My daughter has been a Meth addict for at least 8 years now. I had no idea, partly because she lived in another State than I did. Thinking back now to some of the times and things that happened, makes me realize she was using back then, and I had no idea. She has lost everything. Her home, her car, her children, her job, amongst them. I helped her get a car when she was working and before this plague started. After it started, she quit making the payments, they called me. She lied about having made them. I had to pay the car off myself or risk my own credit being marked. She became rude, snotty, and arrogant toward me if I called, or she would just have her "friends" tell me she wasn't home, thereby avoiding talking to me.
   She has been in jail for drug related charges. 3 years ago she called me on the phone and told me she was pregnant. She is not a youth. She just had her 39th birthday----the father of the baby kicked her out because she didn't want an abortion. Could she come and stay with me? She was going to give the baby up for adoption--I sent her plane fare, she missed the first plane because the father of the baby and her were arguing. I sent another $50 to make the reservation change. I hadn't seen her for probably 4 years, when I picked her up at the airport, I couldn't believe what I was looking at. She stunk. Her beautiful blond hair looked as though it hadn't been washed for weeks. She was wearing a huge black coat that had belonged to the father of the baby. It smelled too. Anyway, during the following months, she got healthy, she didn't use because she was with me 24-7, didn't drive, and we lived out in the country. She picked the adoptive parents for the baby. I had no say in it.
   She spent her days either sleeping or mooning over that louse of a man who fathered her baby, and writing him letters she never sent. It was like living with a love sick teenager in many ways. She defended him to the hilt. I just told her that I found it hard to find anything I liked about a man that would want you to kill your baby. He was a Meth user too.
   I did everything I knew to do when she was with me. Going through seeing my grandbaby given up for adoption was horrible. I am older and didn't have what was needed to keep the baby myself. Besides, I feel like I failed with her, so it was not an option for me.
   I don't know her anymore. 3 months after the baby was born, she moved to Denver to be near her then 18 year old son. That lasted about 3 weeks. We gave her money to get a place to live. IT all went to drugs. She went back to Minneapolis. Her son has also used Meth. I haven't talked to her in almost 3 and a half years. I don't know where or who she is living with, only that she in the Minneapolis area. When I try to find her, I am met with what I believe are lies, or just reach a dead end. I also have a grand daughter in Minneapolis who is 12 years old. She lives with her dad, he doesn't allow me to have contact with her, I think because he thinks I am covering for my daughter, which I am not. I haven't seen my grand daughter since she was 3 years old. My grandson is living with me now. He is 21. He is struggling with his addiction but is in counseling, has drug tests done, and I don't know what is going to happen with his future. He feels that his mother abandoned him , which is true. She has. For Meth.
   She wanted my oldest daughter ---her sister to adopt the baby. My oldest daughter first said yes, but was struggling herself to have a child of her own, they were undergoing IVF so in the end my oldest daughter and her husband told the drug using daughter no. They don't speak--- and haven't spoken for over 3 years. Not because my oldest hasn't tried--
   I am angry. How did this happen? How did my youngest daughter end up like this? She is going to die if she doesn't get help. I have laid awake at night, unable to sleep because of her. I hate who she has become. I never used drugs or drank alcohol myself, she wasn't in that kind of environment growing up. She started being rebellious at about 13, used pot, graduated to cocaine in her early 20's, and I think now, used probably every drug imaginable. I love her with all my heart. I don't want her to die. I even contacted the television show Intervention to see if they would help. They didn't even respond to my letter.
   I feel that I have been dragged into this nightmare because of her. Sometimes I get so angry when I think about it I could just shake her til her teeth rattle. I know how that sounds.
   But, after years and years and years of the same old crap, I am tired. I am 62 years old, it is something I can't deal with anymore. I have told her I can't help her anymore. Occasionally she emails me. It's been since September of this year since I have heard from her. She doesn't care about her family. As I write this, I feel so much anger at her for destroying not only her life, but the lives of her children, and hurting them so deeply, as well as the rest of the family.
   The thing I realized is that she doesn't want help. She doesn't want to stop using Meth.
   She refuses and has always refused treatment, and or counseling.
   When my mother died, I had no idea she was using Meth. I gave her a watch with diamonds on it that my dad had given to my mother one year. And a diamond ring.
   They are gone. They didn't matter to her only what she got so she could buy her dope.
This doesn't even go into detail about the sorrow, pain, hurt, tears she has caused within out family. The fighting with my husband over her--her step father--the lies, the deceit, the attitude of entitlement from her, the not caring about any of her family. Her bio-dad is undergoing Chemo for blood cancer. I wrote her and told her. She has not responded
   Her paternal grandmother died about a year and a half ago, she never responded when she learned of that either. How can anyone be so selfish? How can anyone not see what they are doing and not care? I don't get it. I know, the drugs do the talking for them, but I will tell you one thing, when she was with me for those 10 months, I had my daughter back in so many ways....too bad it didn't last.
   I have given up. There is nothing I can do for her. She doesn't want anything but her Meth, and to smell bad, and have her teeth fall out. Her beauty --it is no more. She was so pretty before all of this. It makes me sick.
   I wait every day for that phone call telling me they have found her body in an alley somewhere in Minneapolis. I know it is going to happen one day.
--LInda

   Hello ,I don't have any titles for this letter. I'm not going to bore you with details about my life before meth .I really can't remember the way I used to be other than ,I use to have joy.
   I was 15 in 1990 when a started drinking and smoking pot. Meth was not rampant back then. I was 19 when I tried meth. I am from a small town in MT. at that time there wasn't much known about meth. There were no bill boards ,commercials ,movies or T.V. shows (intervention and such). At first I hated it. I couldn't just come home and go to sleep , I loved my sleep. Then I was just using on the weekends and not every weekend. I moved out of state to NV to get away from meth at the age of 21. Little did I know the friend that I was moving to be near was also using . I didn't ask, I knew she and her man like to party but I didn't know it was with meth. Long story short first weekend I'm in my new town I'm using again. I lived there for 3 years and did meth almost every day. If I wasn't mething it up I was on ecstasy. I snorted, smoked and finally shot at which point I hit rock bottom. I moved back to MT. was clean for two years. Moved to WA. Met a Guy my husband. We were using on weekends. I got pregnant 2 years into our relationship. I was using the first month and one week of my pregnancy I quit when I found out, but to little to late. The damage was already done. My daughter God love her is so smart and sweet .She is how ever very clumsy and has poor balance I believe this is a result of the drugs I used in the first month of my pregnancy. She also has ADD. Which I also attribute to the meth as well. I have been clean ever since I found out I was expecting my first child. I have been sober 6 years and would sooner die then ever touch that poison again. I have had two more children who seem to not have the same issues as my oldest. ( yes I am ashamed of my self ,I feel guilty everyday for the things my daughter has to endure because of my addiction)
   I myself will never be the same. I am sick all the time. I have ulcers all the time. I have had to have hundreds of dollars worth of work done to my teeth. I have troubles talking to people I always feel like they will judge me some how (paranoid). I am constantly tired, I sleep all the time. When I get a cold the mucus runs into my ears and throat instead of my nose. I have a very short temper and get exhausted fast. So if that is not enough to make a person stay away from meth I don't know what is, I wish I could turn back the clock but since I can't maybe someone can learn from my stupidity. I used meth for 8 years. I'm 33 and feel like I'm 80, most of the time.
PLEASE DON'T DO METH AND IF YOU ARE STOP. Your killing your self and the people who love you.
--Da

   Hi - i just found your site through a friend of mine and read some of the stories. Seems to me some people realy don't know what a real meth addiction is to me. I'm 45yrs old now - had a heart attack at the age of 41 and would probobly still hit up a pipe full is someone held it in front of me.
   I've done time for it, i've given it so much of my time, and it's taken time from everyone i know. Like the song says "i used to do a little til a little got more and more". I started using it when i was driving truck back in my mid twenties. Didn't know it was addictive then just that i could drive straight through for four days straight before i started seeing things and had to sleep some. Then like a true genious i was i figured out a person could have a realy good time if you did a whole bunch at once. THEN IT WAS ON!!!! Hell i didn't look back and for that matter don't remember much up till i got busted in 99.
   I like everyone else lost pretty much everything i had. Legal fees burnt up what little money id did have so i moved the hell out of dodge. I forgot to mention above that when i got out i started cooking my own then so i didn't have to pay for the shit. That was ok till all my buddies wanted to learn how too - so what's a guy gonna do right???
Anyhow i got busted again for having bought a jug of tululol in sioux falls and that got a warrant for my house. Well i got off that one anyhow and then i moved out of state to start over. Well i cooked down there too but only a couple time. i got a bad hit of anhydrous one time and said i'd never mess with the crap ever again - and i havn't.......... NONE OF IT"S WORTH IT PEOPLE !!!!!!!!!
   I had much more fun being clean and working fulll time at decent job and it was kind of cool that no one knew my history at all so i could be just like the people i used to look out my jail window and wish i was.
--Treatmentjunkie

My God, What Next?
   Hi Out There! I am 49 today. I have never been much of one for drugs, though I have quit drinking because I was afraid I liked it too much. My daughter Becca is 28, in prison for stealing her grandmother's identity, and my husband and I have custody of her 13 year old daughter and her four year old son. Becca has done well in custody; going through treatment, taking classes, working and paying child support. I am terrified about what's going to happen when she gets out. She has nowhere else to go but here. She hasn't scarred her face up too much, but she has classic meth-mouth, and that is going to be a serious roadblock when she tries to find work. She has had three jobs in her life, and the longest one lasted only two weeks. My brother and his wife have a small farm in Idaho, and we were hoping she might be able to stay with them for awhile and get a fresh start. My brother is willing, but his wife wants no part of it, and that could wreck their marriage. I am so afraid that she will go right back to the same old crap if she stays with us.
   Like everyone who uses this stuff, she has done horrid things as MethBecky that my Becca would NEVER have done. Right now, Becca is a frail and needy person, trying to be an adult for the first time, and I recognize the tattered remnants of what used to be my daughter. I just don't know what to do or say to give her the strength to deny MethBecky's demands. She doesn't acknowledge many of the acts that MethBecky performed, and I don't want to be unforgiving, but I don't want to sugar-coat the problem with trust when she comes back to our home. We will no doubt continue to lock up what we can and unobtrusively do daily inventories of portable items.
   There are so very many families in my town going through the same trial by fire, and not one of us has any answers. To be perfectly honest, I don't know anyone who's kid has kicked it and stayed straight. I must be a dreamer, but I want MY child to be one of the lottery winners who beats this. I just wish there was somebody I could talk to who could tell me how to help us all. We live in terror of her daughter making all the same mistakes.
--Loree

Love and Meth ( much like love and war)
   I was very grateful to have found your website. I, like many of the women whose stories are posted, am in love with a meth addict. We both use to be addicts before I went to prison for selling dope and decided to change my life. I got out and started working and never turned back to that stuff. When I was released, he was still incarcerated in prison (for the sixth time) and we would talk on the phone occasionally. I swore to myself that I would never get back together with him, but I was right there at the gate to pick him up when he was released. A week later I let him move in. Things were great at first. He was clean and working a decent job, our bills were paid and the sex was awesome. Then I started noticing little indicators of meth use. He started arguing with his boss at work and showing up late. He wouldn't come home after work or answer my phone calls. The day after I found out I was pregnant, I pulled a glass pipe out of his pocket. He tried to tell me it wasn't his and even had some kid run up to my car and try to convince me that it belonged to him and not my boyfriend. I knew better. I told him from the beginning that the first day he went back to meth would be the last day he saw me. I stuck to my guns and asked him to pack his things and leave. The very same night, I let him come back. He promised to stop using and even cried with me. I wanted so badly to believe him, but of course he went right back to using. He stopped helping out around the house and started acting really weird. I kept thinking I should just get an abortion and be done with this mess, I even told him I would if he didn't stop using. Somehow I thought the threat of losing his kid would affect his drug addition. Crazy really. Now I think that loving an addict is as bad of an addiction as the drug itself. Why else would we put ourselves through so much pain? So yesterday he called me and said that if we could stay together, he would quit using meth. Me and the unborn baby in my tummy meant that much to him. But when he got home, he was high again. Like always, it caused an argument that escalated into a physical confrontation. Today I am paying for one of the windows in my house to be replaced after his elbow went through it. Again, I asked him to pack his things and leave and I got my keys back from him. He stayed up all night and didn't go to work today. How do I know, because he told me he had been up all night when he showed up on my front door step this morning needing a screwdriver to get himself into a car he had locked himself out of, and it was past the time he would have had to be at work. And you know what, I probably would have continued on this ridiculous path of self destruction until I went crazy or started using meth again myself if it wasn't for your website. It is a huge help to not feel like you are the only one going through the crap that meth addicts do to their loved ones. I though it was me, I though if only I loved him a little better or waited a little longer he would change. I personalized everything and lost more and more ground by the minute. At times I cried, other times I screamed. When he wouldn't answer his phone, I would call him 50 times in a row, until he did. I thought I could save him. The only person I can save is myself. So I think I will take the advice of so many other women on this website and RUN as fast and as far away a possible from that monster that has swallowed that man I use to love called meth.
--N

   Wow I am in amazement on the two stories for December to Miss Loree, I thought that I could help my brother and even thought that using his son as the main goal would help but it didn't. He even went to rehab after a 2 year prison stay. That didn't work now he is back in prison and hoping that when he gets out he will try something else to get better. You are right if she stays in town near the old friends she will probably go back. What everyone needs is they have to want it. They need lots of counseling, in treatment rehab for more than just 6 months and I believe they need to get away from there home town and old friends. I have found that if they even talk to one of there old buddy's that is a sure sign they are back. Because normally that is the only reason they were friends in the first place. Good luck to you and your family try not to enable her but be there if she needs to talk but everything else you need to make her work for. The hand outs are what keep them going back. They figure that if they need it they will be able to get it from there parents and that is why they never get better. I know it is not your fault but you have to let her make her own decisions and mistakes. You need to stay strong and don't give in.
   To the girl from Oregon I feel so bad for you but in an another sentence I am so proud of you. You kicked a habit that even strong people cannot beat. Stay strong and find a church and some real good friends to keep you strong and away from the bad. For your mom there is nothing you can do. Threats don't mean anything she doesn't hear them and she doesn't comprehend what is really going on. Again stay strong. You are a very strong little girl and I am so impressed that you pulled yourself away from the crap.
   I am Mary from Cali, this is my third letter and not much has changed in my family saga. My brother is back in prison and his son is being raised by my parents. His mother is so far into meth that she has lost 8 children to the system and someone else is raising all of them. Even worse the 8 siblings never get to see each other because they all have different fathers. My brother in law lives in a trailer and doesn't get to see his 2 daughter's because he cannot bring himself out of the drug seen. My stepdaughter's mom still only see's her on supervised visits and hasn't gone to rehab yet. We got custody 2 1/2 years ago and she only needed 6 months to get her back on regular weekend visits. Children, family, spouses and friends mean nothing to any one on drugs. The only thing they think about is there next fix and whom is going to help them out of there next jam.
   I have never used drugs and I never will. I am so far into the drug world its confusing. I study and read about it all the time. I try to make sense of why this is so important to them. It hurts to see all the people in the world that cannot run from this horrible habit. If you get nothing out of this letter at least get this "Stay away from drugs it will take your life over". If just need to chat or make a comment please feel free to email me I love learning more about other people and the hurt they are going through it helps my research. Have a wonderful holiday I will pray for all of you and your families. mgalano@juno.com
--Mary from Cali

   I met Crystal in August of 2006. She was a friend of a friend, and we hit it off from the first night we met. We were first introduced on a Friday night, I remember it like it was yesterday. I arrived at a hotel on 1960 and pulled up, not knowing what an effect this night would have on the rest of my life. I walked into the hotel room and was introduced to 4 others, 1 being Crystal . She was gorgeous, like nothing I had ever seen before. She glistened in the light, which immediately caught my attention. She was the center of attention, everyone was focused on her. It seemed like everyone was there for her and nothing else mattered. I was very quickly introduced to her and in a weird obsessive way, feel in love. We spent the whole night together in this hotel room with these other people, but none of them mattered, it was all about Crystal and I. She made me laugh, she made me open up, she made me alert, she made me feel like I was on top of the world. I spent the next 3 days locked in this hotel room with her and the others would come and go every now and then. She was my best friend, she is what I had longed for my whole life.
   My whole life from here on out was consumed by Crystal , every waking minute she was by my side. Our relationship turned ugly real quick but I didn't see it, I didn't want to see it. I was so engulfed with the feelings I had for her. I began to lose weight very quickly, in the name of Crystal . She took away my house, my pride, every relationship I had in my life, my dignity, my self-worth, my job, all my money. She was so sneaky, this Crystal !
   In a matter of 2 months Crystal and I became homeless. I would do horrible things to try to support her and I...anything for Crystal . We would stay up together for days on end....I think our record was 7. We would just stay up talking, organizing everything in my purse 20 million times, putting on make-up, peeking out of the blinds at shadows in the dark, talking about the plots that the world had against us, and most of all I would plan out my next move, to insure that Crystal would never leave my side. I was physical, mentally and spiritually dependent on what Crystal had given me...a whole new life.
   Everyone around me let me know not quickly enough that mine and Crystal 's relationship was a deadly one. In December of 2006 a guy tried to come between Crystal and I and I pushed back at first. I HAD TO defend what Crystal and I had built over this time. It was priceless! I began letting this guy in emotionally and he began to push Crystal out of my life. He was a friend of hers too, a friend of 10 years!, but was concerned for me. I guess she was more a controlling part of my life than she was for him.
   On February 24th, 2007 I, with the help and support of my family and friends, forced Crystal out of my life. This wasn't the first time I had tried but I knew that if I didn't put an end to the relationship immediately, I would loose this guy, my freedom and everything that I had not ALREADY lost.
   It was really hard to let her go. It was really painful; physically and emotionally. She drained the life out of me and I thought I was going to be nothing without her.
   My life took a turn for the better on this day and I haven't seen Crystal since the 24th day of February, 2007. She is no longer a strong hold on my life and I AM something without her. I am everything that I thought I would never be! I have the life I was longing for with Crystal , but she could never provide. It is a long hard road to lose a friendship like Crystal and I had, but it was definitely a road worth taking. I think about Crystal from time to time and I hope she is okay without me :). This road has taught me so many things about myself that I would have never known if Crystal had not come into my life. I will be forever thankful for Crystal .
--C

   Hi, I'm 15 years old. I was once addicted to crystal meth when I was 12 years old. But this is about my mother who is addicted to meth and has been sence i was little. not sure how little but yeah. to this days she is probly doing it right now. the woman, mother, sister, daughter, aunt that i once knew is not that person anymore. She does not buy it or sell it just gets what we used to call it with pot is "smoked out" she comes how late late at night when im already in bed and when i wake up at 6 a.m. she is up and all prettied up ALREADY...i found out that she was doing it from her recnet boyfriend when they were fighting i heard him say "maybe if you lay off the meth" and she said "shhh"... i didnt know what to do after that. my whole family is sick of it, when she is high she is really mean and cruel *not phisically), mentally and verbally as well. one time i told her that she was going to lose me forever if she didnt quit, the next morning i caught her doing it in my room as she thought that i had left for school. she doesnt understand what it feels like to us kids that have to deal with drug addicted parents. she doesn't own up to any thing that she does wrong. lts always someone elses faught, im lost...we werent around each other when i was doing meth because i was always out with other meth users and dealers, i have even done it with her friends, i have been clean for 2 years now. she also has a disease called "chrones Disease" its nothing to mess around with. she cant eat with out getting sick from it. and when i was on it she was visiting me in jail, and im terrified of having to visit her grave..my uncle (moms youngest brother) juswt died in june,...he was the first person to die on both sides of my family in 20 years and everyone took that really hard...i took it out on drinking like once a week...not meth everyday.
--A girl from Oregon