Pubdate: Sun, 21 May 2006
Source: Palm Beach Post, The (FL)
Copyright: 2006 The Palm Beach Post
Contact:  http://www.palmbeachpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/333
Author: Sofia Santana, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

COCAINE: WOMAN'S DEATH FROM ABUSE SHATTERS FAMILY

PALM BEACH GARDENS -- Jaime Luff's cocaine addiction shattered five
lives, including her own.

Luff, 27, died Jan. 26, 2005.

Her husband, Mark, died four months later.

Distraught over losing the woman he fell in love with as a teenager,
Mark Luff went drinking one night and lay down on the train tracks
near Alternate A1A. When a train came through, the engineer couldn't
stop in time.

Family members call it a tragic accident. He was 24.

With Mark Luff's death, the couple's young daughter, Breanna, who had
been raised by her grandmother, became an orphan. Mark Luff was her
stepfather, but he was the only father she ever knew.

The deaths pushed Luff's sister, Joni Monson, 25, deeper into her own
addiction. She devoured any drug she could find and remembers sucking
on morphine patches in a Singer Island hotel room during one of her
lowest points.

"It feels just like you're getting a shot of morphine," she said,
recalling the daze and floating sensation that made it so easy to
forget the pain.

Monson's mother, Tina Fife, saw what was happening to her younger
daughter and knew she didn't have much time.

"I already buried one daughter this year. I'm not going to bury
another," she recalls telling officials at the state Department of
Children and Families.

The agency helped Fife secure a court order that forced Monson into
drug rehab. It has helped her stay away from drugs and alcohol for
about a year.

Her sister never went to rehab.

"During the end she kept saying, 'I just want that last party and then
I'll stop,' " Monson said of her sister. "When she was high on coke,
she could be someone she couldn't be without the coke."

Sometimes that person was a stranger, a whole person apart from the
vivacious woman who loved to surround herself with family and friends.

Luff's addiction grew worse with age.

She left her family and middle-class Palm Beach Gardens home and lived
for three years on the streets of Riviera Beach, paying any price to
get high on crack, the highly potent rock form of cocaine.

Friends and family often drove through rundown neighborhoods looking
for her.

A lot of times they couldn't find her.

In fall 2004, Luff began having seizures from smoking crack and was
rushed to the hospital, where doctors told her she had to stop using
cocaine or she would die, Fife said.

The hospital visit stunned Luff enough to shun the drug, and her
family noticed a gradual change.

She visited Breanna more often, spent more time with her husband and
enrolled in nursing school, with plans to get her GED so she would be
able to earn a degree later.

But the respite didn't last.

In school, Luff heard cocaine calling again.

"We always called drugs 'the monkey on your back,' " Fife said. "The
monkey will lie to you and tell you this is the last time."

In nursing school, Luff learned how to use needles and soon began
injecting cocaine, Fife said.

She did this for a few weeks until one night, at a friend's house, she
had another seizure.

Luff died later at the hospital of what doctors call cocaine toxicity.
She had so much cocaine in her system that her body went into
convulsions before systematically shutting down.

"Everybody loved her, but she didn't love herself enough," Monson
said.

Monson's big sister was her hero growing up. Still
is.

Luff is buried at Riverside Memorial Park in Tequesta.

Her husband lies next to her. He reserved his spot when she
died.

Fife, Monson and Breanna, now 10, visit often, leaving flowers, photos
and treasured mementos.

Breanna likes to walk and run barefoot in the grass there. She wants
people to remember what cocaine did to her parents. "Maybe more people
will stop using drugs," she said.

Fife sometimes lies down, her back touching the ground above her
oldest daughter.

"This is life after cocaine," she said. "This is what it's all about."
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