Congratulations, you’ve made it this far and are getting closer to your hearing. Now we need to cover why letters of reference are important to submit to your hearing officer, who can write them for you and what the letters should include.
Letters of reference are important because they allow the hearing officer to have the people who know you best vouch for your sobriety and note positive life changes they've observed since you have become sober.
Good candidates to write your letter of reference include family members, friends, or colleagues who can testify to your history of use and your current sober lifestyle. Keep in mind the purpose of the letters are not to demonstrate what a nice person you are. The purpose of the letters are to describe the changes you have made that contribute to your current sobriety such as new social groups, alcohol-free interests and activities that contribute to living well and/or practices that contribute to your spiritual life.
You will need at least five to seven letters of reference. The requirements of what needs to be in each letter are listed below:
- The writer’s name and relationship to you, the petitioner. The letter needs to be signed by the writer.
- How long has the writer actually known you and how often they see you. A letter written by someone whose only known you for a few months isn’t going to be as credible as a person who has known you for several years. The more history; the better.
- The date of the last time the writer saw or had knowledge of you drinking or using.
- The writer’s knowledge of your past involvement with alcohol and arrests.
- Any other information that the writer believes would be beneficial for the Hearing Officer to know about your sobriety.
If all of the letter requirements are not met, the letters can be inadmissible. Ultimately, you will be the one to choose who to ask to write each letter. However, these letters are absolutely critical to the restoration of your driver’s license and should be written very carefully. If you have further questions in regard to the letters, a Pacific Substance Abuse Assessment & Treatment Services therapist, or I, can discuss this with you.
For your convenience, I've included two example reference letters for your review.
Example letter 1
Example letter 2
Stay sober and thanks for reading.
-Kiernan Gamel