Back from the Brink

  Some of the biggest meth problems in the state are right here in Vermilion, Coles and Effingham counties.
  But police fear people don't know just how deadly this drug is.
  WCIA-3' s Christina Wall talked with a former addict in Effingham County where police and victims agree this is their biggest problem.

  State stats show just a handful of seizures last year. In reality police say Effingham is somewhere near one-thousand cases a year.
  And the real damage is done to people and their families.
 But one woman who went to the brink of despair fought her way back. She goes by "Stephanie," and this is her story.

Aluminium foil is just a typical household item for most of us.  But Stephanie still has trouble keeping it in her house.  It brings back memories that tear her apart.

"I can look at a roll of foil and be like, hmmm. I used to tear just a little piece of that off and use that," Stephanie says.

For years she small pieces of foil to smoke meth. There was a time when she was willing to give up her son… even her life for that drug. And it nearly landed her in jail.

"The first time I tried it I was 19."

19 and hooked.. so she and a boyfriend at the time quit their jobs and started cooking meth in their kitchen.

"When you're messed up in that, it's just unbelievable what
things can happen," she says.

Her house quickly became the place to get high. Dozens of addicts would show up… with pills… anhydrous amonia… starter fluid… all ingrediants for the deadly drug.

"They were like cockroaches, you just couldn't get rid of them," Stephanie says.

High for days, often hallucinating, she'd even scratch off her own skin.  It's a feeling Stephanie compares to "putting your foot down on the gas pedal and seeing how long you can rev it up."

It was life in that fast track that prompted her parents to make an incredible decision. They took away her one-year-old son.

"It was the hardest thing that Steve and I ever had to do," her mother said.  "But we had to.  We had to think of Haylen and it woke her up."

It wasn't just her son.  Meth cost Stephanie her home and nearly $90,000 over three years.

"You could look in her eyes when she was on this and you could just see the demon that was there," says her mother.

Stephanie tried rehab once, but it was hard to shake the demon. 

"There for a while I thought this is my life, this is what i'm supposed to do," she recalls. "I'm going to smoke meth."

The turning point came when her ex-boyfriend nearly beat Stephanie to death.

"I was like that's it, I'm done. I don't want no more. I want to go i want to go to rehab."

It's been three years since stephanie's smoked meth. Her life's much different now.

"I've had two more kids since I've gotten clean and I've gotten married.  And I've had a lot of good things happen to me," she says.

Police say Stephanie's lucky.  Her friends and her ex-boyfriend are all in prison... while she's finally being the mother she's always wanted to be.

"She's got her dream," Stephanie's mother says.

 Stephanie went to rehab before she and her friends were charged, so the State's Attorney gave her a second chance. 
  She's using that chance to tell her story and save others from what could be a terrible fate.
  In the second part of this series, find out how people like Stephanie are banning together to fight meth in their hometown.