cannabisnews.com: Counselor Fails to Halt Own Slide Back to Drugs!





Counselor Fails to Halt Own Slide Back to Drugs!
Posted by FoM on April 14, 1999 at 05:41:33 PT
Source: JS Online
Waukesha Although Mark Lemke started his adult life as a drug addict and petty criminal, he worked his way into sobriety and a 20-year career as a highly regarded alcohol and drug abuse counselor before losing it all. 
The allure of alcohol and crack cocaine resurfaced and sent him into a downward spiral, costing him his job, his wife and, finally, his freedom. On Tuesday, Lemke, 46, was sentenced to jail for recent drug-related offenses, including terrorizing his girlfriend with a loaded gun in a cocaine-induced rage and driving a motorcycle while drunk with a loaded 9mm handgun in his jacket. After 20 years of sobriety, Lemke, who as a counselor had taught peers how to avoid drugs and alcohol, relapsed. "It's scary," his attorney, Frank Cappozzo, said after the hearing. "If this can happen to him, it can happen to anybody." Assistant District Attorney Lesli Kasten said: "It sounds like he had a lot going for him, and now he has nothing. He was clean for 20 years . . . and he still got back into it." Lemke told Circuit Judge Joseph Wimmer he was ashamed and remorseful for his slip into the life he led 25 years ago. "Basically, I lost everything," he said. "This is very unusual behavior for me. I'm working hard . . . to turn my life around." According to court records and statements in court by Cappozzo and Kasten: While in jail since being arrested in December at the Como Hotel with a crack pipe, Lemke completed an intensive substance abuse treatment program offered through the jail. His counselor called Lemke's participation "outstanding." Lemke had been intimately involved in teaching participants in such programs for two decades. In his early 20s, after graduating from high school in Appleton, Lemke became a "street drug addict," dabbling in alcohol, marijuana and cocaine. He was convicted of drug possession and retail theft. He turned the corner after treatment and got training as a drug abuse counselor at the former Kettle Moraine Hospital, in Summit. There he was hired and became assistant to the president until he quit in 1990, probation officials reported. The hospital closed in the early '90s, and Lemke worked part time in the same field, at a halfway house in Appleton and at the Willough Treatment Center in Naples, Fla., where he and his wife lived for a few years. After returning to Wisconsin, Lemke started using crack cocaine again. When his wife found out, she filed for divorce. Cappozzo said she had told Lemke that if he ever started using drugs again, the marriage would be over. Lemke headed to the Hazelden treatment center, 55 miles north of Minneapolis, to get help. He talked to his wife about a reconciliation. However, she committed suicide in July 1997, sending Lemke into a deep depression and more drug use. Then he met a 33-year-old woman with a long drug history. The two became roommates at Waukesha's Mountain Village apartments. She had no job and later went to jail for not paying child support for her sons. "He (Lemke) was supporting her and supporting their joint drug habit," Cappozzo said. Lemke was arrested several times between February and December of 1998 for carrying concealed weapons and for traffic violations. On Sept. 6, a motorist called police after seeing Lemke falling off his motorcycle on busy Blue Mound Road. He registered a 0.18 blood-alcohol level and had a crack cocaine pipe and a loaded 9mm handgun in his jacket. Authorities said that on Nov. 17, after being released from a short stay in the county's Mental Health Center, he had taken cocaine and had a couple of alcoholic drinks before fighting violently with his new girlfriend. Cappozzo said the woman was an "extremely negative influence on Mark's life," stole items from him and cheated on him. Cappozzo said he marveled that his client, after years of experience with drug addicts in denial, couldn't see the warning signs of relapse and bad relationships. "He's seen it from both sides of the fence," Cappozzo said. "He stands before you today . . . admitting that he was in an extremely self-destructive spiral (and) needs to be absolutely sober at all times." Lemke pleaded no contest on Feb. 12 to charges including carrying a concealed weapon, false imprisonment and pointing a firearm at another. Wimmer imposed the sentence recommended by Kasten: a stayed 3 1/2-year maximum prison term with four years on probation and six months in the County Jail. Lemke, who has already served five months in jail, may be allowed to transfer to a treatment center, however. "It really gives the defendant an opportunity to clean up his act," Kasten said. 
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