Pubdate: Mon, 18 Apr 2005
Source: Bradenton Herald (FL)
Copyright: 2005 Bradenton Herald
Contact:  http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradentonherald/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/58
Author:  Martha Irvine, Associated Press
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)

ONE WOMAN'S LIFE AFTER METH

The Last In A Series Examining Meth's Toll In America

CHICAGO - She gets her latest grade from her theology professor - it's a 
"check-plus," the highest mark she could've received.

The tall, fair-haired student, older than most of her classmates, smiles 
slightly and shrugs it off, as if it's not such a big deal. But she knows 
better, especially given her circumstance a year ago, even little more than 
two months ago.

Her name is Robin - she's a 35-year-old mother of three and college student 
earning an undergraduate degree on scholarship.

She's also a recovering addict who spent much of last year strung out on 
methamphetamine, a drug more often associated with Western states and rural 
areas that's spreading to other pockets of the country, including a growing 
number of urban areas. Some people manufacture meth in mom-and-pop "labs," 
others in hotel rooms. Still others, mainly dealers, have it shipped to 
them from large meth-making operations in the Southwest and Mexico.

Robin, who'd never tried the drug until last year, found her meth dealer in 
downtown Chicago through a posting on a popular online bulletin board. She 
had used cocaine in the past - but was immediately drawn in by meth's 
longer high.

"I'd stay up for three or four days and drive around with my children in 
the car. I was a zombie," says Robin, who shared her story on the condition 
that her last name not be used. "After a while, I needed meth just to get 
out of bed."

Woman on the edge

Now her father is caring for her kids, ages 8, 12 and 15, and she is 
attempting to get her life back together. Her focus is on staying sober and 
finishing school, while she attends support groups and lives in a halfway 
house, a short train ride from the university she attends on the North Side 
of Chicago.

She remains, in many ways, a woman on the edge. A relapse in February sent 
her to the halfway house's detox unit, only a few weeks after she moved there.

"For me, it's the month later and the six months later that are the 
hardest," she says, noting that making the initial decision to stay clean 
was easier than ignoring the cravings that can still hit out of nowhere.

Drugs have long been her coping mechanism, a way to run from her problems 
and ease her pain. But after years of struggling with addiction, she is 
determined to make it - without methamphetamine or any other drug.

The front door of the four-story brick halfway house is taped over, its 
glass cracked. Women who live at the house, all of them addicts, shuffle in 
and out to smoke cigarettes on a warm spring morning.

As Robin walks out, she seems rattled.

She is worried she'll be late for her early class and is mad that none of 
her roommates bothered to wake her up after she overslept. On top of it 
all, she's been fighting with her boyfriend, and it's starting to wear on her.

"That's how I am. When things in my life are going horribly, I'm used to 
it. But when things are going good, I find ways to mess it up," she says.

Robin plans to take classes this summer, and hopes to graduate by the end 
of 2006 with a history major and special education minor. She would like to 
get a job teaching high school.

"I think I could relate well to kids who have problems," says Robin, whose 
own troubles began as a teen after her parents divorced and her mother left 
her with her father.

Feeling utterly abandoned, she soon turned to alcohol and drugs.

"I don't think she ever has gotten over her mother leaving," says her 
father, now retired at age 61 and living in nearby Skokie.

Discovering the drug

Until that happened, he says, she was "absolutely the perfect kid." But by 
age 15, she had already entered rehab for the first time, and at 17, left 
home to move in with her drug-dealing boyfriend, with whom she had her 
first child. Robin calls the years that followed "a horrible progression" 
that led to her marrying and divorcing the father of her other two 
children, troubles with money and accusations of child neglect. She didn't 
make a serious attempt at getting sober, long term, until she was 26 and 
pregnant with her third child.

Robin managed to stay off drugs for eight years and remarried in 2002. But 
the pressures of school and her family sent her back to her old habits in 
early 2004, prompting her second husband to eventually leave her. She also 
was stripping at bachelor parties to earn money and found the drugs in that 
scene difficult to resist.

This time, though, she discovered a new drug - methamphetamine - not fully 
understanding what she was getting herself into.

"I thought it was like coke, so I was snorting it like crazy," she says, 
describing how it kept her up for days instead of hours.

It wasn't long before she started smoking it and, as she continued to use, 
the drug's nastier effects quickly set in. She got sores on her face and, 
as sometimes happens with meth use, couldn't stop herself from scratching 
them. Her 5-foot-7 frame became so emaciated that, at one point, she 
weighed about 100 pounds.

She also recalls getting fixated on odd tasks, staying up for hours to 
clean one room in the apartment while the rest of it remained in shambles.

Meanwhile, her kids - a girl and two boys - had to get themselves up and 
ready for school.

"I was physically there, but I wasn't there," Robin says now. "You don't 
realize what it's doing to your life. It's real cunning stuff."

For the children

Last summer, at her boyfriend's urging, she tried going to rehab but left 
almost immediately.

On New Year's Day of this year, her father consulted an attorney and called 
the police. After she admitted to the officers that she'd been using drugs, 
Robin went voluntarily to a hospital and then to the halfway house.

"I still love her but, boy, I sure don't like the things she does," her dad 
says now. "It's heartbreaking is the word for it - absolutely heartbreaking 
to see her ruin her life and the lives of everybody around her."

Robin worries about her daughter, a seventh-grader whom she describes as 
"real sensitive." She's also concerned that her youngest son is showing 
signs of depression.

When Robin first moved into the halfway house, she says it was hard for her 
to even call her children on the phone.

"At first, I cried so much. But now the more I talk to them, the better I 
feel," says Robin.

During one of her classes, she doodles on a notebook cover, filling in a 
heart that she's drawn next to the names of her kids and her boyfriend.

"My kids are awesome," she says, smiling. "People say, 'Your kids are so 
good.' So I must've done something right."
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MAP posted-by: Elizabeth Wehrman