A DRUG TALE SHE DARE NOT KEEP SECRET

Ida Crall's Ordeal With Son's Drug Dependency Illustrates The Toll
Addiction Takes On A Family

GLASFORD - Ida Crall sat in the audience at her granddaughter's DARE
graduation program and cried hard tears of a tough-to-pinpoint origin. The
steady leak - brought on by a confusing mix of pride, guilt, shame, hope,
sadness - stirred a sympathetic reaction from those around her.

A soft pat on the back.

A squeeze of the shoulder.

A "God bless you and your son," whispered in her ear.

And the tears kept coming.

"I looked at those fresh-faced, innocent kids singing that song so
sincerely about being happy and living a drug-free life and I thought
'Please, please kids, don't put yourself or anyone else through what we've
been through.' And then I just couldn't stop crying."

Crall doesn't know much about DARE's work in middle-school classrooms to
promote drug-free lives, the cops-helping-kids program in which her
granddaughter participated. She knows a lot, however, about drug-filled
lives and the wrecking-ball damage addicts cause families. Her son, Jeff
Miller, of Glasford, who is now 40, smoked cocaine for two decades - may
well be smoking it again for all she knows - and now that Crall fears he
may be forever lost to her, she's willing, again, to publicly describe the
hell-on-Earth torture of loving a drug addict. Her message goes out to
those who choose not to recognize and act on the early-warning signals of a
young life going terribly wrong.

Like she did.

"Don't do it," said Crall, who will turn 60 this year. "And for God's sake
don't ignore the signs. There is not a man, a job, a friend on this Earth
worth stepping over your child for. I know, I've done it."

This is the third time in the past three years that we've written about
Crall and Miller. In a December 1998 story, Miller, then 36, stood at a
crossroads. Years of drug abuse and the petty crime that was required to
support it, had stranded him in the Peoria County jail. Locked up, he faced
either a court-approved stay in a residential rehabilitation program or
years in prison.

A judge gave him rehab.

"When I walked out of the courtroom after the judge gave Jeff rehab instead
of prison it was just like all this weight was flying off my shoulders,"
said Crall, in the second story that ran four months after the first, and
detailed the encouraging start to Miller's first-ever stab at real
sobriety. "There's a part of me that's still holding back because I've been
burned so many times, but this is the most hopeful that I've ever been."

Now, three years later, that hope has died.

"I try not to let myself hope for a happy ending any more," Crall said.
"It's not worth the heartache."

According to his mother, Miller's first-ever serious attempt at a drug-free
life was relatively short-lived. After leaving a Bloomington rehab center
he rented an apartment in the area and got work as a roofer. He regularly
attended the daily meetings of a 12-step treatment program and had a
sponsor who helped him stay sober.

"I had a lot of contact with him through that time," Crall said. "He was
clear-eyed, healthy and had a positive attitude. He got religion too,
although I always suspected it was a sort of jailhouse religion, but we
were all willing to go along with it because it looked like he was doing so
well."

Crall often drove to Bloomington to get her son to work and home. He was
welcomed back into the Crall home in Glasford for family get-togethers. He
painted their bathroom.

"We talked more than we had for years," Crall said.

The conversations weren't always enjoyable. Miller horrified his mother
with dark tales of the spirit-snuffing rigors of the lives of the homeless
and the hopeless. Sharing needles with strangers. Living in the woods.
Sleeping underneath bridges. They were painful talks, but in some ways they
felt like therapy.

"We never really talked about why this stuff had happened. But he was
sober," Crall said. "And that was good."

Good and temporary. One day Crall called Miller's Bloomington phone number
and got a recorded message that the service had been disconnected. Miller,
she would soon learn, was back in jail. Despite a new setback, rock bottom
was still not in sight.

"We brought him home to our house," said Crall.

This time Miller had an electronic bracelet wrapped around his ankle to
monitor his movements. When that came off, Crall and her husband let him
stay under three conditions:

He had to go to addict's meetings.

No drugs.

He had to have a job.

The family reached a second, even higher, level of happiness in the
following months. Miller again found roofing work and this time talked
about getting financial aid and taking classes at Illinois Central College
to be a drug and alcohol counselor. They fixed up a room in the basement
for him. He paid rent and his family helped him buy new clothes. And though
every ounce of common sense told Crall not to invest too much in this new
and improved version of her son, she allowed herself to think that maybe -
please God, maybe - this time was different.

Turns out it was a little different. It lasted longer.

"Jeff got himself a truck, and after that it was all over," Crall said.

The phone rang in Crall's bedroom at a time in the morning when calls
seldom bring anything but bad news. Miller was somewhere in downtown
Peoria, out of gas and needing a hand. Crall and her husband got dressed
and drove from Glasford to find him.

"My husband got out and talked to Jeff then came back to the car and said
'He's higher than a kite, Ida,'" Crall said. "I felt sick to my stomach."

Miller left his basement room the next afternoon, though Crall knew where
he was going to be staying. When some money turned up missing in her house,
she called her son and told him to move out. When he didn't bother, Crall
eventually moved most of his stuff to the curb for the garbagemen. She has
not heard from him in a year.

"Actually I kept his Social Security card and a Bible of his," she said. "I
guess that means I still have some hope of hearing from him again."

Crall went silent for a time after Miller left. She stopped using her
normal human lifelines and didn't want to discuss her son with anyone. She
went to a doctor thinking she could use a tranquilizer prescription -
something to stop her from being squeezed in the dark grip of depression -
but when she opened her mouth to talk to her doctor, no words came out.

"I literally couldn't speak," said Crall, who was also coping with a
personal cancer scare that had her thinking for the first time that her
relationship with her son might never be resolved in her lifetime. She saw
a future in which she would die, and her son would still be a crack addict.

One morning she awoke at 3:30 a.m. compelled, oddly, to write a poem. She
said it helped to get the words down that had been in her mind for weeks.
And though she's self-conscious about its lack of polish and erudition,
she's certain she wants others to read it.

"I would sell my soul if I could see my son off drugs,

Safe, happy and free.

But it's too late for him and it's too late for me.

I was just too busy to care or see.

Please open your eyes, your minds and your hearts,

Stop this addiction before it starts.

Don't go down this road where we have been,

Grab hold of their hands and pull them back in.

A life on drugs is a no-win game,

It only produces great misery and pain.

You will wander the streets with no hopes or dreams,

Lie and steal just to fill the need.

Your family will cry, they'll beg and plead.

But the drugs now have control.

They are the master of your body and soul,

Don't throw your life down that long, dark hole.

This won't help my son and it won't help me.

I just pray I can get one person to see

What hell their life on drugs will be.

It's not too late so listen to me,

Dear God please choose to live drug-free."

Crall is an Internet Bingo fanatic. Now that she's retired from her
waitressing job, she spends hours playing against strangers from around the
world in a live format that allows them to converse - like in a chat room -
while they play. Recently a woman happened to mention that she was having
problems with her 16-year-old daughter.

"Is she on drugs?" Crall wrote, remembering her son started at age 13 and
look how that ended up.

"I don't think so," the woman wrote back, "although her boyfriend might be."

"She's probably doing drugs too," Crall wrote.

A third woman typed in that her children were only four and six, but that
she wanted to know what signs to look for as they grow older.

"Let me tell you sweetheart . . ." Crall began to type.

There were 15 to 20 women playing Bingo at the time, six of whom had
personal stories to tell about drug abuse in their families. The Bingo game
came to a halt. The conversation stayed on topic and lasted an hour.