BREAKING FREE: ADDICTED TO HIDEOUS DRUG, MOM FIGHTS TO GET HER KIDS AND
LIFE BACK

TAFT -- The 11-mile ride Gina Alexander took with her father on Sept. 10
may well have been the longest ride she's ever had to make.

"I spent the whole ride here apologizing to him," Alexander said. "I
couldn't have him forgive me until he learned the truth."

The truth -- two years hooked on crank, a lost family, a mountain of unpaid
court fines and time in prison -- was what had led 29-year-old Alexander on
this ride.

But it was a ride Alexander knew she had to take, from Eddie Warrior
Correctional Center, where she was serving a sentence for stolen vehicle
and conspiracy to commit arson, to MONARCH drug and alcohol abuse treatment
center for women.

At MONARCH, Alexander will undergo three months of counseling, group
therapy and life skills training on her way to a new life of sobriety and
getting her four children back.

"The No. 1 thing I want is sobriety," she said.

That's the key, above family reuinification or finding a job, said Sue
Williamson, who is in her 64th day of treatment at MONARCH.

"If you don't have your sobriety, you won't have any of the others," she said.

Alexander said she agreed to share her story about her drug problem and her
three-month treatment with the Phoenix because she wanted to warn of the
effects of methamphetamine.

"It's everywhere and it's taking people's lives," she said about the drug
that got her hooked. "There's old women in their 70s and 80s doing it.
There are kids shooting up. Who would have thought."

Easy to find and easy to make, methamphetamine is the primary drug of
choice in Oklahoma, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Numbers prepared by the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program for
the National Institute of Justice indicate methamphetamine use might be
more prevelant among women than men.

In 2003, ADAM reported that 24 percent of females arrested in Tulsa County
used methamphetamine within the past year compared to 21.1 percent of
males. Based on personal interviews and urinalyses, 16.5 percent of women
reported use within the past 30 days and 12.6 percent reported use within
the past seven days. The numbers for men drop to 15.3 percent in the past
30 days and 12.1 percent in the past seven days.

Increased meth use even has hit MONARCH, executive director Joyce O'Neal said.

"We used to have more self-referrals. Now it's more court referrals,"
O'Neal said. "More women are coming in with (meth-related) health and
dental problems. We have to start looking for a dentist. There are more
trips to the emergency room, more trouble with the Department of Human
Services."

Methamphetamine use also destroys families, as in Alexander's story.

Gina Alexander grew up in Arpaler, a southeast Oklahoma town too small to
have its population listed on the state map. Her dad was a carpenter, her
mother, a homemaker.

"I always told my mom I wanted to be just like her," Alexander said. "She
was the best mom in the world. She never left us. She had unconditional love."

Meth addiction would strain that love.

Alexander said she was about 15 years old when she met the man she'd
eventually marry.

"We met in Arpaler at the Lighthouse of Prayer," she said. "I was looking
for an escape."

In 10th grade, she quit school. She said she started drinking and smoking
"bud" around that time.

Alexander and her husband had three children.

"Most of the time I was a housewife," she said. "I usually stayed home so I
could take care of my kids."

Two years ago, Alexander's husband left her.

"He found a woman he worked with," she said.

"I was looking for a way to ease the pain, looking for release," she said
with a hard swallow. "That's how I got addicted."

She discovered methamphetamine, an easy to manufacture, easy to find drug
in rural Oklahoma.

"I smoked it, I ate it," she said, adding that she watched family members
do crank. "For the first couple of times I shot it up a vein in my leg."

She also gave birth to a fourth child, a little girl, who will be 2 in
October. She would not keep her baby girl for long.

"I was staying with this guy and we were both using and all the time we
were using, the landlord kicked us out," she said.

But she stayed, even though the house was abandoned, she said.

"Abandoned houses was the only place I felt safe," she said. "I wasn't
eating, wasn't drinking anything. I've lived in motels."

She said she wants sobriety because "I'm tired of living in abandoned houses."

One night Alexander brought her daughter to the hospital.

"I was in a house that had dogs with fleas, and there were fleas on the
dogs, fleas on her," she said. "I was so high, I was tripping bad."

Officials noticed she was high.

"I had to sign my rights to my daughter over to my mom," she said.

Alexander said the mother she had loved so dearly as a child has not spoken
to her since last November.

"I want my mom to call me and talk to me, but some things aren't fixable,"
she said.

One of MONARCH's goals is to get families back together.

"About 75 percent of the women in here have lost custody of their kids,"
MONARCH counselor Tommye Williams said. "That's a big motivating factor in
their coming here. A lot of women come here straight from jail. But,
children have a big impact on these ladies' lives."

For a while after losing her child, Alexander lived with an old man who was
dying of cancer.

"I lived with him and took care of him every day," she said. "He let me
live there if I took care of him. He was my blessing. He was my guardian
angel and I was his in a way."

She had her vehicle impounded; her vehicle license expired. She amassed
thousands of dollars in fines in McAlester, Coalgate and other towns.

Alexander was arrested and sent to prison in 2003 for stolen vehicle and
conspiracy to commit third-degree arson.

"It was a car my boyfriend stole that I took the blame for," she said. "He
was going to set fire to it to erase fingerprints."

She said she was put on probation, but missed a visit to her probation officer.

At Eddie Warrior, Alexander went through a drug treatment program, which
incorporated a tough military-style regimen. She recalled rising at 5 each
morning and turning in at 9 each night.

"We had to march every day," she said. "It was very strict. Telling my
warden 'permission to speak, sir, permission to carry on, sir.' Even on
your birthday you had to do push-ups."

On her first day out of prison, Alexander said she expected her time at
MONARCH to be a "cakewalk compared to Eddie Warrior."

One week into her treatment, she admitted it hasn't been that easy, but she
welcomed the support she's received from others at the center.

"The toughest part has been being tempted again," she said. "When I got
here, I felt nervous and tense. Now, I'm still nervous and tense, but I'm
surrounded by good people and good counselors."

Alexander has taken an important step in making the MONARCH program work,
counselor Norma Burris said. "She's accepting of the fact that she wants to
get help."

To that, Alexander adds her own determination.

"I'm a somebody and I'm a mother and I want my children back," Alexander
said. "I want to be a part of the world again."

Sidebar SUNDAY EXTRA

She came to MONARCH seeking sobriety. The Phoenix will follow Gina
Alexander's three-month treatment program, as well as how she fares once
she leaves.

Future installments focus on how MONARCH seeks to reunite and help the
family, job training, the role of family in recovery, what happens when
women leave the MONARCH cocoon and go home.

We want to hear from others who have found sobriety, and made it stick,
through the program or similar programs.

If you want to share your story or opinion, e-mail
cspaulding@muskogeephoenix.com or phone 684-2928.

Gina Alexander

BIRTHDATE: Aug. 28, 1975.

BIRTHPLACE: McAlester.

EDUCATION: Tenth grade.

STARTED ABUSING: Alcohol and marijuana, age 15; methamphetamine, age 27.

CHILDREN; One son, age 3; three daughters, ages 8, 5 and almost 2.

IN PRISON: Dec. 19, 2003; released on probation, Sept. 10; on parole until 2008.