A network of sisters: Applying the science of social media and data to addiction in Oklahoma

BY DAMION SHADE

Lindsay McAteer’s life changed Aug. 8, 2014 when she was sitting in a Tulsa drug treatment facility suffering the early symptoms of methamphetamine withdrawal. It was the first time she’d been sober in 20 years. A few months earlier, she was pulled over by a group of unmarked police cars. She later learned they had been surveilling her for weeks.

That day, she was in Broken Arrow to deliver pounds of meth stowed away in her trunk. McAteer was facing 12 years to life in prison for trafficking, but at the last moment she received a lifeline. She was eligible for the Tulsa-based Family and Children’s Services program called Women in Recovery (WIR), which could save her from spending the next decade in prison.

“I showed up to court having gotten high on the way there,” McAteer said. “I was still using right up until the day I entered the program. None of it seemed real to me, but my attorney was amazing. She honestly didn’t even really give me another choice. She said this program is willing to take you, and this is what you’re doing. She saw something in me. Had I not been eligible for Women in Recovery, I’d have definitely gone to prison.”

Read the full article at TheTulsaVoice.com