July 17, 2005 The Bulletin
By Kayley Mendenhall
One night seven years ago, Kathie Menefee's 14 year old daughter Michelle didn't come home. Michelle had always been a responsible kid, Menefee of Bend, said.. But she had noticed a change in Michelle's peer group and was frantic with worry about her disappearance. As it turned out, the first time Michelle stayed away from home all night would not be the last. She began running away for days at a time. She would steal her mom's money, cars, credit cards, household items - anything she could hock for cash or drugs.

At 14, Michelle Berry was addicted to methamphetamine.

She began losing weight rapidly and broke out with horrible acne, her mom said. And then there was the stench.

An odor described as resembling cat urine began wafting from Michelle's room; it clung to her clothes and oozed from her skin. "I panicked. Total panic," Menefee said. "I called every house, every being I could think to call. It is the most horrid feeling in the world."

Menefee's story of her family's struggle with meth is not uncommon. In fact, elements of it are echoed in stories of other local families, including that of Susan Ashley of La Pine whose son is still addicted to the drug. Both mothers have worked desperately to save their children from methamphetamine addiction, and now they are part of a group that has formed to support others with the same problem.

"We have been fighting this battle for seven years," Menefee said. "There was no Meth Action Coalition. There were no handouts. I barely knew what meth was."

In the beginning, she was embarrassed. If she talked about her daughter's addiction, she feared she would be judged as a bad parent or her daughter would be thought of as a bad person. Through the Meth Action Coalition, Menefee, Ashley and others have come together to start the Meth Family and Friends Support group so other parents dealing with meth in their families have somewhere to turn for advice.

"We envision this support group as an opportunity for members of our community who have been affected by a loved one addicted to meth to come together and discoverv they are not alone," according to the support group's mission statement. "It is a place to share information, to learn about the disease of meth addiction and to discover that there is hope at the end of the day."

These days, when Menefee talks about meth, it is with an attitude of triumph and in past tense terms. Her now 21 year old daughter Michelle Berry, has been clean for one year. It's the longest Michelle has gone without using drugs since her addiction began and Menefee is proud of Michelle's success. "She and I are closer than ever. I'm so thankful that I have my daughter and she's alive. I call Michelle my greatest miracle, because she is alive."

There were many night s when Michelle was on meth, running from home, and Menefee didn't know where to find her, that she thought her daughter was dead. Menefee's emotions would cycle from anger to fear to fright to anger all over again. "I would go to bed thinking, "Is she dead in a ditch? Should I be looking for her? You drive everywhere, look everywhere, show pictures to people. It was the most painful feeling in my life, not knowing if my daughter is alive and OK."

Michelle, now a student at Lane Community College in Eugene, said she can think back on those days and imagine what her family was feeling, but at the time, nothing about their emotional struggle mattered. "In my mind, what was really going on was that I needed the drug and I lived for the needle... Every day that was all that I thought of. That was what drove me to live for the day, but in reality I was committing suicide," Michelle said. "I was continually hurting them and putting this drug before them. They didn't even come in second. They came in third or fourth. I can imagine how hurt they were."

Menefe, a nurse at St Charles medical center-bend said when the drug use began she had trouble removing herself from the emotional impact of the situation to critically thionk things through. She didn't know where to turn for help.

The same is true for Susan Ashley. When her son, Ryan Bergstralh, began stealing from her and her husband and when they found drugs in his room, they turned him in to the Deschutes County Sheriff's Department multiple times. "He didn't start using meth until he was 17 and only went to the juvenile detention center once," Ashley said. The Ashley's then spent their entire savings to pay more than $17,000 for a residential drug treatment program, only to have him start using again shortly after his release.

Bergstralh, now 19 has been convicted of several felonies and placed on probation. the Deschutes County District Attorney's office has filed a petition to revoke his probation and Presiding Circuit Judge Michel C. Sullivan has issued a warrant for his arrest.

His mom is convinced he'll either end up in prison or will be killed by the drug. "They continually rip your heart out. Stomp on it, spit on it, pee on it. We keep picking it up and putting it back in," Ashley said. "We don't even know where he's staying at."

At this point, Ashley said that her son is no longer welcome in their home. "Our phone is always open for communication. If he called and said, 'I need you. Would you go to a meeting with me?' I would pick him up seven days a week and go to meetings with him. The addict needs to take the steps. If he asked to come home, I would have to tell him, no. It would kill me."

Menefee went through the same process with Michelle, eventually telling her daughter she could no longer come home if she wasn't clean. "I didn't completely ostracize her. I wanted to see her. I would meet her for lunch." During one of those lunch meetings, Menefee left her purse at the table while she used the restroom. Days later, she discovered her bank card was missing and knew Michelle was the culprit. Menefee reported Michelle to the Bend Police Department when she stole her car and her credit cards. Michelle was in and out of Deschutes County Juvenile Detention center 22 times before she turned 18, her mom said.

As the need for the drug continued to drive her actions, Michelle found herself with no one to turn to for help, she said. She has told her mom stories of nearly being raped, of having a gun held to her head and of sleeping outside in the snow. "I slept in a park in Bend in one of those covered slides, just to stay out of the snow," Michelle said. "I had nowhere to go. I had no money. I had no one to call. When you do drugs, you burn up all your resources."

Through the support group, Menefee and Ashley hope to share these stories and their advice for other parents. They have helped create a handout filled with answers to frequently asked questions about dealing with drug-addicted family members. "The idea was that we could have an education component," said Chuck Hemingway, a certified drug and alcohol counselor with Pfeifer and Associates Counseling Center in Bend, who is helping with the support group. "We hope to spend most of the time allowing the family and friends to open up and talk among themselves."

Other programs for family members of addicts, like Alanon, Naranon and Families Anonymous, are already established in Central Oregon, Hemingway said. The Meth Family and Friends Support Group does not aim to replace those programs, but he said it is geared specifically toward those affected by meth use and is not a traditional 12-step program. Instead the support group will serve as a place to share thoughts and ideas, to share stories and sorrows and mostly, Menefee said, to provide hope.

"People do recover. People do mend," Menefee said. I want people not to lose sight of that. Michelle's story is very powerful and there is hope on the other side."