the most talkative person there.

John Andrews:

Yeah, that's right. And people that come and do this for so-called legal reasons, that may be the initial reason why they showed up. With the program I do, we ask that you either... To be able to do our program, it's got to be more than you're doing it just for the legal reasons. There's got to be some buy-in on your own. Either you're able to admit you have a problem or at least be willing to explore whether or not you do.

If you say, "The only reason I'm doing this is because the judge is making me do this," we need to have more than that, more buy-in. You may feel that way initially, but if you're able to come off of that and say, "Yeah, I can at least say I'm willing to explore whether or not I have a problem," then you can get something out of it. Because if you're going to do this... And it's a commitment to do this four days a week, three hours a day for 20 sessions. I lost my train of thought there.

Charlie Roadman:

Well, no, that people need to have some buy-in. I mean, I think it would be difficult for someone to come in and just not say a word and get their certificate. It just seems like it would be impossible.

John Andrews:

Yeah. You want to get something out of it. If you're going to spend the time doing this, at the end, you want to have gotten something out of it. And if all it was was just to get the certificate or just to get the letter, you're really cheating yourself.

And I'll even say sometimes, one thing I'll say is if you're not honest, it's a waste of time to do this. You're not going to get in trouble for being honest. That's another thing I'll tell people. Oftentimes, people have this fear that maybe they're going to get in trouble with the legal people. And I've been doing this, like I said, almost 20 years, and I've never seen that happen.

The legal people don't ask questions. They just want to know, did you show up? Did you complete the program? That's what they want to know. They just want to see that letter of completion. They're not asking, "What did they talk about in the group?" I've never had that happen. They don't do that.

Especially Travis County. Travis County's great. They really educate the probation officers on treatment, and they're pro-treatment. They want people to get better. So you're not going to get in trouble for what you talk about. Now, there's exceptions to confidentiality, if you talk about hurting or injuring a child or an elderly person. But that's really the limits. Otherwise, everything's confidential, what you talk about.

Charlie Roadman:

And the prosecutors, when they see that certificate that says they completed it, what it communicates to them, a couple of things. But the first thing is that, okay, this person is stable enough to have completed it. Right? Because as you and I know, not everybody makes it through the program.

John Andrews:

That's tight.

Charlie Roadman:

Because they're relapsing or something about their life isn't stable. I would even say you can't complete it unless you have some baseline of stability.

John Andrews:

That's right. You got to be sober. That's the one thing. So there's different levels of care. There's intensive outpatient that we're talking about, and then there's inpatient treatment where you go somewhere and you stay. And usually when you tell someone inpatient treatment, you're going to have to go and stay. They're like, "I don't want to do that. I can't do that. It'll affect my job, my family." So my response to that will be, "Well, then you better stay sober. If you stay sober, you take that off the table." They're not going to take you if you're sober. So the way to take that out of the equation is stay sober.

But some people still can't do that. They fully want to and intend to, and they just can't do it. The addiction is so strong that they need a higher level of care. They need to go to inpatient treatment to be able to stay sober.

Because in intensive outpatient, we can't separate you from the drink or the drug. Even though it's a lot to do our program, you still have a lot of free time. With the Monday through Thursday program, we don't even see them Friday, Saturday, Sunday. That's a lot of time on your own to where you could do whatever.

Charlie Roadman:

And from the criminal justice system, like you said, you've got the intensive outpatient, and then the next level is inpatient.

John Andrews:

That's right.

Charlie Roadman:

And then the next level is county jail.

John Andrews:

Right.

Charlie Roadman:

If you can't... In county jail, no matter what you see in the movies, you're not going to be able to get illegal substances.

John Andrews:

That's right, like the SMART program, five months in jail treatment.

Charlie Roadman:

Right. So the IOP, in one sense, it's kind of like your last hope?

John Andrews:

That's right.

Charlie Roadman:

So in this sobriety that people usually start with, I say even after two weeks of sobriety, they're just different people a lot of times.

John Andrews:

For sure. And a lot of times... And this happens all the time. I'll do an assessment on someone and I'll ask them, "When was the last time you had a drink?" And they'll say, "When I got the DWI a year and a half ago," or six months ago, or three months ago, or whenever it was that they got arrested. And my next question will be, "Well, what have you been doing to stay sober?" And they'll say, "Well, I just don't want to put my family through that." But they don't really tell me anything that they've been doing to stay sober.

And then I'll pry a little bit more, and we'll figure out that they've still been drinking, that it's not really true. And they might've drank the day before they came into the assessment. It happens all the time.

And sometimes, people literally up till the day they start the group, they've used. And that's okay. We just ask that once you start the group, you make the commitment you're not going to do it during that time period. And the legal aspect of it, you're not supposed to be doing it for the legal reasons. It's actually, and you can probably talk more to that of it, that-

Charlie Roadman:

Well, there are some situations where the rule hasn't been put in place like they're not ordered. But most scenarios with a DWI, especially if there's an alcohol ignition interlock device or something like that, that a judge has ordered. Of course, my legal advice is not a drop of alcohol ever, just because it's really hard to get in trouble if you're sober.

John Andrews:

That's right.

Charlie Roadman:

You're going to try.

John Andrews:

And that's the other thing over the years that has been real clear with the people that come to us and do these programs. They don't get in trouble when they're sober. Almost 99.5% of the time, it's alcohol drug related. If you take that out of the equation, they've never been arrested.

Charlie Roadman:

Right. So you've got people coming in. So what things do you do in class? How do you move them through this six week process?

John Andrews:

Yeah, that's a good question. That's what everybody always wants to know. What are we going to do for three hours? And the other thing I'll say, the three hours goes quick. They see that the first night when they come. They're dreading it. They're dreading the three hours, the four nights a week. But then they get there and they see, and they're like, "Wow, that went quick."

But again, after we get past what brought you here, we do check-ins every day. "How was your day? Anything new going on with you?" And it's a group of people. So usually, somebody has something new. Especially on Mondays and Thursdays when we haven't seen somebody for three days, and then we're about to not see you for three days. Because the nature of the timing of the group Monday through Thursday, we don't see you Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Charlie Roadman:

How big is the group?

John Andrews:

Yeah. Usually... And we've been doing it over Zoom, which makes it real convenient. You don't have to drive in. At the end of the night, you're home. But the groups have been smaller with Zoom, usually no more than eight people, which is really nice. And sometimes, we'll get as small as three people, which there's advantages both ways. There's advantages to smaller groups, advantages to bigger groups. When we're in person, we would go up to about 12 people in a group.

Charlie Roadman:

And are they going to go back to in-person, or is it transitioning that way?

John Andrews:

I think so, at some point. But we've been continuing with the Zoom. We found that for a lot of people, it's really convenient to do it, and they wouldn't be able to do it without it. It enables some people that wouldn't be able to because of their schedule, where they live. Being able to work it in, it's easier to do it over Zoom.

Charlie Roadman:

So back to what you were saying earlier, so you do a check in like what's been going on. So people, they'll tell you about anything, right? "I took my daughter, started kindergarten," or whatever.

John Andrews:

We try to keep the focus alcohol and drug related. Now yeah, it's okay to talk about family stuff, but we try to not steer too far off into other topics. We try to keep it on the alcohol, drug type things. But obviously it's okay to talk about family, because that's very important.

Charlie Roadman:

But the program, it must have a curriculum. So then, okay, you check in. Then what kind of other stuff do you talk about or do?

John Andrews:

Yeah, and that's another thing that'll come up. There's sometimes a lot of resistance to maybe AA or 12 step programs. And I always tell every people, "This is not AA," although I'm a big fan of AA. I'm also a fan of whatever's going to work for someone to stay sober and to be okay. And so our goal is to help you find what's going to work for you as you go through this. But I also say, "Keep an open mind towards AA," because we've had a lot of people... I always tell a story. I had a lady when she first came to do the program, she said, "John, if you try to get me to go to AA, I'm going to get up and walk out of your group because I'm not going to do it." And this was when we were meeting in person and we had about 10 people in the group, and there were several other ladies in the group that were going to AA. And she started attending the group. And at some point, she started going to the meetings because of those other ladies that were going. And by the end, she was like, "Hey, I'm going to continue doing this after I get out."

A big thing that we talk about in the group is, "What are you going to do when the group's over? Because we're not going to cure you going through this program. And if you're going to have success after the group's over, you're going to continue to do something after the group's over. So what's that going to be for you? That's the big focus on why you're here in the program, is to help you figure out what's that going to be for you. What are you going to be willing to do after the group's over?"

Charlie Roadman:

In the courtroom or my clients, a lot of the times when they have some arrest, they'll say, "It was for this reason. My grandfather passed away," or, "I got fired," or things like that. And they describe that in a way, they want me to tell the prosecutors, "This was just a one-time thing." And of course you and I know that basically bad stuff, sad stuff is going to happen to all of us for our entire lives. And so what you're describing there with the IOP program is giving them tools that they can use when the next bad thing happens.

John Andrews:

That's right. Coping skills, whatever you want to call them, tools. That's a big focus also during the time we're here is helping people. When people show up, I always... Anytime we have someone new, I put up an outline, kind of what we're going to be going over. And a big goal is to be stable in recovery. That's your first big goal. And stable recovery is much more than just not drinking or doing drugs. It's actively doing things to help you stay sober.

And so a question throughout the program is, what are you going to do? In addition to come to the group. Because again, the group's going to end after five weeks or six weeks, whenever. What are you going to do after that's over? And so a big focus is on helping them figure out what they're going to do, and then be able to recognize warning signs and triggers that can get them off track. Whether it be things, like you were talking about earlier, sad events that happen. Maybe it's loneliness, not being able to hang around the old crowd. Or hanging around old friends would be a warning sign, or old places that you used to go to.

People stop drinking or doing drugs, and that can be a big change. You have to change the people that you were hanging around. And all of a sudden, you can look around and there's nobody around. And that can get pretty lonely initially. That can change hopefully through time. But at first, it might be pretty hard to go through that. You're lonely, you miss that old crowd, those old places, and you don't really know how to spend your time and things to do sober.

Charlie Roadman:

Can you describe the orientation process or... Because I know there's different types of IOPs. But if a client comes in, how do you evaluate them and figure out where to put them?

John Andrews:

Yeah, the first thing they're going to do is an assessment. And an assessment usually takes about 45 minutes to an hour. And that assessment is designed to help point you in the right direction of what would be best for you to do treatment wise.

We talked earlier about the difference between IOPs and inpatient treatment. During that assessment, the goal is to find out the proper placement as far as treatment goes, and maybe come up with a diagnosis for the patient.

You've got to meet criteria to be able to do treatment. You don't just do treatment because you got a DWI or the judge says you need to do IOP. You've got to meet criteria from a clinical standpoint, and that comes out during the assessment. There's certain things that the person that's doing the assessment is looking for, and they're going to ask questions that are going to help them determine the proper placement for you.

Charlie Roadman:

So a 45-minute assessment. And then programs are just ongoing, so they can just get in fairly quickly?

John Andrews:

That's right. You do an assessment, and then you could conceivably start the next day. And usually, you really want to start as soon as possible. If you have insurance, insurance, they don't always want to pay for it. They don't always want to cover it.

And one thing they'll use sometimes to not cover it is if you wait too long to get into treatment. If you've been sober too long, they'll say, "Well, you don't need treatment. Why should we pay for treatment? You've been able to stay sober all this time." And if you come in and do the assessment and wait a couple weeks, two to three weeks, that sometimes can make it more difficult to get the approval from the insurance company.

Charlie Roadman:

When you talk about people who have been sober for a while, it's amazing in my line of work, how many people have been sober for two years, five years, 10 years. And they relapse, and they get in trouble within two weeks. It doesn't take them years to get in trouble.

John Andrews:

Unfortunately, you see it all the time. And I tell people, unfortunately, I get way more bad calls than I do good calls. Sometimes I'll have somebody call, "John, I've been sober two years, just wanted to let you know." But I get those other calls where, "Hey, I had stayed sober, but I slipped up. And within a week, I got another DWI. I need to do an IOP."

Charlie Roadman:

Right, right. So do you guys talk about current events as a way of getting conversations going? Because back in the classes I taught, boy, you just bring up anything.

John Andrews:

Yeah. Like I said earlier, we try to keep it on topic, revolving around alcohol and drug use. But yeah, stuff comes in about... Especially if it has relevance.

Charlie Roadman:

That's what I mean - because the news is full of a celebrity that gets ADWI, or the ankle monitor, or whatever. Or just celebrities that are known for drinking too much.

John Andrews:

Sure, yeah.

Charlie Roadman:

I mean always, people would just start talking. They could talk for hours if you just started with a celebrity.

John Andrews:

Yeah. Again, this cuts across all demographics, whether it be famous people, or your ordinary, average people. As far as people that do the group, I've had doctors, lawyers, even had a judge one time. And just the wide spectrum. People with disabilities.

And people will identify with the other group members. That's the other thing. When you get into the group, that identification is a big part of the program, being able to relate to the other people in the group. At the end of the day, everybody's got the thing in common with the substance use, and that's what kind of connects everyone in the group.

Charlie Roadman:

So just to close out here, John, if someone's listening to this now that's thinking about it, I mean really everything you already said has been... How would you try to convince them to just make the call?

John Andrews:

Yeah, I would tell them there's really nothing to fear. It's something that's going to be good for you. The time you put into it will come back to you in some way. There'll be a reward for it. It may not come right as you do it. But later on, you'll see a benefit to doing it in some way. Whether you feel better, you feel better about yourself, your family feels good about it.

You can tell your family all day long that you're going to change your ways, you're going to get sober. But when they see you doing something, that goes a long way. When they see you making the effort to go to something four days a week for five weeks, as opposed to just saying you're not going to do this anymore, they've heard all that before. They want to see something different. They want to see you doing something. And this goes a long way towards that end of it.

Charlie Roadman:

It really does. And you're absolutely right. I mean, the prosecutors, I could tell them anything, and they just look at me like until they see it in paper, demonstrated a certificate proof that... Because you're not going to get a certificate for IOP unless you complete the IOP. And it's great for my cases, because the prosecutors start to go, "Okay, we've got something to work with here. We don't need to put them in jail. They're stable at this point."

John Andrews:

That's right.

Charlie Roadman:

Well, John, I just love this. I could talk for another hour, but I appreciate it.

John Andrews:

Yeah, thank you Charlie. And thanks for all the work you do. You do a great job, and I appreciate what you do. And being educated about treatment like you are, Travis County is such a great county to be in.

Charlie Roadman:

It really is.

John Andrews:

It's a very treatment friendly place. But I appreciate you and thank you for having me here today. I appreciate it. Yeah, thanks.