LIFE AFTER METH: STORY OF ONE FAMILY

EDITOR'S NOTE: Once a scourge only in scattered pockets of America,
methamphetamine is now fueling an epidemic that has branched out from the
West through the heartland states, into cities, suburbs and hamlets
nationwide. At least 12 million Americans have tried meth, one of the most
addictive of all illegal drugs. This story is the last in a series
examining meth's toll.

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 he 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 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
cheaper, 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."

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 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 Chicago's
North side.

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

"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. It looks kicked in. 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.
But she ends up making it to class on time and steps out briefly to grab a
cup of coffee and a bag of M&Ms to help her wake up.

Her classes this semester include environmental science, finite
mathematics, American history and a theology course about the Orthodox Church.

Except for the C-minus she got on a math test, things are going well this
spring a much needed boost after she all but wasted the last two semesters
at the university after good grades at a community college helped get her
scholarship money.

With a plan of taking classes this summer, she still hopes to graduate by
the end of next year with a history major and special ed minor and would
like to get a job teaching high school.

"I think I could related well to kids who have problems," says Robin, whose
own troubles began as a teen after her parents divorced and her mother
decided to leave 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 dad,
now retired at age 61 and living in nearby Skokie.

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. She calls the years that followed "a horrible progression"
that led to a marriage to the father of her other two children and divorce,
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.

She managed to stay off drugs for eight years and remarried in 2002. But
the pressures of trying to go to school and keep her family going sent her
back to her old ways 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 though 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 only about 100 pounds.

She also recalls getting fixated on odd tasks, staying up for hours to
clean one room in their apartment while the rest of the place 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 now says. "You don't
realize what it's doing to your life. It's real cunning stuff."

Her current boyfriend says seeing Robin high was like watching a real-life
version of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."

When she's sober, he says, "I'm a big fan of hers and very proud of what
she's been able to accomplish.

"She is a kind, sincere, sweet, generous and honest person who's trying to
make the most of what life and addiction have dealt her."

But on meth, he says, there was a dark side, behavior he describes as
manipulative and "dangerously self-destructive." He recalls how, when she
missed her eldest son's eighth-grade graduation last year, she holed up in
a hotel room and cut off all her hair.

Last summer, and at his urging, she tried going to rehab but left almost
immediately.

"That's when I kind of withdrew," the boyfriend says. "It was obvious she
didn't want to be sober and I loathed the person she was (when she was) high."

On New Year's Day of this year, her father had had enough. He 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," he dad
now says. "It's heartbreaking is the word for it absolutely heartbreaking
to see her ruin her life and the lives of everybody around her."

He and Robin met to talk during a counseling session in recent months. He
remembers telling her how he felt. She remembers him yelling angrily until
she had to leave the room.

"Just take it. You deserve it," she remembers telling herself. But she says
she has enough of her own guilt to handle, especially when it comes to her
kids.

"In the past year, they've seen too much," she says, her eyes looking
downward as she shakes her head: "These are the consequences and I'm going
to be dealing with them for a long time."

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

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

"At first, I cried so much. But now the more I talk to them, the better I
feel," says Robin, who often spends time with them on weekends, taking them
to video arcades or bowling.

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."

On bad days when she's having cravings or a hard time coping with even the
smallest of annoyances she thinks of them and it helps her through.

She also recalls the night she relapsed in February and landed back at one
of the drug houses where she used to hang out. "It just really hit me how
awful this all was the cigarette burns, weird people, drug paraphernalia
all over the place," she says.

After she dragged herself to detox at the halfway house, she met with her
psychiatrist.

"I don't want to live like that," she told him. "I'm too old for this."

She vividly remembers his response: "No," he said. "You're too young to die."