Emotional gathering supports Teen Challenge graduates
The parents of two Minnesota Teen Challenge graduates said they once only had peaceful sleep when their sons were in jail or the hospital.
In between there was chaos, pain and fear.
Central Minnesota Teen Challenge in south Brainerd is a Christian faith-based drug treatment residential program where residents spend about a year. Thursday, two young men graduated from the program in an emotional gathering of family and friends.
Stewart Sawdey, 26, who grew up in Nisswa, was accompanied by his girlfriend, Jessica Homes, at his graduation ceremony Thursday from Minnesota Teen Challenge's 13-month treatment course in Brainerd. Sawdey said this program's success came after 15 years of drug and alcohol use and many previously failed attempts to get straight.
Brainerd Dispatch/Steve Kohls
They both came from supportive and loving families. Why they chose a stony path that could have easily cost them their lives and continuously traumatized their loved ones was hard to understand. They talked about the mess they created of their lives, but they were also hopeful about the future after making it through the darkness.
Stewart Sawdey grew up in Nisswa. His sisters and parents and extended family provided a loving home. He was good in sports, was involved in music and did well at school. He kept his drug use, which started at age 11, disguised. But he said even as a child he was always dishonest and lied about things he didn't even need to. He used his drugs as a solo escape to fill a hole he felt in himself, he graduated from marijuana and alcohol to cocaine, crack cocaine and heroin.
He stole items from family members to pawn and pay for drugs and lied about it. Finally, the drug use overtook the ability to function and there were overdoses, seizures and homelessness. His mother advised family members not to take him in and then there was the bottom.
"I was so broken when I got here," Sawdey said.
Pressured by his family, he came to Teen Challenge in Brainerd unconvinced it would work. After all, there had been numerous attempts at treatment in the past. None took. But this time it was different.
Sawdey was scared enough of where his drug use led him on the street that he didn't want to return to it. He said the length of the stay with Teen Challenge gave him time to look into himself, but the big difference was a connection to Christ.
"I should have been dead years ago, many times over," said graduate Chase Holmes. The 25-year-old once flipped his mother's convertible end-over-end nose to tail. He fell into the wrong crowd and was once beaten with a nine iron and a gun barrel to the point he was beyond the recognition of his own mother. Bouts of white-knuckled sobriety would be followed by drops back into addiction.
Holmes started drinking and using drugs at age 15. He wanted to be cool and hung out with the wrong friends. He hadn't met a party he didn't want to attend. He often drove drunk. His drug use progressed to include cocaine and meth.
"That brought me to a dark place," Holmes said, describing himself as lost, hopeless, scared and without the desire to live. On one of many stints in the emergency room, his mother once again asked if he wanted help and this time he realized he did. The program and a relationship with God opened a new life, Holmes said.
Holmes is now working in the community and enrolling at Central Lakes College in the computer technology program.
"This is an incredible accomplishment, " Sam Anderson, Teen Challenge director in Brainerd, said of Thursday's graduation.
Mike Sawdey, Stewart's father, said it's important to realize what Teen Challenge provides here. Those in the program need to have jobs lined up to graduate, he said, adding he hopes businesses will embrace them with that chance.
"This program saved his life without a doubt," Mike Sawdey said of Stewart, adding God works through the program and the staff and the students work together to face what they've done in their lives. "It's an awesome program. The community needs to recognize how important this program is to have in the community."
Stewart Sawdey will now work at Teen Challenge in an internship. To others struggling with addiction, he said: "I would say there is always hope. This place has given me the tools to succeed."
RENEE RICHARDSON may be reached at renee.richardson@brainerddispatch.com or 855-5852.