MOTHER REGRETS NOT SEEING WARNING SIGNS WITH SON

PENGILLY - Doris Schmidt, a registered nurse and mother of three,
can't believe she missed the warning signs that her son, Joe, was a
methamphetamine addict.

She was an involved mother, taking interest in her children's
activities and leading her daughter's Girl Scout troop for years.

Her husband and their older son shared an interest in
computers.

And then there was Joe Schmidt. He never did as well as his siblings
in school and was labeled a class clown and trouble-maker early on.

But his mother knew he was a bright kid. He just wasn't a "traditional
student," she said. Doris Schmidt once watched Joe control a group of
50 kids at one of his birthday parties, showing great leadership
skills and an ability to command respect.

She and her husband tried steering Joe toward sports and activities as
he got older and became friends with a group of kids of whom they
didn't approve.

Joe was strong-willed, though, and, while still in elementary school,
told his mother that she could not control him.

"Joe has been a great joy in my life and he's been a great sorrow in
my life," Doris Schmidt said.

She got no help when she approached teachers to figure out a way to
aid her son in school. A senior English teacher once told Joe that he
might as well leave and stop wasting the teachers' time, Doris Schmidt
said.

So he did just that.

At age 17, Joe dropped out of high school. His parents made him move
out of the house. He got his first full-time job and had trouble
staying awake through his night shifts. So, when Joe's supervisor
asked him if he would like something to help get him through the
night, he accepted.

That "something" was methamphetamine, and that was 10 years
ago.

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About a year later, Joe decided to get his high school degree and he
moved back into his parents' home.

"He was going to night classes, working night shift and, I assumed,
sleeping during the day," Doris Schmidt said. "I think that's when he
got into it (methamphetamine) heavily. He was burning the candle at
both ends and I always thought, wow, how could he do that?"

Joe was relying on the meth, which can keep users awake for more than
a week.

"He was staying up at all hours" and Doris Schmidt would find him
working in the garage before she left for work early in the morning,
she said.

"Then there was the crashing. He'd sleep for days and have no energy.
It was hard to get him off the couch. I always just associated it with
catching up with his sleep. And, of course, he was."

Family time became rare for Joe. He wouldn't join in their activities
and, if he sat down to a meal with them, would eat very little and get
nauseous or would eat a lot and immediately go to the bathroom.

He became evasive about his plans, never telling his parents where he
was going or who he would be with. He also developed sores and acne,
which Doris Schmidt just chalked up to him being an adolescent.

"I'm a nurse," she said. "I still kick myself for not seeing it. I
always thought he was on marijuana and he admitted that. There was
always just something not quite healthy looking about him."

Doris Schmidt also explained away her son's "endless, go-go-go
energy."

"I'm a workaholic and I just thought he was taking after me," she
said. "When he moved home, it was kind of neat. He was getting all my
chores done."

Eventually Joe moved away to set up his own life, though. A friend of
his got him a job in St. Cloud, which led Joe to open his own
construction business in 1998 in the Twin Cities. While he was there,
he married his longtime girlfriend, Jenn.

"I remember thinking they were so perfect," Doris Schmidt said of her
son and daughter-in-law. "They were the soul-mates you read about."

But methamphetamine addiction ruined that.

"That's why their marriage is falling apart," she said. "They didn't
care about each other. They cared only about the drug."

It ruined other parts of the young couple's life. After filing
bankruptcy and having all his construction tools stolen, at age 27,
Joe had to move back to his parents' Iron Range home in January, along
with his wife.

They kept their addiction hidden, though, until mid-summer. Doris
Schmidt hadn't seen the couple for a few days in June and got worried.

"They had been gone from home for three or four days," Doris Schmidt
said. "I called Joe's wife's mother and she told me. She said,
'they're both high on meth.'"

Both sets of parents did an intervention that night and the couple
agreed they were ready to get treatment.

The families turned to the Northland Center for help but the treatment
facility wouldn't take a married couple, Doris Schmidt said. Joe and
his wife both needed the treatment equally as badly, and neither
wanted to leave the other stuck in the mire of meth while the other
broke free.

"So we went home," Doris Schmidt said. "We tried Hazelden. It was the
only other place we could think of but they wanted $21,000 up front."

Neither family had that much money and the Schmidts considered
refinancing their house to pay for it.

Then they came across Project Turnabout, an addiction recovery center
in Granite Falls, Minn., which would take them both. The couple's
treatment there would have been covered by county funds but the county
would not approve them for the program, Doris Schmidt said.

"They said they felt that there were appropriate resources here," she
said.

So Joe and his father put a treatment plan of their own into action.
Whenever Joe went anywhere, he had to tell his parents the who, what,
where and when; and he was not allowed to spend time with old friends
or take phone calls.

"It's working well with Joe," Doris Schmidt said. "We're having a
harder time with his wife, though."

She feels that the system wasn't there when they were looking for
help, when her daughter-in-law was ready to break her addiction.

"I think we missed an opportune moment in her life," Doris Schmidt
said. Joe's wife had talked about wanting to break her dependency on
drugs in June, but hasn't shared those strong sentiments since and has
had a couple of relapses.

One of the big differences between her son and daughter-in-law, Doris
Schmidt said, is that Joe has a good friend helping him through recovery.

"They go camping," Doris Schmidt said. "It's such a help to have
someone he can go have good clean fun with."

She also credits Joe's recovery to prayer.

"I know he's not been able to do this on his own and my husband and I
are not professional counselors," Doris Schmidt said. "He says he has
no cravings. That's the miracle I've been praying for."

She said a strong yearning for methamphetamine can hit 30 to 90 days
after last using the drug. Her son has been clean for about three
months and is gaining weight, sleeping, holding a job and has opened
up to his parents about his addiction and why he fell into that life.

"Joe gave me a lot of light bulb moments," Doris Schmidt said. "He
told me that parents have to accept the friends that their kids
choose. Parents have to do good things with their kids and invite the
friends with and try to turn them around, no matter what you think of
them."

She also thinks her son's addiction may have stemmed from his hands-on
personality.

"He always wanted to see how things felt and how they worked," she
said. "I think a lot of this was experimentation."

Joe's attraction to methamphetamine was its promise to let him do all
things he wanted to accomplish, she said.

"But he's lost his home and his car," she said. "For all the salaries
and money he made, he has nothing to show for it. It's just a big
illusion to do more or be more. Methamphetamine gives the user a
self-illusion of super-human powers. It gives false esteem."

The situation at home may also have had something to do with how
easily Joe fell into the drug scene, Doris Schmidt said. His father
was away, finishing college courses in Bemidji. His mother was also
absent, caring for an ailing relative. Joe was alone.

"We believed what he had to say when we asked if he'd be all right by
himself," she said. "Because it was what we wanted to hear."

If parents want to make sure their children don't become involved with
drugs, that is not the route they should take, Doris Schmidt said.

"Be very involved in your kids' lives," she said. "Be with your kids.
Don't leave them alone."

There are also many red flags parents should be aware of, including
changes in mood, sleeping and eating patterns.

"You can't chalk it up to adolescence," she said. "Parents know their
kids. Joe was always so caring and considerate of others."

Parents should not be scared to be nosey, either. Doris Schmidt urges
them to call the children's friends' homes if they're supposed to be
spending the night there.

"Make up an excuse, if you have to," she said. "Tell them you can't
find the car keys and are wondering if they've seen them. Ask them
what they did with their basketball shorts that need to be washed."

The best solution, though, lies in getting the truth about drugs out
to children. Incarcerating dealers isn't working so it's time to try
something new, Doris Schmidt said.

"We have to get the kids to stop taking drugs," she said.