The House is a Home: Lori Johnson, executive director of Amicus House, stands outside the substance abuse recovery home located along S. Buena Vista Avenue in San Jose. Established in 1998 by Johnson and her husband, Richard, a pioneer in the treatment of alcoholics and drug abusers, Amicus House is a model for several other treatment programs around the state.

By Elaine Bartlett

By the time she was arrested at age 38, Carola McWilliams had been using drugs and alcohol for almost as long as she could remember.

It had started in her childhood with alcohol, eating liqueur-filled chocolates, taking sips of whatever her parents were drinking. By 14, she was experimenting with drugs. Speed, or methamphetamine, became her fix of choice.

She would go on to graduate from high school, get a job, get married and become a mother, but the addiction never went away. Eventually she was making speed for sale. Once, having taken pride in her housekeeping and organizational skills, she watched her house fall apart. Then her daughter started using and became an addict by the age of 16.

When the police finally caught up with McWilliams, they handcuffed her in front of her house and arrested her daughter with a gun to her head, she says.

“I’d been for many years saying, ‘God, I hate my life,’” McWilliams recalls today. “I didn’t want to live another 20 years as an addict. I didn’t want to see 60 years old the way I was living. When they arrested me, I remember looking up [to the sky]—and I didn’t have belief in God at this time—but I remember looking up and saying, ‘Thank you. It’s over.’”

It’s been a little more than six years since that winter’s day—the day McWilliams and her daughter began the road to recovery, she says. For McWilliams’ daughter, staying clean has been a struggle: some steps forward, some steps back. She’s been sober for just a little over a year.

But for McWilliams, in those six years there’s been no looking back.

After her arrest, she enrolled in a drug treatment program called Amicus House.

“When I came in for the first interview,” she recalls, “the counselor asked, ‘Are you done?’ And that hit me really hard. She was the first person in my entire life that ever hit me with such a direct question [about my drug abuse]. And I just looked at her and said, ‘Yeah, I am. I’m totally done.’”

McWilliams is one of 615 clients to have graduated Amicus House since it was founded in 1998 by husband and wife team Richard and Lori Johnson. Since leaving Amicus, McWilliams, 45, has graduated college with a 3.95 grade point average and has begun teaching rehabilitation classes to convicted drunken drivers. She’s now planning to get a counseling degree so she can work more closely with those in recovery.

McWilliams is far from the only success story to come out of Amicus House. Since the Johnsons established the program at a rambling farmhouse on S. Buena Vista Avenue just south of W. San Carlos, Amicus House has gone on to earn the accolades of judges and attorneys in the Santa Clara County court system and those within the recovery community for its treatment of alcoholics and drug abusers. In a field where lax management and cases of fraud have frequently marked substance abuse treatment providers with a scarlet letter, Amicus House, with its 66 percent success rate, is a program that stands apart.

“I’ve never had any reason to doubt anything that happens at Amicus House,” says Paul Cole, a judge who handles drug cases at the Santa Clara County Superior Court’s Terraine Courthouse in downtown San Jose. “And that’s a high mark for a [drug treatment] program to have.”

Changing the system

Building Amicus House into one of the most highly regarded treatment facilities in the county was not without its challenges, however.

When Richard Johnson entered the substance abuse treatment field in 1977, the courts’ approach to alcoholics and drug offenders was a very different one than today. Frequently, drunken drivers and drug addicts were penalized solely with jail time, and few treatment programs were available to prevent recidivism.

Within the Santa Clara County court system, Johnson became a prominent advocate for a new approach, encouraging judges to allow addicts and alcoholics to attend treatment programs in lieu of jail time, on the argument that treating their disease would prevent further run-ins with the law. Later, as treatment programs became more popular and horror stories began cropping up about poorly managed facilities, Johnson advocated creating standards enforceable by law. Amicus House would be one of the first facilities certified through a program with the district attorney’s office that monitors treatment providers.

“I think he was the first person the local courts listened to about drug treatment programs,” says Cole. “And a lot of what he accomplished was in establishing the accountability standards of these programs. He was very much a leader.”

In 1989 Johnson and his wife, Lori, started a drug treatment program called Mariah, eventually running 10 facilities throughout the Bay Area, from Redwood City to San Jose, before selling to a business partner in 1998 and founding Amicus House.

When Richard Johnson died in 2001, his passing was widely mourned within the legal and recovery communities. David Byers, who investigates the county’s substance abuse treatment facilities for the district attorney’s office, remembers nearly 300 people attending the funeral—judges, attorneys and former addicts all crowded together in one room to remember the longtime advocate.

“It was packed,” he recalls. “The recovery field had lost an important individual with Richard.”

Lori Johnson, then in her late 30s, took on the full responsibility of managing Amicus House and continuing Richard’s advocacy in the courts. Having entered into the substance abuse treatment field through marriage, she’d worked alongside her husband for years and had become an expert in her own right.

Those familiar with the program say Lori Johnson hardly missed a beat in picking up the full responsibility of managing Amicus House’s five facilities.

“For someone who came into this job by marriage, she’s done a remarkable job,” says Byers, characterizing her attitude as “caring but tough.”

“She goes by her rules. She stands by her rules,” he says. “Her attitude is, ‘We’ve got a job to do and we’re going to do it.’”

Taking the steps

Most of the clients the Johnsons have treated since 1998 have started out in the farmhouse on S. Buena Vista, entering a highly structured program that includes 40 hours a week of education sessions and recovery or treatment planning. For a minimum of one month, clients remain under the constant supervision of the five on-site staff members.

The second stage of treatment moves clients to one of the four other Amicus House facilities in San Jose, where those in recovery work or attend school while residing at the sober living environment, or SLE. They are supervised by a house manager and continue counseling for at least five months. Out in the SLE, where the risks of relapse are greater, the rate of random drug and alcohol testing increases, and for those clients who are doing the treatment program in lieu of jail time, results are reported back to the courts.

In the third phase of treatment, which focuses on relapse prevention, clients attend weekly counseling meetings for at least three months.

The primary goal in all three phases, but particularly the first, say Amicus House staff, is to teach the client the tools necessary to transition into a drug-free lifestyle. The program, based on the 12-step process developed by Alcoholics Anonymous, teaches clients how to meditate and to improve their conflict-resolution skills through role-playing and group sessions. Clients also learn how to resume a normal daily schedule balanced with work, chores and free time, and occasionally help out elderly neighbors with chores like lawn mowing or taking out the garbage.

While readjusting to “normal life” or acquiring certain skills for the first time can be difficult for clients who are learning to live without their addiction, administrators say, the attitude of Amicus House staff remains forward-looking.

“Quite often when clients come into treatment, they’re broken and beaten down,” says Carrie Lewis, director of administration. “The addiction has taken control of their life. So we try to take an optimistic approach: ‘You can control your life.’ It’s hard sometimes. You have to look at things you’ve been burying for years through the addiction. But I tell my clients that they can do it.”

Sometimes just immersion into the first phase of the program can be a significant first step toward recovery as clients realize that they aren’t alone in their addiction.

“Some of our clients have a history of relapse,” Johnson says. “They’ve been to AA; they know they’re not alone. But if you’re talking about the first-timer, the amount of guilt and shame they walk in with, you can see it just start to sort of fall off them as they realize, ‘Other people have done what I’ve done.’”

That recognition of community can be humbling, staffers say, but also empowering. Although clients are encouraged to look at Amicus House as a supportive environment, program administrators make clear that each client is ultimately responsible for ensuring his recovery is a success.

“The key really is whether the individual is ready,” says Johnson. “Sometimes I get clients and they complain about another program. Or a client will say, ‘The only reason I’m clean and sober is because of Amicus House.’ I always try to point out to them, ‘But no. We work with all clients the same. Some clients stay clean, some don’t. … It’s about the readiness of the individual.’”

For McWilliams, that emphasis on self-sufficiency has made all the difference.

“I put out my hand to say ‘help me,’ ” she says, “and I get into a program where they get you up in the morning, you take your shower, you go to groups, you do your chores, and you participate. You’re participating in life again. I remembered that from years and years ago. There was a part of me that I had lost, and it was there again.”

For more information about Amicus House, 466 S. Buena Vista Ave., contact Lori Johnson at 408.294.2277
Reprinted from an article in the Rose Garden Resident, www.rosegardenresident.com