Recovery Court: This judicial diversion program converts sweat equity into freedom

This story is republished from The Daily Yonder. Read the original article.

Editor’s Note: This is the second installment of a series on a judicially sponsored fitness recovery program in rural Virginia. Today we visit a court-sponsored workout, where some people who face drug charges get a chance to "work off" some of their legal woes through adhering to an exercise program. And the judges who came up with the idea exercise alongside them.

We're instructed to form a big circle in the gym.  People are clustered together in groups chatting and laughing while we try to follow instructions. 

This is Recovery Fitness, and trainer Walter Midkiff is handing out 6-foot lengths of bamboo-like PVC pipes.  Everyone stands an arm’s length from each other holding these pipes.  Nobody knows what Midkiff is up to, and people chuckle as he shows us what to do.

This feels more like a group game than a fitness class. He tells us when we hear the whistle, each person has to leave their pipe standing upright on the gym floor – like a flag pole – and scramble to their neighbor's and hold it upright before it falls.  If you're too slow and drop your neighbor's PVC pipe, you're out of the circle. 

The game proceeds until only one person is left standing – the winner.  We're laughing because we're adults playing this game and it's really fun. 

Midkiff's program is a requirement for Judges Lee Harrell and Brett Geisler's Recovery Court.  It's a weekly exercise group offered in two locations: Harrell's courtroom and the gymnasium at Galax Presbyterian Church.  Alongside participants recovering from substance use disorder, law enforcement officers, social workers, and judges workout in Midkiff's intensive, community-building fitness program.  This means that someone who is trying to stay out of jail for a drug offense is sweating alongside the judge who is giving them a chance at a clean slate.

Tonight, the gym floor is organized with stations targeting muscle groups.  People progress through the stations lifting weights, lobbing sandbags, and doing crunches.  Music thumps from an oversized speaker.  A grandparent has brought his grandchildren – a pair of bright-eyed and determined elementary schoolers – and patiently guides them through the exercises.  This grandfather is working hard to graduate from Recovery Court.  It will be a chance for him to clear his name from drug offense charges.  Watching his gentle supervision of his grandkids, it's difficult to imagine he'd ever faced trouble with the law.

I ask Midkiff why fitness has been added to Recovery Court's requirements. He answers without hesitating: "Fitness is key to everyone's benefit.  Somebody who's recovering from substance use disorder has really wrecked their body.  They're broken.  Fitness can fix that and help reinforce long-term recovery.” 

We talk about the effect drug and alcohol abuse have on a body's organs, brain function, and muscle strength. 

The program has been in operation since last year.

“Judge Harrell came to me with the idea for a fitness class in 2022,” Midkiff says. “We both knew the benefits of fitness – especially on brain chemistry with endorphins and dopamine.  We thought if we could help bodies in recovery learn to produce their own endorphins, people might have a better chance at staying in recovery.”

In its first months of operation, Judges Harrell and Geisler began to notice that fewer participants were having setbacks and relapses. While the program is in its infancy, the results are promising. 

Midkiff says the workouts are designed to get the heart rate into the moderate or hard range. Then he says something that catches my attention.  “We want to get people into a ‘fake stress’ situation to show them how they can get through it.” 

Midkiff describes how many people with substance use disorder cope with the stress of daily life through self-medication.  A primary goal in Recovery Fitness' regimen is to expose the body to stress so the individual can experience what it feels like.  When people develop resilience in their ability to cope with a fight-or-flight response to stress, they're less likely to rely on drugs or alcohol.  This is true for everyone, but for someone who's developed a substance use disorder, it takes time to learn or re-learn these healthy stress responses.

Midkiff also describes the isolation that occurs in people who live with substance addiction.  For everyone, working out in groups is a routine part of joining a health club, for people in recovery, a group activity adds another layer of therapeutic care.  Midkiff says that exercising in a “group setting and working together – teamwork and interdependence” adds something to their lives that has been missing.  Someone isolating from family, friends, and co-workers to nurse drinking and drug habits benefits from establishing connections with a healthy community.  Our PVC pipe challenge is building connections.

I ask Shana (not her real name) what this fitness group means to her.

“At first I wasn't excited about it because it's fitness.  But once I started doing it, it made me feel better about myself.  It made me feel better about sobriety.  It was just an eye-opener.” 

She didn’t have a history of working out or playing sports before starting recovery workouts “Now I look forward to coming up here (for Fitness Recovery) every Thursday.  I can't wait to get back in there.” 

Shana says she now walks every day. “If I could, I'd play volleyball every day.” 

I'm surprised when she mentions volleyball and ask about it. “I love volleyball.  It's something new that I tried with a sobriety group here in Galax.  I love volleyball.” 

Shana tells me that she's been involved with drugs for around 10 years and that she started doing drugs when she was 15.  After facing a recent distribution charge, she thought she'd spend the rest of her life in jail.  “Recovery Court made me have a whole new outlook on life.  Like I've got something in life that I can do; like I can go back to school.  I can do just about anything I want to do.”

Shana and I return to the gym and join the group now sitting in a circle on the floor.  Judge Harrell closes with words of encouragement and invites a retired sheriff to lead the group in a closing prayer.  As we collect our gym bags and disperse across town, I ask Midkiff if he thinks there's a reason this program works well in a rural community.  He said more manageable group sizes may help. It's easier to create a sense of belonging for 25 participants than it would for 75. That smaller scale may make it easier to care for others. “Smaller communities have the heart to care for people.  It's not a job.  It's a calling.”