LOVE AIDS KARTYA IN DRUG FIGHT

A MELBOURNE teenager who miraculously found her Taiwanese birth mother in a
22-million-to-one long shot last year has told of her continuing battle with
heroin addiction.

Kartya Wunderle yesterday said she had been unable to shake the habit,
despite finding her long-lost mother and sister last June after a desperate
search for years.

The 19-year-old was speaking to the Herald Sun on the eve of the launch of
Kartya's Story a moving account by Nola Wunderle of her daughter's struggle,
her own nervous breakdown, the family's heartache and their undying love for
one another.

The book to be launched on Monday tells how Kartya first turned to drugs as
a 12-year-old, confused about her identity after being adopted by Nola and
her husband Othmar as a nine-month-old.

By the time she was 15, she had quit school, left home and was addicted to
heroin. Her parents reported her to police as a missing person 16 times.

But Kartya's problems began long before then.

Born in Taipei on July 20, 1980, Kartya was four months old when her
alcoholic father sold her to an illegal adoption racket for about $1800.

She spent the next five months being shunted between foster homes, neglected
and deprived of love.

As a result, the troubled teenager had difficulty showing physical
affection, shunning her parents' hugs and cuddles.

Instead, she sought comfort in drugs.

"Kartya had missed out on the one-to-one love and care so necessary for a
small baby," Mrs Wunderle's book explains.

Kartya and Nola's pilgrimage to Taiwan was a last-ditch attempt to help rid
the young woman of her demons.

Kartya yesterday revealed she had overdosed and almost died two days before
she flew to Taiwan to begin searching for her roots.

She said her addiction was a continuing mental battle, which the meeting
with her birth mother had been unable to cure.

"Words can't describe how I felt when I first saw her," she said of her
first 4am meeting with her estranged mother.

"Only then could I begin to recover. But I still use (heroin) affects me
more so mentally than physically, it's what's going on inside my head."

The shy teenager who spent four months in Taiwan getting to know the other
woman she now calls "mum" has come a long way.

Although she is an infrequent heroin user, her loving family has stuck by
her to help her cope when she relapses.

"That's the message in the book.

"It is easy to love a child unconditionally when they're good, but when
they're not going down the path you want them to and they're subjecting you
to a lot of pain, that's when you learn about acceptance and the true
meaning of forgiveness, that's unconditional love," Mrs Wunderle said.

She said she wanted to tell her daughter's story in all its gripping
detailto give hope to other families whose children had turned to drugs.

"I wanted to show that normal, nice families have kids that turn to drugs,"
she said.