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She kept her windows covered, and a string of shady characters filtered in and out of her Grass Valley home at all hours.

Police arrested her twice, and Oxarart tried to stop using the deadly drug. But she played the system, she said, and each time went back to her old habits.

Until one night in May 2004. Police knocked on her door, handcuffed her and handed her son, Christopher, then 15, over to Child Protective Services.

“It had to be done,” Oxarart said. “(Police officers) sat me down and brought my son out. That’s when I started to cry and just hit the floor.”

Oxarart’s mug shot showed a gaunt, strung-out woman with greasy hair and scabs on her face who looked much older than her years.

It was a far cry from the straight-A student she was in her younger days.

Hitting rock-bottom was a Godsend

“God sent the cops,” Oxarart said recently, sitting in her sunlit home, surrounded by pictures of her smiling granddaughter Bailey, 4. “I truly believe that.”

With more than three years of clean and sober living under her belt, Oxarart has regained her son and her health, and she mentors other women recovering from meth addiction.

People who knew her when she was using drugs don’t even recognize her anymore, she said. Sometimes, people who knew her years ago do double-takes in the grocery store, and she has to remind them of her past.

The path to health, however, was not an easy one. She had to fail a few times before she hit bottom.

“The consequences (before her last arrest) weren’t great enough,” Oxarart said. She was high when she completed Proposition 36 court, she said. She quit again during a 90-day stay at Hope House residential treatment center, but 20 days after her departure, she hooked up with an old friend. It took them about an hour to score some meth.

“I didn’t know any other way,” she said.

Guilt fueled abuse, 12 Steps doused it

Everybody’s stopping point is different, Oxarart said. Hers was losing her son.

“You have to really want it,” she said. “I had a little experience with the 12 Steps, so I went back and I just did what I was told.”

She learned to dismiss any notion that she knew what was best. She let go of the hook that always brought her back to using - those old feelings of guilt and shame.

“A lot of women let guilt and shame sustain their addiction and let it run their lives,” she said.

A CPS worker she met with the day she got out of jail told her to stop dwelling on her failures - something she’ll never forget.

“She said ‘You gotta knock it off,’” Oxarart said. “She said, ‘Kick yourself in the head as much as you have to today, but tomorrow, stop.’ I was desperate to hear that.”

Riding home on the bus after getting out of jail, Oxarart sat across from a woman who was reading the newspaper. The front page showed Oxarart’s disheveled mug shot, and the two made eye contact. Oxarart recognized the woman from an earlier 12-Step meeting and asked the woman then and there to become her sponsor. The woman agreed.

Oxarart went to a 12-Step meeting daily, sometimes twice. She volunteered to make coffee at one meeting every week. She made frequent contact with CPS to show them she was making progress.

She would do anything to get her child back, she said.

Unlike many moms recovering from meth, Oxarart did regain custody of her son after just 22 days. Now, she devotes herself to attending to his physical disabilities, living on the meager home health care wages she earns for Christopher’s care.

In addition, Oxarart volunteers in the community, attends ceramics classes with her son at Sierra College and dreams of becoming a nutritionist.

But it was in those early days that she took one of the toughest steps - what many in the recovery community say is key to staying off drugs.

Strengthened by her 12-Step support and determined to keep her child, Oxarart screamed her head off at old using buddies who would show up on her doorstep. She cut them out of her life.

She has no idea where they are now.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 30th, 2007 at 10:10 pm and is filed under Meth Addiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.