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2010.02.02 08:54:52

Mariah Beckman

Mariah Beckman → Victims of Meth Addiction...Not Just Users

Anne and I were friends from infancy--we spent every holiday together, we attended parties toge

ther, our families were always commuting back and forth to spend time with each other. Anne and her family were, in many ways, closer to me than my own relatives.

Anne was recently arrested from her home for auto theft and credit card fraud. In court, a lawyer would plead compromising circumstance due to an intense methamphetamine addiction.  Counsel would go on to suggest that Anne’s role as a mother to her newborn were circumstance enough to warrant a second chance for this wayward 24 year-old. As the first person who had their car and credit cards stolen by Anne, I knew that this offense she’d been charged with is roughly her sixth time committing such a crime, although  I did not press charges.   A judge would not agree that second chances were in order.

Fast forward to present day: Anne and I haven’t spoken in three years, since my lifelong friend decided that her blossoming meth addiction was paramount to hours of girltalk, fashion shows and secrets we’d shared. Anne’s mother, Cath, was raising Anne’s son Owen in Anne’s absence (unfortunately, Owen was born a meth baby the same year she stole from me) when she went to the doctor for back pain, only to be admitted to ICU because an MRI and CAT scan revealed her body was riddled, literally, with cancer—stomach, throat, back, lung and breast. Anne will likely use her one visit from the prison in Perryville, Arizona, to say her final goodbyes to her mother in the hospital—one time only, prisoners may be escorted in shackles to visit a loved one in times of extreme duress.

This is my meth story:  my family friend, Cath, is going to die. Because her daughter stole from me, Cath refuses to speak to me—she thinks that I am somehow responsible for her daughter’s fall from grace.  Anne will probably never speak to me again, probably for the same reasons—maybe they feel as if I  should have helped stop the problem back then.  Maybe I should have. I should have called someone—I should have done something. And now, because meth was more important than me, both of them are dead to me.