Pubdate: Thu, 23 Dec 2004 Source: Albany Democrat-Herald (OR) Copyright: 2004 Lee Enterprises Contact: http://www.mvonline.com/support/contact/DHedletters.php Website: http://www.democratherald.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/7 Author: Jennifer Rouse Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine) HOW AN ALBANY WOMAN SAYS SHE SAVED HER OWN LIFE When Tiffany Jackson stepped on the bus last fall, she knew nothing would ever be the same. As the Greyhound pulled away from the Corvallis bus station, the petite brunette started crying. She was leaving her family, her friends, and everything she knew. But she was convinced that leaving like this -- without saying a word to anyone, cutting all ties -- was the only way she could save her own life. Otherwise, she was afraid she would soon lose her battle with methamphetamine. As the bus rolled down the highway, she vowed that she would never come back. Tiffany Jackson was born in Albany, spent her childhood in Oklahoma and went to high school in Alsea, graduating in 1997. The middle child in a family of three, she was the last person you'd expect to get involved in drugs, said her mother, Tamie Williams. "From the time she was in sixth grade, she wanted to be in the FBI," Williams said. "I knew that she knew of some kids who used drugs, but she didn't hang out with them." But after high school, Tiffany gradually drifted into a circle of friends for whom drugs were their whole world. Starting at 21, she worked as a bartender off and on at J.P.'s, a tavern in Albany. She was drinking heavily. Sometimes after a night of partying she would black out. That frightened her, so she decided to stop drinking. However, she felt a need to replace the alcohol with something, and at 23 she finally accepted her friends' offers of methamphetamine. At first, it was just an occasional thing. "I was experimenting, I guess you'd say," she said. When she was afraid she might go drinking and black out, she'd get high instead. At first, one $20 bag of meth would last her a week or two. But her friends encouraged her to take it more and more often. At times they were insistent. "I would say 'No, I'm fine, I don't need any right now,' and they would get offended," she said. In that world, Tiffany said, everyone is paranoid. Using weekly changed to using daily, and before long it was changing her life. She lost her job, and it came close to ruining her relationship with her family. One day a baggie fell out of her pocket while she was at her mom's house. Another day her nephews were there, and Tiffany called and asked if she could come over to visit them. "I couldn't tell anything was wrong on the phone, but when she got here she was so high she couldn't sit down," Tamie remembers. When Tamie drove Tiffany home that night, she told her never to come over to her house in that condition again. They didn't speak for months. It wasn't because she was angry with her mom, Tiffany said. She knew Tamie was right. "I didn't want to disappoint her," Tiffany said. "I grew up better than that." Tiffany tried to clean up last Christmas so she would be able to spend time with her mother, her grandparents and her nephews, but it didn't last. By this fall, she was getting frightened. One of her friends was dealing drugs from her apartment, and she was scared to go home. She stayed with a different friend for awhile, but then that friend kicked her out. "I felt like I had nowhere to go," she said. "My only thought was that somehow I had to get away. The only job I had, every friend I had, were all a part of it." So without telling her mother or anyone else, she went to the Corvallis bus station and got a ticket for "as far away from here as I could go." When Tamie realized that neither she nor any of Tiffany's friends had heard from her in weeks, she got worried. She called the police. She put up fliers. She went to the newspaper, begging anyone who had seen her daughter to call. When she heard about a series of attacks on women in parking lots, she feared that her daughter had been abducted. "Some days I would get up and I would do really good," Tamie said. "Other times I would see something on the news, and I would think she's never gonna come home." Unbeknownst to her mom, Tiffany had made her way to Reno. Her luggage had been stolen, she was cold, and all she had was one backpack. There she met a man named Teague, who was in town for a motorcycle convention. They hit it off, and when the time came for him to return to his home in another state, she went with him. Weeks went by and Tiffany and Teague began to make a life together. Day after day went by, and she stayed clean. She got a job in a deli. In their free time, the two rode his Harley-Davidson motorcycles. She wrote her mom a letter, but with each day that went by she began to feel more nervous about how her mom might react. Just how angry would she be? It got harder and harder to send the letter. "If I was going to let her know that I was okay, I wanted to do it in person," Tiffany said. "And at first, I wasn't sure if I was going to be okay." Learning to live drug-free wasn't easy. She would lie around the house all day with no energy to get up and look for a job or do anything. But by Thanksgiving, Tiffany felt confident in her new life. She and Teague got in the car and began the long journey to Oregon. They got to her mom's house the morning of the day after Thanksgiving. Tiffany was shaking as she climbed the steps. Tamie was expecting someone else to drop by, so she didn't think it was unusual when there was a knock at the door. But when she got to the door, she stopped in her tracks. Through the window next to the door, she could see her daughter. Tiffany gave a tiny, timid wave, and Tamie threw open the door. "Sissy!" she cried, calling her Tiffany by her family nickname as she wrapped her in her arms. Tamie now says she understands why Tiffany did what she did. "She gave me the letter and explained everything," she said. Tiffany and Teague left after Thanksgiving, but mother and daughter have kept in touch, and Tiffany returned to town to celebrate her 26th birthday on Thursday. They plan to spend Christmas at her mom's house with her family, then go home. Ryon McHuron, a detective from the Albany Police Department, said that what Tiffany described is all too common for people who have a drug problem. "It's why people can't stop, because it's tied so closely to the social aspect. How many people just stop hanging out with all their friends? No one," he said. "If their friends aren't as strong, then they can't handle someone else being strong enough to stop using.... Ninety percent of people who stop start again, because their whole social group is centered on using." Tiffany says she isn't tempted to use drugs anymore. She admits that she enjoyed the feelings she got from drugs, and the fun she had with her friends. She still seems like she can't quite believe that things got as bad as they did and insists that it was more because of her friends than herself that she used as well. "It just kind of overtook my life," she said. But she's not taking any chances. "I'd like to go out and sing karaoke while I'm here, but I'm not setting foot in a bar in this town," she said. There are too many people who know her, too many people from a past that's not a part of her life any more. - --- MAP posted-by: Derek