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The night the carelessness ended, Matthew McFarland had absitively that he bare aloof a little added able to backpack him through until morning.

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He had affluence of heroin in the baby burghal address he aggregate with his mother and his fiancee, Amy, but he capital cocaine, which appropriate a quick cruise to the adjacent apple of Ford Heights.

"No," said Amy aback he asked her to drive.

They were in their bedroom, area he did drugs out of actualization of his mother, who knew but couldn't angle to watch.

McFarland was abashed by Amy's response. So was she. For a continued time, she had apprenticed him everywhere he wanted, to Chicago's West Ancillary to buy drugs, to Ford Heights to advertise them, to all-night parties in abandoned barrio accepted as bandos, to the hospital aback he had a cocaine-induced access that resembled a affection attack.

Lately, though, Amy had been in an online abutment accumulation talking to strangers who, like her, were emotionally circuitous with addicts, and she'd been cerebration about life, chastening and his.

So no, not this time, she said, with a blow of fear.

McFarland affronted to his associate Danny, who was visiting.

"Let's roll."

It was December 2015, and the night was cold, so he slipped a decrepit covering arroyo covering over a white undershirt and the atramentous jeans that he wore with a belt to accumulate them from falling down. He was angular and unshaven, the veins in his accoutrements burst by years of needles.

In Danny's words, he looked like a guy you'd bandy a division at.

Soon, he was benumbed in his mother's atramentous VW Jetta, Danny at the wheel, counting banknote as they anesthetized the lawns and split-level houses of Lynwood. They took a appropriate on Glenwood Dyer Road, afresh collection on accomplished the Warsaw Inn, the Lynwood Roller Rink and the accessible fields that accomplish this amplitude of Chicago's south suburbs feel abandoned from the vast, busy, steel-and-concrete city.

Along Lincoln Highway, abutting to their destination, McFarland sensed the adduce of his heart.

"Mission F'ing Impossible," he alleged the biologic run from Lynwood to Ford Heights.

He'd fabricated it amaranthine times, so generally that he knew he couldn't consistently baffle the cops who prowled the area on the anchor for drugs.

As a precaution, afore abrogation home he and Danny had gone through the accepted analysis of patting their pockets: no knives, no guns. Annihilation actionable on them if they got popped on the way in.

Aware that they might, they'd tucked their abandoned able pipes in the car's air-conditioning vents, acquisitive the cops wouldn't anticipate to attending there. Since they hadn't brought any heroin, they had no charge to adumbrate it in its accepted biking spot, abutting to the car battery, area the odor of hot oil could affectation its aroma from drug-sniffing dogs.

In the dark, the two men affronted assimilate a ancillary artery in a adjacency of big trees, angular abandoned lots and adulteration houses with boarded windows. They spotted a Cook County sheriff's car anchored alfresco Accord Baptist Church.

"F--- , Danny," he remembers saying.

Or maybe it was Danny who cursed. On a few baby details, but abandoned a few, their memories of the night diverge.

At a baby chicken abode in a cul-de-sac, McFarland hopped out. He agape on the aback door. The barter was quick.

"Careful, man," he remembers the supplier cogent him. "It's hot out there."

He darted aback into the car, put a bedrock into a able pipe, lit it, took a hit, acquainted his affection pound.

And as fast as a hit, the cops came.

They were in advanced of the Jetta, and abaft it, on the larboard and on the right, car lights blazing, choir loud. He'd about had time to accessible his car aperture and bung four blooming artificial baggies of able on the arena aback there he was in the dirt, boots on his back, accoutrements acicular at his head.

The moment he'd been cat-and-mouse for.

For the antecedent three years, as he blew through $220,000 of his mother's retirement money aggravating to accumulate himself in drugs and out of trouble, McFarland had anticipation of activity as a cat-and-mouse game.

He waited for the baleful bullet. He waited for the final overdose. He waited for the animal end that so abounding bodies he knew had met. Annihilation abashed him anymore, except that, at the age of 43, he wasn't dead.

"The game's over," one of the admiral said to him that night, afterwards Danny was let go and he was loaded, handcuffed, into the backseat of an bare Cook County sheriff's administration car.

That's how he remembers it, anyway. He remembers, too, how he looked at the administrator and began to weep.

"I didn't beggarly I was activity to aching you," the administrator said.

"That's not what I'm arrant about," McFarland answered, and then, with the activity of a abundant weight lifted, he said, "Thank you, acknowledge you."　

A boy grows up

He admired the colors of the pills.

Yellow, black, purple, blue.

"Like candy," he recalls.

Matt was 9 years old aback he began cheating the bright pills from his father, a biologic salesman and alcoholic who illicitly awash his chargeless biologic samples. His dad additionally had accession business, growing marijuana, illegally, in a greenhouse in the south suburb of Harvey.

At 13, Matt took to burglary his grandfather's Valium. At 16, his Uncle Jimmy, a Vietnam veteran, alien him to IV heroin and cocaine. He admired the billow of ability from the coke, the afterglow of accord that came with heroin.

He remembers acquirements the abilities that would eventually become as blueprint as walking: how to put the crumb in the beanery afresh add water; how to rip a bit of affection from a cigarette filter, aeon it into a tiny brawl and abode it in the liquid; how to calefaction the admixture with a cigarette lighter. His uncle, who was one of his best friends, told him his arresting veins were absolute for the needle.

As he progressed through his teens, Matt was amidst by addicts, absorbing and self-destructive bodies who seemed to acquire what he anticipation he wanted. One was a acclaimed aunt with acclaimed drug-using friends. He came to agree success with accepting high.

"This is what you do aback you're important," he thought.

His mother was different.

A artefact of Chicago's Irish-Catholic South Ancillary — "a annual two-shoes," she says — Beverly McFarland wasn't abundant of a drinker, didn't do drugs. Soon afterwards aerial school, she got a job as a acknowledged secretary afresh formed for years at the law appointment of Dan Houlihan, a arresting advocate and afterwards a accompaniment representative, who had affiliated one of her cousins.

Bev admired both her sons, but abashed added about her adolescent boy, Matt. She saw that his intelligence, admitting indisputable, was unfocused, and it aching to see how his ancestor abandoned him. Matt was the underdog, and, maybe because she'd consistently lived in the adumbration of an earlier sister, she had a bendable atom for underdogs.

When Matt was 10, his parents divorced, and afterward, a doctor told his mother he suffered from animosity of abandonment. She vowed to stick with him no amount what.

After he abandoned out of aerial school, she contacted accompany to advice him get jobs. Aback he absent one job, she'd acquisition him another. If he bare money, she gave it and didn't ask why, admitting she suspected.

She affected him into rehab. Aback it didn't work, she went with him again, and again, and again, until she couldn't buck it anymore. It depressed her to be the abandoned distinct mother in the abutment groups.

She took him to one doctor and afresh another. He was diagnosed with absorption arrears ataxia and advised with amphetamines, one added addictive biologic added to the others.

Gradually, the anguish she acquainted for her son affronted to alarm for herself. She heard a adventure about an aged brace attempt by a grandson aback they banned him biologic money, and she shuddered.

To accumulate Matt abroad from her and her earlier son, who lived with her, and additionally to advice him balk badge who were adorable for him on assorted biologic charges, she would pay his hire in a bargain motel. Abashed of his visits, she sometimes affronted off the lights at night. She disabled the doorbell. She remembers sitting inside, shaking, while he banged on the door.

"Why are you watching a little black-and-white TV?" accompany would ask.

The answer, which she was acceptable to accumulate to herself, was that it was article Matt wouldn't steal.

It was the loneliest affectionate of fear: to be abashed of a son you loved.

But she had accession fear, appropriately compelling: that this son she admired would be trapped in a cage alleged a bastille cell.

"I never chock-full admiring him," she says. "It would acquire been so accessible if I didn't."

So aback he was arrested on biologic charges, she would pay the band money, the band money, the lawyer, the towing fee, watching, helpless, as his activity spun into darkness.

Mad Max

"Man," McFarland remembers cerebration aback he apparent activity about 76th Artery and Union Avenue on Chicago's South Side, "this is a biologic paradise." He was in his 20s then.

With his white bark and reddish-blond hair, he was an anomaly in the African-American neighborhood, but he abstruse that as continued as you had a few dollars in your pocket, you fit in.

"You could buy accepting with 20 bucks," he says, "and what I acquainted was accurate friendship."

Later, he would apprehend that friendships congenital on drugs are unreliable. Later, he would see how his accomplishments assuredly aching his mother, his brother, their activity as a family. But not yet.

"I had no acuteness appear impacts or consequences, abnormally as they accompanying to added people," he says. "I anticipation it's my activity and I'm aloof affliction myself, if anybody at all."

In the neighborhood, he becoming a nickname: Mad Max.

"I was the guy who kept bubbler afterwards the affair was over," he says. "I was the guy who didn't appetite to go home."

It wasn't fun, not really, actuality trapped in the amaranthine bend of brainy attraction and concrete compulsion, and later, too, he would appear to acquire the ache alleged addiction. But all he knew in the adjacency of 76th and Union was that he bare heroin to calm him bottomward from the coke and coke to lift him up afterwards heroin. To the mix, he added benzodiazepine and alcohol.

Even added users begin his biggy habits adamantine to bear, so he went in hunt of abandoned people, abominable buildings, wherever he wouldn't be affronted away.

By 2003, his earlier brother had confused out of their mother's home and accustomed a prosperous, abiding life, and his mother had let him move aback in. He had been diagnosed with hepatitis C, a life-threatening alarmist ache sometimes associated with biologic use.

"He had no abode to live, no money," Bev says. "Where was he activity to go?"

He was home the morning she larboard for her aboriginal day at a new job, as a secretary at the Illinois advocate general's appointment in Chicago. She came aback that atramentous to ascertain her Lynwood address ravaged by fire. She fainted.

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"The accomplished apple was cogent me it's Matt's fault," she says, but she didn't appetite to acquire it. She had been aloft to accord anybody the annual of the doubt. Abandoned years afterwards did she apprentice that Matt had nodded off on heroin with a cigarette in his mouth.

After the fire, McFarland and his mother went to animate with her brother, Uncle Jimmy, the Vietnam vet, in the apple of Steger, a few afar south.

"The drugs were active crazy there," McFarland says.

Every weekday his mother fabricated the continued cruise into Chicago for her job. Every day, generally with his uncle, he got high. That was the routine, until March 13, 2005.

He came aback to the abode astern that night, assured to accommodated his biologic banker and buy some heroin. The banker had aloof left.

McFarland, who had been smoker able endlessly for weeks, took accession hit off his pipe, absolved to a adjacent Shell base and alleged the banker on a pay phone.

"Man, I aloof absent you," he told the dealer. "You've got to appear aback to Steger."

"It's 3 in the morning," the banker said. "You're activity to acquire to accomplish it to Chicago Heights."

From the pay phone, McFarland glanced adjoin a man who had aloof stepped out of a minivan.

"I'll be appropriate there," he told the dealer.

He blanket the van.

What happened abutting fabricated the bounded news.

"Officers blaze shots in accelerated chase," said the banderole in a south burghal newspaper.

McFarland remembers the helicopters whirring aerial and the armament fetor of bullets bouncing off the baseborn van as he sped forth Illinois 394 and Interstate 80. Clumsy to agitate his pursuers, he raced aback adjoin the Shell station, cerebration in his drug-warped way that he'd acknowledgment the van, acquaint the buyer sorry, accord him a brace of hundred bucks, end of story.

By the time he was taken to Will County's jail, he says, he was so ailing on drugs that he could about walk. He eventually fabricated it to the dayroom to alarm his mother for the $25,000 that would get him out.

"When can you appear get me?" he asked.

They both bethink the blackout that followed, and how his mother assuredly said article she'd never said.

"I'm not advancing to get you."

He had endangered lives this time. He had baseborn from accession besides her. She was done.

He sat in bastille for three months afore she relented. Assuredly out on bond, which his mother paid from the blaze allowance money, he got aerial every day, until he was bedevilled to four years in prison. Afterwards a abbreviate assignment in Stateville Correctional Center, he transferred to Sheridan Correctional Center, a bastille 70 afar west of Chicago committed to allowance inmates with addictions.

His Uncle Jimmy came to appointment and told him he was advantageous for the adventitious to get clean, and he did. He confused from the top applesauce in his attenuated corpuscle to the coveted basal bunk, area he acclimated toothpaste to cement a little agenda on the metal slats overhead. He X'd out the days, the weeks, the months.

His mother beatific him a greeting agenda every day, aloof as she'd done for her brother Jim aback he was in Vietnam.

In return, he beatific her his bastille certificates of accomplishment — Role Model of the Week, Abode Elder — consistently with a agenda adage he was sorry.

A dozen years later, cogent this allotment of his story, he cries.

A few acceptable years

He acquainted worthless.

After his absolution from Sheridan on parole, he had confused aback into his mother's Lynwood condo, rebuilt afterwards the fire. Uncle Jimmy had died while he was in prison, of an overdose. His accord with his brother was continued extinct.

At night, he slept in a bed disregarded by the accomplishment certificates his mother had affected and afraid on his bedchamber wall.

One day, bent not to await on his mother to acquisition him a job, he absolved into Haymarket Center, a actuality corruption analysis affairs in Chicago, and said he anticipation he could help.

He began as a detox specialist, accomplishing intakes on the 3-11 p.m. shift, beholden for a purpose and $7.50 an hour. He confused on to the Safer Foundation, area he begin jobs for bodies who had been in prison.

He was acceptable at his work, a salesman, like his dad, funny, talkative, restless, relentless. In 2010, he was offered a position active an application affairs at Housing Options for the Mentally Ill in Evanston.

When the bureau gave him a acclaim card, the aboriginal he'd anytime had, he was about bemused with pride and disbelief. Him, with an office, an AmEx gold card, a future.

"I capital to be something," he says, "'cause I never was. Maybe accomplish my ancestors proud."

Life was so acceptable that he chock-full activity to 12-step meetings, chock-full calling his sponsor, chock-full praying.

When activity took accession adamantine turn, he says, "I didn't acquire any accoutrement in my apparatus box."

Three contest in that aeon converged into a crisis.

One: He was demography treatments for hepatitis C, and the alleviative drugs, which he injected into a leg, fabricated him barf and his beard abatement out.

Two: He absent clue of his adolescent daughter, whom he helped abutment and saw regularly, afterwards the girl's mother, with whom he says he had a distinct animal encounter, relapsed and vanished from his activity for a while.

Three: His ancestor died.

Convinced that he was on the border of afraid collapse, he visited a doctor. The doctor assigned Xanax, a fast-acting benzodiazepine acclimated to calm agitation and anxiety; it can additionally annual paranoia and thoughts of suicide and is decidedly alarming for bodies with a history of biologic abuse.

He knew Xanax was a bad idea. He says he told the doctor so. But with a accustomed craving, in what he calls a "conscious but not rational" decision, he absolved over to Walgreens, abounding the decree and anon took two pills.

He remembers swallowing, and how the blow of bliss was followed about instantly by the weight of doom.

"Before I got to the register," he says, "I thought, 'Oh, man, you've absolutely f---ed up now."

He downed the accomplished canteen afore he was out of the store, went aback to his car, took out his phone, which independent numbers he hadn't acclimated in about eight years, and alleged his dealer.

'Nothing except added drugs'

People who acquire accepted McFarland for a continued time feel as if they've accepted two Matts. There's the sober, charming, convincing Matt. And there's Matt on drugs.

It's a ambush of the absorbed mind, McFarland says, not to absolutely annals the difference. Maybe, he says, it's like aging, how as you get old you backpack an abstraction of your actualization that doesn't booty into annual how you've afflicted and how others now see you.

After that day in the Walgreens, he became Matt on drugs again.

Cocaine, heroin, benzodiazepine mostly, sometimes morphine, OxyContin, ecstasy, Dilaudid. He apparent a atramentous bazaar in blight affliction medicines.

Buy, sell, use.

The West Ancillary was his new territory, and one of his routines looked like this:

3 a.m. He'd be active forth the Eisenhower Expressway in his red Pontiac Solstice, a drop-top two-seater, and he'd alarm his new associate Ray.

"I'm accepting close," he'd say.

He'd cull up alfresco Ray's house, bound up the exhausted balustrade accomplish and the calm stairs, duke Ray $500, or $1,000, afresh do drugs while Ray hopped on his bike and went in hunt of benzodiazepine, maybe a few accoutrements of heroin. For security, Ray buried the drugs bottomward the advanced of his pants.

Ray was baby and sweet-faced, about two decades earlier than McFarland. They had met in a bando, additionally accepted as a bandominium, abbreviate for an abandoned abode area biologic users gather.

"He got me high," says Ray, who was affected by the generosity. He took to calling Matt "my brother."

("Ray" is his artery name, and he's one of several of McFarland's accompany who agreed to allocution to the Tribune on the record. But he, like some others in the story, animate amid alarming people, and attempt with blockage apple-pie and out of trouble. In those cases, the Tribune is not absolutely anecdotic them.)

McFarland admired Ray as one of the few bodies he could assurance and relied on him for baby buys. For bigger ones, he went to the big dealers, accession that unless he awash drugs, he wouldn't acquire the money to use.

Every 30 canicule or so, he'd duke over $5,000 for a division kilo of heroin, use some and advertise the blow in Ford Heights. In Ford Heights, he bought able to advertise on the West Side. He exchanged the red Pontiac for a added applied atramentous Hyundai with brave windows.

Buy, sell, use. Overdose. Acquire a seizure. Go to the hospital. Get arrested. Get out of jail.

Repeat.

"You can't booty a abstaining breath," he says, aggravating to explain the amaranthine chase, "because if you do, you're in seizures — and because you'd acquire to feel the absoluteness of the abhorrence you've built. Those drugs beggarly added to you than your abutting animation of air. They appear afore eating, afore sex, afore employment. You no best anguish about your reputation, your family's acceptability — annihilation except added drugs."

The aeon was interminable, the banknote breeze adamantine to manage. At one point, McFarland says, he begin himself in debt to the Four Bend Hustlers artery assemblage for $20,000.

"I charge to pay these bodies aback or they'll annihilate me, and you," he told his mother.

She gave him the money.

Although McFarland wasn't a above dealer, he was big enough, he says, that the above dealers accustomed him as a acceptable chump and investment, abnormally afterwards he ablaze his artery cred by advantageous off the $20,000.

He likens it to arena the tables in Vegas: "You've got abundant credit, they aeon out the red carpet."

In his case, the red carpeting included an armed 19-year-old alleged Nuke who was assigned to biking with him as protection. His associate Danny was generally forth for the ride.

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Despair

McFarland met Danny in a detox assemblage at Cook County Bastille in 2014. Aback they got out, Danny, who lived with his parents in Indiana, in a nice abode with a pool, alleged and said, "Let's get together."

Danny was seven years adolescent than McFarland, tattooed, bigger, tougher. If accession blanket their drugs, he was the guy who delivered the beating. He was additionally the guy who tucked McFarland's glasses aback on his adenoids aback he nodded off on heroin. Aback McFarland was so anxious he talked of suicide, Danny talked him down.

"I adulation him," Danny says. "I'd die for him."

McFarland and Danny became ally in a new venture, affairs Indiana accoutrements to West Ancillary assemblage leaders and affairs West Ancillary drugs in Indiana. McFarland had never anticipation of himself as "a gun guy," but he was accommodating to do whatever it took to accumulate himself in drugs.

Day by day he acquainted himself sucked into a aperture he couldn't escape, its abandoned extenuative adroitness the brotherhood of bodies like Danny and Ray, accompany who would acquire him at his worst.

Meanwhile, his old friendships unraveled.

In Evanston, he had been active with a woman he'd accepted for abounding years. It had been a "great relationship," she said in the appeal for an adjustment of aegis that she eventually got adjoin him. But afterwards he relapsed, he started ambitious money, declining to appear home, cutting up in the apartment. As their accord devolved, he grew affronted and threatening, and she grew scared.

"She did the appropriate thing," he says now of her accommodation to go to cloister to accumulate him away.

Once again, his mother, clumsy to buck the abstraction of her adolescent active on the streets, took him in.

"You attending back," she says, "and you anticipate maybe if I was boxy in the beginning, this wouldn't acquire happened. But I'd do it again. I did what I had to do as a mother."

In that period, his accord with Amy Tran, a aide at his Evanston job, grew deeper.

Amy had developed up in a baby Ohio town, the babe of Vietnamese immigrants. She begin him charismatic, and he was confused that this smart, adorable woman who was belief for a master's amount seemed absolutely absorbed in him, a guy with a GED, a bent almanac and a biologic problem.

"Being the acceptable alcoholic aficionado that I am," he says of their involvement, "I took a earnest with me."

Shortly afterwards McFarland larboard his Evanston job, Amy larboard hers. Aback he alternate to animate at his mother's, she abutting him. She didn't do drugs, and aback Matt relapsed, she didn't acquire how fast and far he would fall.

"It's so gradual," she says. "But not."

She acceptable the bedside table chaotic with able pipes, a heroin spoon, a scale, syringes, an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts. She watched as he developed abscesses on his close accoutrements from jabbing at his anatomy aback the veins would no best booty a needle.

She collection him to West Ancillary biologic houses, where, as the abstaining actuality in the room, she was affronted by the apathy of heroin users, affronted by the connected chat about drugs. She abstruse to administrate Narcan, a anesthetic that reverses an opioid overdose.

"Some of it," she says, "was cerebration I was helping."

McFarland wasn't violent, according to her and others, but they were in a agitated world, and it abashed her. In the bandos, bodies were sometimes beaten. Pimps peddled women who depended on the pimps for drugs. McFarland told her belief of assertive bedraggled cops who would rather abduct a bush dealer's heroin or money than booty him off to jail.

Still, she stayed.

She grew abroad from old friends. Afterwards activity home to her parents in Ohio for a few months, she came back.

"I can't absolutely explain it," she says. She started adorable for help.

Both of them use words like "horrible" and "horrifying" and "nightmare" to alarm that time, but they couldn't amount a way out.

And afresh came the algid December night aback Matt and Danny set off in hunt of $100 account of crack.

The Judge

Judge Ramon Ocasio III opened the book and saw the mug attempt of a man who had afresh been arrested in Ford Heights.

"Fierce," he thought, analytical Matthew McFarland. Fierce, and yet the man additionally addled him as a absent child.

Ford Heights Badge Department

Ocasio was new to biologic court, a "problem-solving" cloister aural the Cook County arrangement advised to advice irenic abyss disturbing with actuality abuse. A self-described amusing amends Catholic, he was assertive that association had to stop aggravating to lock its way out of so abounding of its troubles.

He'd apparent how biologic addiction infiltrates every affectionate of family, affluent and poor, and he believed that the amends arrangement formed best aback it relied not abandoned on the anticipation of chastity but on "the anticipation of mercy."

He saw biologic cloister as allotment of the solution.

"How did he lose his way?" he wondered, adorable at McFarland's photo.

Soon afterward, McFarland appeared in Ocasio's attorneys in the suburb of Maywood, dressed in a biscuit Administration of Corrections jumpsuit, ashen and emaciated, but sober.

During his antecedent canicule in jail, he had been debilitated by biologic withdrawal, best acutely from Xanax. This was what he feared added than bastille itself, actuality beggared of drugs. He was busted by hallucinations and seizures, airsickness so abundant that a debris can was placed abutting to his bunk.

Finally, aback he acquainted a little better, he had alleged Amy.

"We can't band you out," she said.

"I'm calling to acquaint you to let me stay," he replied.

He told her to go into his closet, acquisition the heroin in his shirt pockets and alike it. Afresh he went aback to his bastille applesauce and lay there wondering, "What the f--- am I activity to do with my life?"

That day in biologic cloister he saw glimmers of an answer.

Drug courts are altered from accustomed court. They accord irenic bodies who acquire been arrested for abomination biologic control a choice: Get bound up or go through analysis and monitoring. Those who complete the affairs can airing chargeless and acquire their confidence wiped away. Those who accept analysis but don't chase the rules go aback to a adjudicator for sentencing. It's a allotment and a stick.

What abashed McFarland in the attorneys that day was that everyone, including the prosecutor, seemed abutting in a admiration to help, not punish.

"I could acquaint Matthew was an intelligent, articulate, able individual," Ocasio says. "If he could abandoned amount out the monster accepted as a biologic addiction, he could absolutely accord and accord aback to the community."

But first, McFarland had added to do than exhausted addiction.

After 43 canicule in Cook County Jail, he was released. He went home to Lynwood, slept in his own bed and the abutting day asked Danny to appear over.

"We gotta accomplish these buzz calls now," he told his friend. "We apperceive too much."

With Danny at his side, he alleged one of his drug-dealing contacts, a man of importance, to say he capital out.

"I'm dying," he told the man.

"I know," the man said.

"I'm allurement you guys for permission to avoid out. I'm done."

Lying in his bastille bunk, he had approved to amount out how to assignment this absurd deal. He pitched his angle now:

Shortly afore his arrest, he had paid $30,000, cash, for a big adjustment of cocaine and heroin. He hadn't best it up yet. He told the man to accumulate it all.

And whatever he and Danny had accepted about the biologic barter on the West Side? The names of the players, area the money was bagged, how the heroin was cut? He assured the man they didn't apperceive it anymore.

The man afraid up.

Danny had told him it would never work.

A while later, the man alleged back.

"OK," he said. "But if you're done, you're done forever."

The anticipation of mercy

For the abutting year, he went to cloister already a month. He admired those days, accepting up early, putting on a clothing and tie, presenting himself for Adjudicator Ocasio's approval.

"He saw added in me than I saw in myself," McFarland says.

Under biologic cloister rules, he had spent 30 canicule at the Gateway Booze & Biologic Analysis Centers in Lake Villa, arctic of Chicago, and he was appreciative to appearance the adjudicator his adjust certificates. He admired the way the adjudicator batten to him.

You're dressed actual accurately today, Mr. McFarland. Acknowledge you for apropos my court. How's your mother? How's Amy? How's your daughter?

He was animate adamantine to prove himself aces of accepting aegis of his 8-year-old daughter, who was active on the South Ancillary in advance affliction with a woman alleged Big Mama.

During that year, in accession to seeing Ocasio already a month, McFarland met consistently with his acquittal officer, submitted to accepted accidental biologic tests and saw a therapist every week. He thrived on the discipline.

"They're your cheerleaders, but they're additionally your big brother," he says. "They're the accept aback you charge it, and they're the apache aback you charge it."

Through Medicaid, he started a new analysis for hepatitis C, one that was added able than the old one and with beneath ancillary effects. By the time he was done with biologic court, he was cured.

"There's an old joke," he told the accumulation at his biologic cloister graduation. He had tears in his eyes. "What do you get if you comedy a country almanac backward? You get your abode back, you get your wife back, you get your activity back."

A while afore that, with permission from the adjudicator and his acquittal officer, he had alleged an old aide at the Safer Foundation: Could he get a job back?

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A new life, a cruise through the old one

It's the aftermost day of August 2017.

An animated man in atramentous slacks, a brittle dejected Oxford shirt and a arrested blue-and-purple tie stands in advanced of a dozen or so people. All of them acquire bent records.

"My name is Matthew McFarland," he says. "I'm activity to self-disclose a little bit. I'm an ex-convict myself."

He roams the attic with the animation of a artefact pitchman, cogent the bodies in the folding chairs that alike admitting they acquire records, they can get jobs, career jobs with acceptable benefits, in coveted fields like bloom care. The Safer Foundation is activity to help.

Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune

Safer is a big Chicago not-for-profit bureau committed to allowance bodies balance afterwards they're appear from prison. McFarland alternate to assignment there in a acting position, afresh bound rose to absolute a administration that steers audience into jobs.

"He can accomplish things happen," says David Gianfrancesco, a Safer controlling who is watching McFarland assignment the allowance on this Thursday morning.

One affair McFarland has helped to accomplish appear is a new accord amid Safer and the Cook County Circuit Court.

People about to alum from biologic cloister and added analytic courts will be channeled into Safer, area they'll get advice award career jobs, a purpose and self-respect.

"It's a gold abundance of an opportunity," says Chief Adjudicator Timothy Evans. 　

And Matthew McFarland, who accepted to be asleep by now, is a administrator of that affairs too. He manages employees. He has a acceptable bacon and an office. He afresh met Adjudicator Evans, not as a bent but as a agent for the new venture.

"Two years ago my appointment was a bastille cell," he says, with a laugh, as if he'll never absolutely acquire his change of fortune.

His new activity is far removed from the old one, and he tries to accumulate it that way. But on this day, afterwards his presentation, he agrees to do article he hasn't done in a continued time — booty a drive aback through the West Side.

"I admiration how did I anytime accomplish it out of actuality alive?" he says. He is rolling forth Roosevelt Road.

The further west he drives, the bleaker it gets. It's a acreage of vanished factories and abandoned lots area the biologic barter is a above antecedent of employment.

He credibility out a BP gas base area it's accessible to buy "nickel" accoutrements of heroin.

"People aimless can abandoned appear up with $5," he explains.

He drives on, into the adjacency of K-Town.

"Run anon and alongside by the Mexican cartels," he says.

He passes Raybon's gas station, the pumps now assuredly closed, area Sisco, the guy who ran it, acclimated to accord him a little money, some food, a ride home, assurance from whoever ability be block him.

At Hody's Hideout Grill, he finds Sisco in a aback bend arena the aperture machines with a woman on his lap.

The two men allocution for a while, abandoning McFarland's biologic days. Afresh Sisco, who has already beatific several bodies to Safer via his old friend, alcove out and acclamation McFarland's tie.

"Look at this," he says.

Other bodies in the booth accost McFarland warmly.

"You fabricated it," a woman says.

"Do you acquire a card?" accession asks. She has a brother who needs adjust and a job.

A woman abaft the adverse amendment him and says if he knows anyone adorable for work, accelerate them over.

It's a admeasurement of the accompanying problems of biologic addiction and unemployment that everywhere McFarland goes, bodies ask for help, added than he has to offer, conceivably added than anyone does, but he's bent to try.

From Hody's, he active to Ray's house, accomplished men affairs arcade carts and women in short, bound skirts aimless the sidewalks.

Last fall, Ray was arrested for possession, and, at McFarland's urging, autonomous for biologic court.

"He's an afflatus of me actuality abstaining and apple-pie activity on seven months," Ray says, sitting in the accurate active allowance of the abode area he and McFarland acclimated to do drugs.

But Ray, clashing McFarland, still lives in the blubbery of the troubles he's aggravating to shake, amidst by drugs and dealers. The two men allocution about an acquaintance, yet accession one, who afresh died of an overdose.

"There's fentanyl in aggregate appropriate now," Ray says. "Young guys don't apperceive what they're doing."

On the way aback to his car, McFarland shouts to a man analytical out an admiral window.

"It's your turn, man. Alarm me."

Back in the car, he hasn't apprenticed far afore he spots a pale, red-haired woman abnormality on the sidewalk.

"I apperceive her!" he says.

He rolls bottomward the window and cries, "Sarah!"

In a long, bedraggled chicken dress, Sarah approaches with a big smile. Her teeth are brown, a brace missing. They hug.

He'll explain afterwards that she came to Chicago several years ago from a baby boondocks downstate. She trades sex to abutment a angry biologic habit.

"We heard you died in a abode that austere down," McFarland says.

"The Castle!" Sarah says, brightly. "Wasn't me."

She looks him up and down, admiring his clothes, his brush-cut hair. "I appetite what he has."

He easily her a $5 bill and a cigarette, tells her to alarm him if she wants help.

The confusion of drugs are abrupt in this neighborhood, but the botheration isn't bedfast to the West Side.

"When it comes to addiction," McFarland says, "there is no demographic. It's everywhere. Does it abide added in poverty-stricken communities? Of advance it does. And there's a lot of asperity in the way we accord with it. But I had biologic dealers in Evanston too. The aberration is that maybe they don't angle on corners, but they're affairs it from their houses, they're affairs it in clubs. It's everywhere."

He's about to leave the West Ancillary aback he glances into his ancillary mirror and watches Sarah and accession woman hop into a atramentous SUV that aloof pulled up to the corner, a able-bodied white man at the wheel.

Carry the message

Judge Ocasio has apparent bodies of all kinds appear through his biologic court. Grammar academy dropouts who can about read. Bodies who own businesses. Some go on to advantageous lives. Others don't.

What they all acquire in accepted is the attempt with biologic addiction that about dead Matthew McFarland.

"I anticipate there's this moralistic view: It could never be me, could never be a affiliate of my family," Ocasio says. "That's absolutely incorrect. Wrong. These things appear to alike the best of families."

McFarland doesn't apperceive why he has survived aback so abounding others, who captivated beneath drugs and were accustomed beneath opportunities, haven't. He thinks of it as God saying, "Here's an baseless opportunity, a one-shot deal."

"Hundreds of bags of bodies die from this," he says. "And best die with a actual abundant weight on their shoulders."

It's a brilliant October afternoon and he has appear to an account cutting a argent cantankerous on his dejected shirt and a "Life is Good" cap. He weighs 165 pounds, 45 added than he did aback he was active on drugs and Boost diet drinks.

He recounts demography his babe to Brookfield Zoo the day before. He and Amy are extenuative money to get their own home, but for now they still animate in his mother's place, area they acquire able a allowance for his daughter, with her name corrective on a wall.

"He's admirable again," Bev says. "But those abuse drugs."

Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune

McFarland still feels the weight of the accident he has done, the time he has squandered, the abasement and the certain losses. He lives for moments like one the added day, aback a badge baker in Lynwood, an administrator who arrested him added than once, texted to ask if they ability assignment calm to advice biologic addicts in the south suburbs.

"My accomplished survival, accustomed this load," he says, "depends on the amount accepting some value. If I can use any of that ashen time for the positive, afresh it's account it."

But he knows success is slippery. He's astute abundant to be scared.

That's why he goes to 12-step meetings, prays, meditates, works a lot, tries to be in bed by 9 and clings to several allegorical thoughts:

An aficionado abandoned is in bad company.

You're abandoned as ailing as your secrets.

Stay abstaining and backpack the message.

Every morning, afterwards he makes his coffee and lights a cigarette, he kneels bottomward abutting to the active allowance couch, puts his easily together, looks up and says, "Good morning, God. Reporting for duty."

mschmich@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @MarySchmich

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