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.
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MAP posted-by: Derek