METH ADDICTION STILL HAUNTS RECOVERING ADDICT

Part three of a three-part series.

To avoid prison and a criminal record, Denise is allowed to attend a drug
counseling program. She had no intentions of attending the program, but
after she found out she was pregnant, she had to consider what would be
best for her and the baby she carried.

"I'm a drug addict who just barely escaped prison this morning, and I'm
about to have a baby," she thinks. "This isn't about me anymore. I've got
to think about the baby. I've got to go straight."

Denise lay shivering under the flowered comforter in her small bedroom. Her
body is withdrawing from a three-year meth addiction. Meth leaves some
addicts with schizophrenia-like symptoms. For others, withdrawal means a
lifetime of listlessness because their brain is unable to produce dopamine,
the natural chemical needed to feel pleasure or excitement. Some addicts
make it out okay.

For two weeks she has been unable to do anything but sleep. With meth, she
had so much energy, too much. She'd always pictured withdrawal as the
sweating, screaming struggles of heroin addicts she'd seen in movies. This
was closer to a coma. Long deep sleeps broken up by waking hours that
seemed surreal and hazy.

Slowly the toxins flush from her body. Her skin clears up; her sores heal;
and her weight creeps back into a healthy range.

Months later, Denise arrives at her new home - a halfway house where she
will spend the summer in intensive drug counseling.

The first night she is frightened. Sitting on her cot, she wraps herself in
a blanket and pulls her knees to her chest. At 9 p.m., the lights go out.
Without moving, she watches the red numbers from the clock glowing in the
darkness.

Denise stays silent and hears the snoring and whistles of other addicts in
the program. The smell of body odors, dried sweat and gas make her nauseous.

At 4:30 a.m., she realizes she has almost made it through the first night.
Only three more months to go.

It had been four months since her last hit of meth. Her health was back,
her energy level was normal, and she was thinking clearly again.

The counselor looks at Denise's pasty white skin from too much time
indoors. Her eyes are downcast, ashamed, scared and angry. "Sad," the
counselor thinks, "because they are beautiful brown eyes, expressive eyes."

The counselor, Celia Ponce, works for Jackson County's Comprehensive
Substance Treatment and Rehabilitation/Alt-Care Rehabilitation (CSTAR)
program in Kansas City, Kansas.

Reviewing a stack of papers labeled "Step Forward," Ponce noticed an answer
from Denise that she felt needed exploring. The question, "Have you ever
lost a close relative due to death?" Denise had answered, "Yes. My Father.
He killed himself when I was 13."

During their next session, Ponce asked about the death.

"Nothing to tell," Denise snapped. "Next Question."

Ponce waited.

"My father sat in the garage of a house he was building," Denise finally
continues. "His car was running. The carbon monoxide got him."

Over the next few days, the story finally came out. Denise was daddy's
little girl. She still missed him and blamed herself for his death. And she
blames the world because he's gone.

After several sessions of little progress, Ponce asked Denise, "You've been
thinking about killing yourself lately, haven't you?"

"Yes," Denise admitted.

"But you say you love the baby you're carrying?"

"I do," she says, eyes welling up with tears. "It's not about the baby.
It's about me. It's about everything I've been through. The baby's the only
good part."

"So if you kill yourself, what should I tell your baby? Should I tell her
it wasn't her fault, that her mother's suicide had nothing to do with her,
that she won't understand her mother's death, but she needs to live on in
spite of it?"

"Yes," Denise says. The tears now streak eyeliner down her cheeks. "It
wouldn't be her fault. It would be my fault. She'd need to know that."

Ponce pauses a second, waiting for Denise to get back under control, before
continuing.

"Don't you think your father would have wanted his baby to know the same
thing?"

After 30 nights at the halfway house, Denise was ready to go home. She
would continue her daily counseling sessions on topics such as anger
management and the effects of alcohol and drugs on pregnancy, but would be
able to live with her mom and sleep in her own bed.

She is terrified. Sure, she has been making progress. But for the last
month meth hasn't been an option. Can she avoid temptation on her own?
Ponce thinks she can and trusts her with more freedom.

Monday morning she learned the answer. She tugs on a loose pair of shorts,
the only comfortable summer clothes left now that the baby is growing
inside her. As she pulls her mom's Corsica out of the driveway, goose
pimples cover her arms.

"I can't believe I'm by myself, driving in for treatment," she thinks. "I'm
now in charge of my own recovery, whether I get better is all up to me."

Denise, now 27, has beaten a three-year meth addiction that almost killed
her. Carly, her baby, was born on Sept. 28, 1997 after 17 hours of labor.
Denise, like all new parents, counted to make sure Carly had 10 fingers and
10 toes. Yes, she was healthy.

About two months after Carly was born, Denise pulls her mom's Corsica up to
an insurance agency on 63rd Street in Kansas City. She's been invited back
to work at the company she abandoned at the height of her addiction. A
family friend helped her get the job.

In the summer of 1998, Denise's mother died after a heart attack. Eighteen
months earlier the death might have sent Denise scurrying back to meth.

"I owe it to my mother not to relapse, now," Denise said. "I know God gave
me the strength to get straight so I could get to know my mother. And I
know he gave my mother this year so she could see her daughter was going to
make it."

Denise knows that unless she commits herself each morning to a better life,
the danger still exists.

At night, when she hears the wail of an ambulance siren, she still shudders
to think how close she came to never seeing her child.

Former friends still slowly kill themselves.

And the hell of meth addiction will always haunt her.