Drug use led to young mother losing custody of daughter

By: GARY WARTH - Staff Writer | Sunday, August 12, 2007 6:21 AM PDT ∞

VISTA ---- Everyone was doing it. That was reason enough for Stephanie Martinez, 26, who began using methamphetamine in her first year of high school in 1996.

"I just think I got mixed up in the wrong crowd," said Martinez, who said she came from a stable home with supportive parents.

All the other kids at school were smoking pot, and Martinez would join in with her girlfriends every once in a while. Then one night, as the freshman was sitting on the sand of a Leucadia beach, her boyfriend pulled out a bag of meth.

"It burned my nose," she said, remembering the first time she snorted the drug. "It really hurt for a second, and then there was a rush. I was full of energy. I was talkative. It woke me up."

Like many new meth users, Martinez was experiencing an exhilarating rush that made everything seem right in her world. It was a rush she would feel many more times in the months to come.

But like many meth users, Martinez began to feel the balance of her world shift. The high was no longer a high, but just the feeling she would have on a normal day. Coming down became not a return to clear-eyed sobriety but a descent into lethargy and depression.

Martinez, a pretty and healthy-looking young mother of two, was able to pull herself out of that descent, but not before risking the loss of her children. She now volunteers at Options for Recovery in Vista, where she continues to attend classes.

After her first experience with meth, the drug quickly became a daily routine for Martinez, who said she would do a line with her boyfriend, a junior, when he picked her up in the morning on their way to school. She said the couple would do another line together at school during lunch, then maybe another at dinner.

Getting the drug was never a problem, said Martinez, who never had to buy it herself. On weekends, with no classes to interrupt their day, she and her boyfriend used the drug all day long.

Martinez broke up with her boyfriend after her sophomore year, but she had other friends with access to meth. She didn't stop using.

With no plans after high school, Martinez said, she took up with a boyfriend 11 years her senior. She moved with him to Texas, where he had a job for six months, and then to Nevada for another six months of work. Martinez didn't use many drugs while away, but fell back into the habit when she returned to Vista and was reunited with her friends.

But at 19, Martinez found that the drug's thrill was gone. When she discovered she was pregnant, she welcomed the excuse to stop using.

"It was kind of a relief," said Martinez, who married her boyfriend. "It was like, 'Here's my reason to stop using.' "

Meth hadn't been fun to do since high school, but Martinez felt something was missing in her life without it.

Feeling like she needed a line just to get up, she began occasionally using again when her daughter was a year old. Two years later, as she went through a divorce, Martinez began using more.

The drug that had once been a teenage thrill ride became a dull remedy for despair.

"Crystal meth helps you forget," she said. "It numbs the pain."

By December 2004, Martinez said, meth had become a huge problem in her life.

"I was constantly doing it," she said. "I was never at home with my daughter. I was always out, running amok with friends."

Martinez was living with her parents, who didn't know about their daughter's drug problem. That changed that month when Martinez was pulled over while driving with her daughter in a friend's car with expired tags. The officer discovered drug paraphernalia in the car.

"It was very frightening for me," she said. "I went to jail and I was crying the whole time. They took my daughter. It was very shameful. I basically broke my mom's heart, and I wasn't playing my role as a mother."

Martinez was charged with child endangerment and possession. She was released after 11 days in jail and the charges were dropped, but she lost custody of her daughter, who went to live with her father.

"It was devastating to me," she said. "I'd never been away from my daughter like that."

With her life turned upside down, the experience could have been a wake-up call for her to get clean, Martinez said. But she was not yet ready for sobriety and responsibility.

"You'd think that I would stop, but I didn't," she said. "I just went out to get high, because it numbs the pain."

Unlike many meth abusers, Martinez said she never lost weight, didn't lose sleep and didn't develop a skin or tooth problem. But while she called herself a functional user, people could not see what it was doing to her on the inside.

"The drug overtook my reasoning," she said. "It took away everything. The only thing I cared about was when and how I was going to get my next bag."

The thought of quitting meth was as foreign to Martinez as the thought of no longer drinking water, she said.

Martinez began moving from place to place, crashing with friends, never working and never far away from her drug. Sometimes she would stop for a few months, but then go on four-day binges. Two years passed.

And then one day in April 2006, against all conventional methods of recovery, Martinez quit cold turkey.

"I just decided I was done and I never picked up again," she said. "I just decided this isn't me. This isn't the way I want to live the rest of my life."

Martinez moved in with a sober friend in Cardiff. When her parents realized she was serious about her sobriety, she moved in with them. She was five months' pregnant. She began attending 12-step meetings and taking classes at Options for Recovery in Vista, which is just for women.

"I love my life now," she said. "I'm doing very well. I have both my children. They're with me, and I couldn't be happier."

Martinez also calls her mother her best friend, and she plans to enroll in college after she completes her program at the center and is considering becoming a drug counselor.

She has no fear of repeating her past mistakes.

"The thought of crystal meth makes me absolutely sick to my stomach," she said.

Contact staff writer Gary Warth at (760) 740-5410 or gwarth@nctimes.com.

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