Colorado Springs mom gets help to overcome drug addiction, gets son back

A program that started in Colorado Springs to help female drug addicts is working.

Project Detour is a program under Homeward Pikes Peak. It allows women who are suffering from homelessness, drug and alcohol addiction to live in a sober living home.

Dominique Knowles was one of their first success stories. She’s been sober for just over 19 months.

Knowles looks at pictures she took right before she entered the program. She describes herself as, “I was soulless, like soulless. I had no life. Today that’s not what I look like.”

She was in and out of jail for years before she lost custody of her two-year-old son, Hunter. He’s one of her three kids, but despite her love for them, she explains they weren’t enough for her to get sober.

“When I was pregnant with him, I still thought it was OK to run around. I thought it was OK to run across and do my things,” Knowles explains.

After trying several programs, Project Detour has been the only one that’s stuck. She credits her success to their personalized treatment and her case manager, Novalie Force.

Force explains, “When they come in, we don’t give them, ‘Oh you have a week to find a job and you owe us 4-500 dollars in rent.’ We give them the time to recover, the time to get on their feet.”

Knowles explained, she needed to focus on her sobriety above everything else.

“Their program walked with, Novalie walked with me, hand in hand. They said one step at a time.
My recovery has to come first and foremost for me to be a mom, in order for me to be a worker,” Knowles said.

Force says, “The time I’ve put in with Dominique has been very gratifying, even on the hard days.”

Thanks to the program, she can now live her life.

“I’m just a normal chick doing like what you’re supposed to sober,” Knowles said.

The first two years of funding for the program has recently come to end. Beth Hall Roalstad, the Executive Director of Homeward Pikes Peak explained, ” Project Detour is currently awaiting a contract for funding from the Colorado Office of Behavioral Health that will be combined with support from private foundations to continue this vital program for our community.”

More information can be found here.

KRDO Only 2019