CHOOSING LIFE

After spending 26 hours held hostage by her husband, enduring beatings
and burns from a curling iron, Carol was grateful for the SWAT team
that rescued her. Equally important to her future, she took seriously
the signal a change of lifestyle was in order. She decided to stop
using meth.

"Five years ago. Right then," said Carol, not her real name. Her own
trauma was bad enough, but there was more reason to rethink the life
she had come to lead.

"He made the children watch," she said.

Her former husband is serving three 40-year prison sentences
concurrently for the incident.

The situation unnerved Carol, now 50, and forever changed her life.
But the change was not a straight line from drugs to sobriety. At
first, the end of her methamphetamine use was marked by relapses.
Fatigue can still bring on thoughts of "maybe just a little," a
difficult admission from a woman whose struggle with addiction cost
her years of contact with her children.

"I snorted some after that, but never the needle again. He was gone,
the crowd changed and it didn't really appeal to me," Carol said. Some
seek professional treatment for their meth abuse. Carol relied mostly
on her current husband and her mother to provide support.

"You have to have somebody there to coach you. It's easy to get back
to it. You get tired and think 'I could do a line.' Sometimes I think
about it, but I just go to bed. It isn't worth it."

Her sons and daughter continue to suffer the effects of the drug world
that surrounded them.

"The boys are in the Cal Farley Family Program and they're going to
Boys Ranch," Carol said. "I'd love for them to be able to come home,
but I have to think what's best for them not what makes me look good.
They need care 24 hours a day, and I'm not up to it."

Her daughter now lives with Carol and her new husband, acting as part
of the support system the former drug abuser credits for her ability
to stay clean.

Other families are not so lucky, forever broken up to protect the
children.

Depending on circumstances, such as hazards in the home, some children
are taken away from their parents due to drug use or manufacture in
the home.

"We don't calculate our numbers by particular drugs, but we are seeing
an increase in methamphetamine playing a role overall. Not just with
babies with positive toxicology screens but in those taken from
homes," said Holly Campidilli, public information officer for the
office of Protective and Regulatory Services that covers 41 counties
in the Panhandle and South Plains.

If a relative or close friend of the family cannot be found to care
for children in danger, the foster care system comes into play.

"They go to foster homes or group homes, whichever can address the
needs of the child," Campidilli said. "If there is drug production in
their home, we define that as more dangerous, and that makes it more
difficult to leave them in the home than if it was just drug abuse."

Carol gave up her children while getting straight.

"A lot of people in that position don't want to give up their kids and
they should. She was courageous to give them up for a while," said Gil
Farren, victim/witness assistance coordinator in Randall County.

Carol was older than many when she started using methamphetamine. When
she was 36, her then-husband introduced her to snorting the drug.
Eventually she shot it directly into her veins.

After she graduated to using the needle, it was only six months before
she quit working and started forging checks to get money for the drug.
She did not get arrested for drugs, but the check forgery resulted in
arrest and conviction.

"I got some of my mother's checks and signed her name. I never did it
to anybody else, just my mother," Carol said. "I would get it (meth)
at people's houses, parking lots at supermarkets and sometimes they'd
bring it to the house."

After years of blackened eyes and broken ribs, Carol decided to leave
her husband and the world where the only people she associated with
were addicts or dealers or both. She does not have plans to return to
that world.

She depends on her current husband, mother and others to fight the
cravings from more than a decade of using.

"A lot go back. Most do. I'm very fortunate. It's one day at a time,"
Carol said.

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SIGNS OF A USER

Excited speech

Decreased appetite

Increased physical activity levels

Irregular heartbeat

Chest pain

Shortness of breath

High temperature

SOURCES - National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of
Health and the United States Department of Justice Web sites