In Camden County, tales of hope as addicts graduate from drugs

Admier Franklin recalls using so many drugs that he sometimes didn't know what they were.

"I did a little bit of everything," said Franklin, 38, of Camden.

That was before he entered the drug court program - for the second time - five years ago in Camden County.

On Tuesday, upon graduating from the program with 20 others, he had a high school diploma, a wife, and a job at Atlantic Avenue Meats in Camden. And most of all, he said, he was clean from drugs.

Stories of recovery such as Franklin's echoed through the packed sixth-floor courtroom in Superior Court in Camden, as each graduate accepted a plaque for fulfilling requirements.

The drug court program, which started in Camden County in 1996, can entail years' worth of drug tests and court appearances. Individuals who complete it typically escape more serious time behind bars.

The state said that more than 3,700 people have finished the program since 2002, when it became statewide, and that most leave with jobs and do not have further convictions.

Judges in Tuesday's ceremony stressed that the real test begins when the drug court graduates have to supervise themselves.

"The fight's not over," Judge Deborah Silverman Katz said. She was quoting the heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, who spoke to graduates of the drug court program in Essex County two years ago and warned them they would fight addiction "until the day you die."

Most of the stories told in Camden, however, were of hope.

"Society doesn't give us a chance, and I'm here to tell you that we can go from the bottom to the top," said Jay Sorge, 37, of Cherry Hill, who once roamed the streets of Atlantic City without a home.

Back then, he used heroin and crack cocaine, he said. Now, with completion of the program and a move to Delaware on the way, his life is back together.