I grew up in what I believed to be a typical family in a typical midwestern town with no significant problems that I can remember

I grew up in what I believed to be a typical family in a typical midwestern town with no significant problems that I can remember. My mother got pregnant before she was married, and my parents were quite young; but all in all things seemed “normal.” I was never abused, neglected, or mistreated. Mom didn’t work outside the home. She did all the room-mother stuff, the PTA and was a Brownie Scout leader, but my parents weren’t really outgoing people – and I tended to be somewhat shy. I have a brother who is four years younger than me. I guess by most standards, you could say I was rather spoiled. There isn’t anything specific I can remember throughout my childhood that could have possibly led me to do some of the things I was to later do; or behave in some of the irresponsible and stupid ways I’ve behaved. But needless to say, I did it just the same.

Sometime around the age of fifteen I began to enjoy drinking. Still being kind of shy, a few beers helped me to relax and talk to people without feeling self-conscious. Whether or not I actually was I can’t say for sure, but all my life I’ve felt fat and awkward. It’s strange, too, because I twirled a baton all through high school – and even did well in competitive bodybuilding later on – but as a whole, I never felt comfortable in my own body. It was as though I was always about a half step outside the “inner circle,” so to speak.

I took all the typing, office practice, bookkeeping, and shorthand classes my high school had to offer during my junior and senior year. I graduated in 1979 and had no problems finding secretarial work. In fact, I’ve done secretarial work most of my life, even though I hated it and found it dreadfully boring!

It was at one of my early secretarial positions that I met a doctor who gave me some samples of a prescription diet pill called Fastin! Those things were wonderful! Just take one in the morning, and you were able to control your appetite all day and even have energy left over to exercise. Besides, I loved that feeling of going just a little bit faster than everyone around me. Well, if one works this well, just think what two can do. (This is the way my mind works. I want everything, and I want it NOW)! It wasn’t too awfully long before I was taking too many pills, partying way too much, and sleeping way too little. Doc would refill my prescription twice a month, but when it looked like she was going to have to up it to three, she cut me off cold turkey! Damn her!

I spent the next six months trying every street speed there was in pill form. Some of it made me sick, none of it made my skinny, and all of it made me bitchy! I was about six months into my second marriage by this time, so you can imagine how I felt about this mess. Finally I said to hell with it, and managed to get through speed withdrawal -- not a pretty sight. I stayed clean and sober for the next eight years. That’s not to say I was sane, but I didn’t use drugs or alcohol. I used bodybuilding.

Like everything else in my life, I couldn’t just go to the gym for the purpose of improving my health. I had to sink my entire being into it. It wasn’t long before I was training, starving, and running like an idiot just to bring home a trophy. It was as if that was the only way I had of feeling that I mattered.

My husband was an alcoholic and had a unique way of making me feel like dirt every time he was in the same room with me. Once we got divorced, he began to get his act together – really said a lot for me huh?

Not too awfully long after my divorce I took a part time job waiting tables at a restaurant/bar to supplement one of my secretarial jobs. I was still training a little bit – my ex and I were seeing each other again, trying to work things out – and I still didn’t drink or do drugs. But things with him weren’t going well, I was always worried about money, and no matter what I did, I still felt like this fat, awkward, little girl standing outside the circle.

The bar atmosphere and world of working nights kind of sucked me in before I realized it. Within six months I quit my office job and started working full time nights. Within another year I was promoted to assistant manager, and after I’d been there two and a half years, the manager was let go for whatever reason, and I was promoted to replace her. I was good at my job and I liked it, but somewhere that shy, awkward feeling would not go away. Oh, I could fake it – I could talk to people and run the store with my eyes closed. It all just felt so mechanical, unless, of course, I had a good buzz going. I usually started work at 3:00 in the afternoon, and by 4:00 I was hitting the beer tap. I drank virtually all night. I never allowed myself to cross the line where I couldn’t run the store though. I came close a couple times, but never where anyone would notice. The first year went pretty good. The store showed a good increase in sales. Employee turnover rate declined dramatically, and my net-profit was outstanding.

I somehow found myself married to one of my fellow bartenders and we managed to have a beautiful baby boy. Then shortly after my son was born, I got a new supervisor. He had gone through a bad divorce, he didn’t like women, and he hated me. Mostly because I had this really bad habit of being honest to a fault, and when he admitted to me that he didn’t know how to run the store I agreed with him. That could have been part of it. Anything could have been a part of it. We just didn’t get along, and it wasn’t long before he was looking for every little mistake I made. If I was working 50 hours a week, he wanted 60. If I worked days, he wanted nights. I had this new baby at home, a fat, lazy husband who didn’t work half the time, and there was SPEED all around me!

This particular establishment has been, and probably still is, THE place to score dope in town. I didn’t have to mention to very many people that I just needed a little extra “bump” to get me through the night, and my “best friend” got me some crank. I’ll never forget it. She had it in a “bullet,” and she said, “Here – hit this!” I was lucky enough (or unlucky enough – however you choose to look at it) to get the real McCoy fresh from the starting gate. No cornstarch, no baby laxative, no crushed B12 -- just pure, unadulterated, crystal methamphetamine! Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you can’t get hooked on something the first time you do it, because you most certainly can. At least I know I can. It was just what I was looking for.

I started out small, of course, just a little bump before work to get me through the night. Then it was an extra trip upstairs to my office for a quick little bump to get me through the “rest of the night.” I started out snorting a line or two a day in late 1994. I lost my job eight months later. I never got caught using on the job or anything like that, though I’m sure plenty of people were more than aware of what I was doing. When well-known dealers and numerous junkies visit you at work regularly, you can safely bet people suspect something. My new boss kept looking for ways to get rid of me until I finally told him to go to hell and he fired me. It was what he wanted all along, and I was tired of trying to walk on eggshells.

I got on the needle a month after I lost my job. The same best friend who gave me my first snort gave me my first shot. Not that I blame any of this on her. She had her own drug problem to worry about. She thought she was being helpful. There is a rather twisted logic among junkies. We know that we’re killing each other, and ourselves but we also know what it is like to suffer through needing that shot so badly! So we find any way we can to get each other through that hell – although we will always take care of ourselves first.

To avoid a lot of detail and to keep this as short as possible, I’ll simply say that when I got on dope in ’94, I had an excellent job, two houses, two cars, and a boat. At the time of this writing, I have one of the houses (the smallest one of course) that I keep rented out because I can’t afford to live in it. And I wouldn’t have it if my parents hadn’t helped me hang on to it to protect their own credit. See, like all my prior adventures in life, I went all out with my drug addiction. When I no longer had any money to pay for my dope, or any personal belongings to sell for a bag, I got to know some people who knew how to make it. I never learned how to cook it, myself. I would just spend half the day collecting all the poisons that went in it, then hope like hell they didn’t find a way to rip me off when they were done. Most of them eventually found their way to the penitentiary, and I couldn’t begin to tell you what has become of the rest of them.

I got pregnant in 1996. Now that was a real shocker, because I had had numerous miscarriages, and honestly did not believe I could ever have more children. Besides, I was 34 years old and looked like a walking dead person. There was no way my body was strong enough to carry a baby – So I never gave a second thought to continuing to shoot dope. It wouldn’t have mattered if I did, because no matter how many times I tried, I could NOT quit.

I remember sitting in the bathtub looking at my arms and wondering where I was going to hit in the next few years because my veins were getting scarred. I also remember sitting on the edge of the bed, belly “out to here” with the rig ready to go and the needle poised above my vein -- tears streaming down my face. I remember praying “God, please don’t let me shoot any dope today!” Then sitting on the edge of the bed within the same hour doing a shot. Most of all I remember praying: “God, please do what you want with me, I’ve ruined my life, but let this baby be okay. It isn’t his fault that I can’t quit.”

More than anything else, I remember the last shot I ever did. I had a real good idea that I was in labor, but I also knew that if I got to the hospital and they found dope in the baby or me, I was caught – and if I got caught, it would end. Once and for all, it could end! I knew I was taking a big risk on my baby possibly ending up in foster care. I had already pretty much turned my older son over to the care of my parents. I couldn’t stand the idea of having my beautiful little boy living in that insanity, but I’d also lost all sensation in my hands and was unable to work or to care for him from the third month of my pregnancy. I found out later that numbness of the hands is sometimes a symptom of methamphetamine toxicity.

It was August 15, 1997. I delivered my son at 6:30 that evening. Sometime during the next morning traces of meth were found in his blood. A hotline call was made to the county Family Services then forwarded to the local police department. My baby was taken into protective custody by the hospital until Social Services could get counselors and caseworkers lined up to meet with me. My boyfriend abandoned me at the hospital because as he put it: “I can’t deal with this!”

I was terrified of people in authority. I’d spent the last three years of my life developing an ever-deepening fear of police, especially ones who appeared to be driving plain cars or ones who looked like the omnipresent “FEDS!” So I was scared to death. I had to call my mother and tell her that I’d been on dope for three years. My mother knew nothing about drugs and was at a complete loss. She didn’t know what to do or where to turn. But I was lucky! There is no way I can ever stress enough how important it is when coming off any drug, but especially meth, to have a strong, stable, and supportive network of people to depend upon! My fear of people in authority gradually began to decrease when I realized that there really were people willing to help me. The only thing I had to do in return was WANT TO HELP MYSELF!

I was set up with a counseling group that worked together with Family Services to see that my baby stayed with me and didn’t wind up in foster care. I gave up my house because I couldn’t pay for it anyway, and moved two children and myself in with my parents (who were more than glad to take us). Not everyone has that option. So once gain, I was extremely lucky!

When the baby was almost three weeks old, I entered outpatient rehab in my hometown. The counselors there should all be commended for the work they do and the amount of sincere effort they put forth to help people. I completed the CSTAR Program on December 31, 1997, and I’ve not touched methamphetamine since -- not to say that I haven’t wanted to. Three years later, there are times when I want a shot so badly I feel as though I am literally going to crawl out of my skin. Maybe its because I’ve always liked the feeling of going fast, but all I know is that meth gets a hold of you and it does NOT let go. Don’t ever let anyone tell you it does! I don’t know how to live without some kind of extra “kick,” whether that is an extra cup of coffee in the morning or a sinus pill when I’m not really all that congested. I will have to watch everything I do and every “drug” I ingest for the rest of my life – because whether I ever do meth again, I’ll always be an addict.

I know my weaknesses, and I just “don’t go there,” but it makes me angry! It makes me angry because I know that as long as those weaknesses are present, I’m not really in control of my own life. There are times I’d love to go downtown, drink a beer, and listen to a good band – but I have to be realistic enough to know that I can’t do that. Not yet anyway. Three years clean, and I know in my heart that if the circumstances were just right, I could end up right back where I started.

I started college in January 1998, something else I never thought I’d do, but I knew I had to do something with my life because I had two little guys counting on me. I chose to major in psychology and minor in criminal justice. I’ve made the Dean’s List and am involved with two National Honor Societies. Because of my age (39) I can’t say I know what I’ll do with the degree, but I’m sure that substance abuse treatment figures in somewhere.

Sometimes the guilt over all the horrible things I said and did to people when I was using overwhelms me – and it seems like I’ll be making amends for the rest of my life. But all in all, I’m not ashamed of anything that has happened to me. There is something in my body chemistry that causes me to crave a feeling that most other people don’t need. Every day that I live I have to manage that – but I try to be as open about these things as I can. I was lucky enough to have people to help me, so maybe what I have to say will help someone else, because isn’t that what its all about anyway?