Local Woman Graduates From Drug Court

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A Moorhead woman has been through hell and back to get her life back on track. She struggled with drugs for years. But a voluntary program has helped her turn her life around.

An entire courtroom moved to tears by Jamie Morehouse. She symbolically throws away her binder full of child protective service documents and memories from her dark past.

“Addiction is very scary, very powerful but today I feel more powerful being sober. And I actually, I’m real. I’m finally real,” Morehouse says.

Jamie struggled with drug use, sold drugs and landed in prison. She also found herself in an extremely abusive relationship. It all resulted in her losing custody of her son Gage.

“The biggest hurdle was my son being placed in foster care. The biggest hurdle was accepting that and getting him home,” says Morehouse.

After test driving a car from a local dealership in 2012 and not bringing it back for days, she was charged with felony theft and DWI for being under the influence of narcotics.

Little did she know at the time, those bad decisions would bring her to Drug Court and completely change her life.

“That entire Drug Court team believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself,” she says.

After three years of hard work in Drug Court, Jamie is drug-free, has a job at American Crystal Sugar and most importantly she has her son back.

“I always believed in her. I knew she had it in her. It just took her to become able to believe in herself,” says former Drug Court judge Lisa Borgen.

While Borgen is very proud of the woman who stood before her, one other person’s opinion means the most to Jamie.

“How proud are you of me?” she asks her 10-year-old son Gage.

“Very,” he says.

Now graduated from Drug Court, Jamie hopes to speak with and motivate people that are going through what she has gone through.