Recovery Raw, county partner on diversionary program

In nearly 20 years as Putnam County prosecutor, and even longer as an attorney overall, Tim Bookwalter has seen effective methods come and go.

When he first became prosecutor, methamphetamine was a problem locally. The drug was generally homemade, so officials focused on the manufacture of the drug to cut off the source. These methods worked, for a time.

About 10 years ago, the Matrix Program — an outpatient addiction treatment effort for alcohol and drug dependence — came into vogue and was effective or a time.

For various reasons, including changes to how the program itself was administered, that method also became less effective over time.

Today, meth that is used locally originates in Mexico, and the local problem seems as strong as it’s ever been.

Tim Bookwalter

“All the things we were doing aren’t working anymore,” Bookwalter said.

With this in mind, Bookwalter began looking around for what was working in the community. He and Chief Deputy Prosecutor Austin Malayer began discussing Recovery Raw, the local program led by Eric Rippy, which has successfully been “walking next to” individuals in recovery for more than six years now.

“I heard all these rumors about your program. I hear all these anecdotal stories,” Bookwalter told Rippy over a recent lunch. “I don’t believe that someone with a bunch of degrees or a judge on the bench can get through to these people.”

Then there’s Rippy, whose story of recovery has been told before. Rippy has been through his own recovery journey, having served a prison sentence related to a painkiller addiction. During his time behind bars, Rippy initially got into a recovery group simply as a way to reduce his sentence and get out quicker.

Then something happened. Even as Rippy felt he was just going through the motions, Rippy’s story and approach began to reach his fellow inmates. At a certain point, he made a choice to get real with himself and his own recovery. Once out of prison, Rippy ended up relocating to Putnam County, getting a job with Duke Energy, marrying wife Brooke and starting a family.

He also founded Recovery Raw, continuing that approach to addiction recovery that’s “heavy on accountability and light on boundaries.”

Through this voluntary, weekly program, Rippy has managed to reach a number of people who were repeatedly appearing in local courts.

“A lot of the people in Raw were going through a revolving door, and they haven’t been back in five years,” Rippy said.

So what started as Bookwalter and Malayer picking Rippy’s brain about what might work became partnering with Recovery Raw on a new kind of diversionary program.

“How do we take his success with individuals who are walking through the door voluntarily and apply it to individuals who are in this program?” Malayer asked. “These are two separate things.”

Eric Rippy

“I talked about a diversion program and the benefit it could be in this community,” Rippy said. “I don’t remember if it was them or me, but we decided it could be good to have Recovery Raw get involved and create a diversionary program.”

Rippy already saw a diversionary program as a need in the community, as it had been mentioned to him on many occasions. He quickly realized the Prosecutor’s Office wanted the same thing.

“These are parents, these are grandparents, some of them are military,” Rippy said. “Tim and Austin don’t want to lock them away and have them carry a felony forever.”

A diversionary program is a way to make that happen. People sign on for a year in the program, after which the felony drug charge will be dropped if all terms are completed.

“It’s a major incentive,” Bookwalter said.

“It will help them get through it a lot better if they know at the end of the year, that felony will go away,” Rippy said. “We don’t stop because we see the light. We stop because we feel the heat.”

While what constitutes “the heat” varies from person to person, the possibility of carrying a felony conviction forever is certainly that line for a lot of people.

In a nutshell, the program is for people arrested on multiple counts for drug-related offenses, with the accused person agreeing to plea guilty to a lesser charge or charges but entering the program in order to have felony charges dropped. (Note that the program is not for repeat offenders.)

From that point, the defendant must serve 30 days in jail, then do daily reporting for two weeks. They also meet with Rippy weekly during this time.

The next step is weekly reporting, which is then moved to monthly reporting for the remainder of the first six months. The defendants are also subject to drug tests throughout this process.

The requirements become less frequent in the second six months, after which the felony will be dropped by the prosecution.

Throughout, Rippy maintains the mantra, “We don’t treat the addiction, we treat the trauma.”

In this light, there is also a therapist who is part of the program, providing six hours of therapy for each individual involved. There is also a specialist who will work with them on the science of addiction.

Rippy also focuses on empathy and carrying for something beyond themselves and their addiction.

On the other hand, Rippy has also always been big on accountability in his approach to recovery. While he may understand that underlying trauma lies at the heart of addiction, this doesn’t release the individual from responsibility for his or her own actions.

“It’s important that the people eligible for this know that my whole outlook on prosecutors has changed,” Rippy said. “Tim and Austin were trying to make it less of a burden on the defendants than I was. These guys were like, ‘We don’t want this to be a burden on them.’”

The cost of the program is about $50,000 annually, for which Bookwalter utilized $25,000 from the pretrial diversion program to fund the second half of 2023. From there, the Putnam County Council was receptive to funding the program in the 2024 budget. Bookwalter noted that some approaches take hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Half a year in, there are no final results to report, though Malayer is confident.

“I think it will be successful because the secret sauce is Eric,” Malayer said.

Rippy doesn’t go this far, though he tries to offer something he didn’t see when he was in prison — hope. In his own life, he recalls how he was in prison not that long ago and now has a life he would not have imagined.

“When I was in prison, I never saw a story of hope,” Rippy said. “I try to be a story of hope for these people.”