I grew up in a college town in Kansas. My parents had money and I lived in a pretty nice neighborhood. My parents were professional people who worked for the government. There was no drug or alcohol use in my home as a kid at all. My parents were maybe workaholics though. I probably could have done whatever I wanted, but I was rebellious. I started hanging out with the wrong people and started messing around with drugs. I dropped out of high school and got my GED. After I had my first three kids, I went back to school. I was able to finish three years of college, but I still have one more year to go.

I'm currently unemployed because it was just too hard to keep my job at Spangles. It was too many hours and I felt like I wanted to be home for my kids because I was already away from them for long enough when they were in foster care. In the future, I would like to go back to school and study social welfare. I'd like to do social work or advocacy work of some kind. I think I'd be good at that.

I first started using drugs on and off when I was a teenager, probably around 13 or 14. At that point, I tried pretty much everything. I stopped using for a while after I had my first child. When he was about a year old, I got some meth, they called it crystal then though, and I started using again. I did  meth and cocaine for a while, then I got clean for about seven years. I started using  meth again after that. When I was using, I was using pretty much all the time. I'd get it through friends or we'd make it ourselves. I had been sober for a long time, but I started using again because of all the domestic violence I was going through. I knew something was really wrong when I started thinking about  meth again. When I started using again, I think it was kind of an escape. Then, all the guilt from using again after being clean for so long just made me get more caught up in it. I was also very isolated out in the country where we were living and I couldn't get any therapy.

I went to rehab before I quit using the first time. I didn't really go because I wanted to quit though. I went because I wanted to get out of trouble. I had written a bunch of bad checks on my mom's account and I knew they were about to catch up with me. I knew that if I went to treatment, I wouldn't get in trouble, so that's what I did. I didn't really quit when I went to treatment, but shortly after that, when I did want to quit, I knew what I needed to do. That was when I quit for about seven years. The main thing you need to do is stay away from all the people that you know. It sounds simple, but I think you can pretty much learn what's going to help you without going to treatment over and over. You have to just really be ready to give up the things you have to in order to be able to quit. Maybe at first doing drugs is fun, but then it's not fun anymore. You just do it, even though you may not even want to anymore.

There were a lot of harmful things that happened as a result of my drug use. The worst thing that happened was that I lost my kids. If I hadn't been hanging out with the people I was hanging out with and doing the things I was doing, they wouldn't have been able to take them away. After they took my kids away, I really went kind of crazy. I just lost hope used more. Eventually, I went to jail on a drug possession charge. For a period of about four years, my kids were in foster care and I wasn't able to see them very often, sometimes not at all. I didn't see them at all for year and it was really hard. I got them back for a short period of time, but then I had a dirty UA and they took them again. I was kidding myself thinking that I could still hang around with the same people who were using and not use myself. You may think you can, but it may be a week, it may be two weeks, but you're going to do it. You start thinking, in your addicted mind, I can get away with this, if no one knows about it. When they took them away again, I felt like there was really no hope. My daughter told me that the court papers said that I just need to prove that I'm clean for thirty days, so I decided, I have to do this. I had an opportunity to get out of town and get myself together, so I cut all my ties and moved to the next town for about a year.

I started seeing the kids again when I was living out of town. I told my lawyer that I was ready to work to get my kids back. I started going for UA's everyday. Little by little, I was able to get the kids for longer amounts of time. After a few months, I was able to get the kids officially out of state custody. I now completely have custody and I've been clean for over two years.

I've done lots and lots of things that I later regretted when I was on drugs. When you're in the meth world, it's like you're in the twilight zone. Things don't look the same when you're using and you think there is no other way. I have a whole different lifestyle now. A lot of people would say stuff to me about my drug use. One of my kids would say she didn't care if I was using, as long as I didn't get caught. The other ones always stuck by me, but they didn't like what I did. My mother would tell me she didn't want to be around me if I was using. It made me mad and I just wouldn't go around her anymore. I don't think she knew how to deal with it.

Before I was using, I don't really know what I thought about people who used drugs. I never really thought about it. Now, I think that if you are using meth or cocaine, that's a problem. Those are not things that can be used socially. If you are taking prescriptions not as they're prescribed to you, that's a problem. If you can't get clean for a UA, then you have a drug problem. When I got clean for good, I was just so tired of living that life. I think the biggest misconception people have about drug users is that they're all bad or stupid or are losers. That if you're a drug user, you're going to do something bad. A lot of drug addicts are just people who are really hurt and don't really even want to be that way anymore, but don't know how to get out. I think that's what people don't understand; that people aren't always in that situation because they want to be. There are so many things that people who aren't in that situation don't realize. The most important thing that I've realized from my experience with drugs is that people need to learn to take responsibility for themselves and their own actions. It is also important to learn to listen to yourself. You need to understand your feelings and what's going on with you that makes you want to use drugs.