SPEAKING HIS TRUTH to Help the Next Generation R oderick G ordon : C lient
R oderick Gordon has been attending meetings at STAND for about a year. He shares his story: “My drug of choice was marijuana.” Starting at the age of thirteen, he was smoking every day by sixteen. By the time he graduated high school, he was fully addicted. “I really had to smoke a lot. That led to my first incarceration in 2018 for possession of marijuana and crossing guard lines with a firearm. I was high and had an anxiety attack from the marijuana, and instead of telling the police officers I had a gun—because it was in my name, so I could have just said something—I panicked.” While he was being processed for possession, they found the firearm. “That's how I got that charge.” Roderick was released the same weekend. “I went three months sober, and then I went to court.” The problem was that he couldn’t smoke while on probation, so he turned to alcohol. “That’s when my drinking started to become an addiction.” He figured out how to smoke and drink. “I went to have the drug test every three months, so I would smoke for two months, then drink for the other month.”
He was working at the time, but when COVID hit, Roderick lost his job and turned to selling marijuana, leading to his current charge. In the Dekalb County drug court, he was referred to the STAND program. “It wasn’t mandatory for us to go, but once I went, I grew a relationship with the staff there and have been going there ever since.” At first, it was an emotional roller coaster. “When I first entered drug court and started attending meetings at STAND, I used to beat myself up a lot because I felt like I’d wasted a lot of time.” But as he learned life lessons at both drug court and STAND, things started to click. “They rearranged my thinking. Now I feel like everything happened for a purpose, for me to grow into the individual I am today.” And Roderick found strength in sharing his experiences with others. “My passion now is to help youth offenders and to
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