Teen Drug Abuse

Teen Drug Abuse-At its worst, the paranoia brought on by Luna's meth addiction caused her to hole up in a "crappy little motel" in a neighboring county, where she lay awake on the floor for four days watching the sun rise and set through the crack at the bottom of the door.

Before checking into the motel, she'd been pulled over for a traffic violation and she was certain the cops were onto her. She wrote a bad check to the desk clerk to pay for the room and hid out from the world becuase of teen drug abuse.

When the police finally located Luna, she hadn't been home in 11 days.

Legna, her 45-year-old mother, has kept a detailed journal of her teens drug abuse since mid-December when she first suspected something was wrong with her daughter. In it she describes what she and her husband saw when they first visited Luna in the holding cell at the teen drug abuse facility where she was being kept for evaluation before entering rehab.

"You were crawled up in a fetal position in your bed and threw the covers over your face when we walked into the room. I was met by a bitchy, angry, caged animal with sunken eyes on a gaunt face." Sadly it was becuase teen drug abuse........

Luna's downward spiral lasted nearly nine months, but it cost her and her family dearly.

"I was next to death," she said. "I could have reached out and held his hand."

Luna's battle has only just begun. Her struggle to avoid the drug will get harder before it gets easier. With the support of her family and friends she's in the process of attending a teen drug abuse "90 meetings in 90 days," but even with that help, she knows the best she can do is take one day at a time.

On her first day out of treatment, Friday, Feb. 11, Luna had an appointment with a mental health worker. It was just the first of several such sessions in her future as she tries to work her way back to a "normal" life.

Just 19, Luna's drug abuse has damaged her heart, which was already genetically prone to disease. A counselor at the treatment center told her most meth users average seven heart attacks per year in their sleep.

She's been continually menstruating for months, which is a common side effect for female meth addicts. Nearly half her teeth were severely damaged by the drug's harmful chemicals; and she's slowly getting back to a healthier weight after losing 25 pounds.

Her short-term memory is "shot." She can't remember what day it is. She suffers episodes of temporary "blindness" where her vision goes completely blurry, and occasionally she's unable to hear, all becuase of teen drug abuse.

At one point during her drug binge, Luna was using between $400-$500 worth of meth (4-5 grams) per day, and she said she was awake for 27 straight days.

In the 11 days her daughter was missing, Legna lost 16 pounds herself. Sick with worry and unable to sleep, she and her husband were awake 46 straight hours waiting for word from the police after they'd signed the committal papers with the county.

Legna missed more than a week and a half of work during the time her daughter was missing, and the various medical and legal bills the family incurred have run into the thousands.

They had to put Luna on Title 19 (Medicaid) insurance, "something we're not proud of" just to help with all the medical and rehabilitation bills.

"The money doesn't matter," Legna said. What matters is that their daughter is alive and safe.

The wrong choice

It's been less than a year since Luna tried meth for the first time. She was still in high school, living at home in the rural part of the county. And, even though she attended one of the county's smaller schools, she'd known schoolmates who had been using meth for years and she knew where to get it.

That first night, she and about eight friends retreated to a basement to do drugs while her friend's grandmother slept upstairs unaware of the activities below. They stayed up all night playing games, talking, drawing pictures and partying. They left the next morning in broad daylight.

"It was crazy," Luna said. "Absolutely insane. (Before the night was over) I knew what a foil was, I knew what a line was, I knew what a light bulb was - all in my first night."

She didn't try meth again for another two months. She had too much going on. She had a job. She was getting ready to graduate.

"My body was craving it," she said. "I felt like I wanted that feeling back, but I didn't have any free time between school and work."

If she'd wanted to, Luna could have easily scored some meth.

"It was as easy as I wanted it to be (to get meth)," she said. "I could make a call. I could take a drive. It's everywhere."

After graduation, Luna decided to get a summer job and get ready to attend college in a nearby county. Her parents weren't too enthused by the idea, but they wanted to believe their daughter was grown up enough to handle the challenge.

Once she left home, Luna's choices betrayed her. Her newfound friends, where she worked, even where she lived all played a role in her growing infatuation with meth.

"Everybody in the place that I lived was pretty much a meth addict," Luna said. "My boyfriend at the time was a meth addict, he had been in treatment before, but went right back to it.

"My friend was introduced to the drug, and she went absolutely haywire. She wanted more and more all the time.
"The only sober people I knew in that town were my relatives, and I didn't see them much."

"Spinning" on meth seemed like the normal thing to do for Luna and her friends. Her boyfriend made sure there was always plenty of the drug around whenever she wanted some. At first, she only did the drug on weekends. But the more she did it, the more she wanted it.

Soon she was doing drugs on a daily basis.

Looking to escape-Teen Drug Abuse

Examining Luna's life on the surface she wouldn't seem a likely candidate for meth use. But she had a secret. She'd been sexually abused as a child, and, in her shame, she never told anyone about it.

It wasn't until Luna was in rehab that she told her parents about the abuse that began when she was just eight years old. Looking back, Legna can see the clues she missed while her daughter was growing up.

She wrote in her journal, "For more than a decade you had carried the weight of the world on your shoulders, trying to deal with it as best you could. I was sickened and saddened by what you were telling me. So much of your rebellious teenage years was starting to make perfect sense. Everything suddenly became very clear."

Legna said she has read that most people who turn to addiction have gone through some type of trauma when they were young.

The drug abuse made Luna question her self worth. By the time she was in high school, those feelings, combined with the hormonal changes all teen-agers go through, made her want to escape.

"I was feeling like I wasn't good enough most of the time," she said. "I didn't want to be the person that I was. I wanted to be somebody else because of what had happened to me. I wanted to be the perfect, pristine angel or whatever everybody saw, because I had gotten pretty good at putting on a front."

She saw friends using drugs as an escape and she liked the idea of getting away from her troubles, if only for awhile.

"When I was younger I was always the 'I'm never gonna try drugs' girl. But stuff just happens, and it gets to you, and I was like 'OK, everybody else is having fun. They look like they're having an awesome time...' So I just wanted to do it too. Not because everybody else was doing it, but because I just wanted to escape."

Leaving home, Luna found her escape. Unfortunately, she escaped with the wrong crowd.

The new boyfriend introduced her to a whole new circle of friends. The meth scene pulled her in, made her feel wanted, made her feel it was normal to want to escape.

By the time fall rolled around Luna was bouncing from one job to another. And, even though she was working, she never had any money and her parents had to help with her bills.

During the next few months she only saw her parents occasionally, maybe once a month, and she withdrew from her lifelong friends, spending more and more time with the new boyfriend and his crowd.

It was after Thanksgiving that Legna and her husband first began to suspect something was wrong, but Luna blamed her work troubles on bad bosses and crabby coworkers. And, since she'd always done well at the job she held during high school, they gave her the benefit of the doubt. Whenever she was around her family, she put on that all-too-familiar false front - being cheerful, going to church, and it was enough to keep them guessing.

vIn mid-December, Luna's dad stopped in town to see her and she told him she wanted new jeans for Christmas because she'd lost weight and the old ones were too big. Her parents figured the weight loss was caused from the stress of not being able to hold a job. About that same time, her parents got a bill from the dentists for repairing 13 of her teeth. Luna blamed overuse of a bleaching kit for the damage meth had done to her teeth.

After Christmas, Legna and her husband intervened. They made their daughter give two weeks notice at her job and move back home. They were sick of paying her bills and she obviously wasn't responsible enough to live on her own. There was stress in the relationship with her parents, but it seemed like things were headed in the right direction.

On Jan. 4, she left home for her last shift at work. It was then that she spun completely out of control.

The road back-Teen Drug Abuse

Legna thanks God she and her husband didn't turn off Luna's cell phone as they had threatened to before she disappeared.

When they went to the police on Jan. 14, 10 days after Luna left home for her last shift at work, the police were able to subpoena her cell phone records and eventually trace her location by tracking which towers were relaying her calls.

"Thank God for modern technology," Legna said.

By that time, the family had also filed committal papers, meaning Luna would be brought in for a 72-hour psychological evaluation once she was found. Fortunately, weekends don't count toward the 72-hour period and, since she was brought in on a Friday, Luna was in custody for 96 hours before entering teen drug abuse rehab.

The month since has not been easy. Luna was in a teen drug abuse rehab center for 21 days and worked through countless individual, family and group therapy sessions. Legna and her husband made the 100-plus mile round trip to see her every time they were allowed to.

Their faith is helping them cope.-Teen drug Abuse

Kossuth County Sheriff Paul Gronbach and his staff have been invaluable resources as have Central Point of Coordination coordinator Dona Nielsen, Whittemore attorney Brian Thul and countless others.

Gronbach admires Legna's energy and commitment to helping Luna beat her teen drug abuse addiction. He hopes to use both of them to educate families about methamphetamine in some of the many meth seminars his department sponsors.

While Luna was in rehab, he visited her parents' home and told them he'd like to meet her when she got out and that he would do whatever he could to help them.

Last week, Luna asked Gronbach to be her sponsor for her teen drug abuse 12-step group and he agreed even though they'd never met face-to-face until that day.
In sharing their story, Luna and Legna hope to help other families avoid the trap of meth addiction.

"By sharing my story, I hope you gain some knowledge of what parents endure when confronted by this horrible drug," Legna wrote in the copy of her journal that she gave to the paper. "It is truly a parent's worst nightmare. I pray that you will never have to experience it."

Luna admits that she still has bouts of paranoia, and she knows she faces a long road in her effort to stay clean, but she's glad her family is there to help her through. She hopes that by telling her story to others she'll help them avoid a similar fate.

"I had already decided before I got out of treatment that if only one good thing came out of this mess, it would be the opportunity to talk to others about the teen drug abuse," she said.

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