Learning meth at home

By Debbie Bryce • dbryce@postregister.com

Mackenzie knows what can happen to children raised by a parent ruled by meth.

Some, like her two sisters, vow not to do it and never do. Others find themselves tangled up in the same drug and lifestyle as their addicted parent.

That was Mackenzie, who is now 24.

She got hooked on meth at 19 and was arrested last year in a drug deal gone sour. She was charged with aggravated assault and aggravated battery.

“It was my path, but I think she enabled me,” Davis said of her mother, who used meth for more than 20 years and was arrested several times.

Mackenzie was susceptible to the same fate the moment her mother became addicted.

Meth can cause problems for children of addicts long before they are tempted to do it. Babies born to meth users and addicts can suffer low birth weight, tremors, excessive crying, attention deficit disorder and other behavioral problems. And older children often act out in school or get into trouble with the law.

“Kids will take attention — good or bad,” Allen said.

Last year, 1,000 youths were booked into 3-B Juvenile Detention Center in Idaho Falls. Brian Walker, the center’s director, estimates 80 percent of them have had some contact with methamphetamine. A growing number are already using by the time they hit 3-B.

He and Lynn Allen of Beehive Counseling say the best way to help these kids is to treat the family. Kids need to learn how to cope with parents’ addiction and have it reinforced that meth is not a good path.

Mackenzie and her sisters didn’t get that, her mom confessed.

In fact, Mackenzie didn’t suspect her mom used drugs until her mom told the girls about it right before she was arrested in 1993. Her mom eventually was sent to prison.

For years, she was opposed to meth because of what happened to her mother.

But she got hooked five years ago and her drug use escalated.

Nothing stopped her. Not watching her mom get clean in drug court or her young daughter’s suffering. It finally took getting arrested and entering drug treatment.

“I was relieved that something had happened to make me stop,” she said.

Now Davis is concentrating on staying sober.

She and her mother, who is still clean, support each other, but they know they are responsible for their own sobriety.

“It’s a lot easier to stay clean than to get clean,” Davis said.