As the mum of a kid that has done meth, a parent who is upfront about it, a woman who has started a business to help others dealing with meth contamination and a friend to listen to everyone’s story, I am here to tell you that you are not alone.

I don’t know that I have ever turned up somewhere and told people what I do and not had someone tell me their “my kids on meth”, “my cousin does meth” or “my sisters kid does meth” story.

It is out out there and affecting all our lives, pitting mother against father, putting brothers and sisters at odds and leaving extended family and friends giving advice or having opinions that just hurt you.

Common questions, what do you do? where do you go? is there anything on the internet? does the government offer any help?

My answer, it is different for every family, the path to navigate through is mind boggling. Suddenly you find yourself spending every spare moment on the internet looking for the answers. There is no one stop shop, this is for sure. What I can do is tell you some of my journey.

Firstly, a mother and a father of the child will react differently to this. My partner wanted to know why he just couldn’t stop, give it up. I saw it as a sickness. My partner was angry with how our son was acting towards us, I wanted to protect him and make it better, even though he was rude and disassociated from us, just give it time I said. I wanted to do family counselling, my son never went with us, my partner went once and said his piece, my daughter and I kept going. My daughter and my son were at loggerheads because of views on drugs and she couldn’t cope with his anger and nastiness.

(I would recommend ringing the Meth Helpline as a starting point, discuss your situation and take it from there).

As court cases started, I was left to stand alone at them by my partner of 15 years, I took holidays to attend every court case, we both paid for his attorney and we both went surety to bring him to stay at the family home instead of going to jail. His biological father and grandmother attended with me, we stood united for him to show him he had the support of the family. I don’t know that it meant anything to him, but it definitely did to me.

I dont know if we if we did the right thing keeping him out of jail, but that was our course of action, after this he agreed to go to rehabilitation (when he felt backed into a corner). He came back healthy and tanned, looking better than he had in years, then pretty well went straight back to the pipe. My heart breaks time and time again, over and over.

What I do know is that they need to want to get better, be off the pipe – for it to work.  When speaking to my boy a couple of months ago he said this “see that plain white wall mum, when you look at it, it’s a plain white wall, when I look at it, it could have a purple dragon running across it, that’s what I want to see, I don’t want your boring reality” .

Something I put to you, you are no longer dealing with your rational child, you are dealing with the drug. They will lie to your face, tell you what you want to hear, you will hear what you want to hear and you will take every bit of normality as a sign of them getting better. Good luck with that. It’s not that they won’t get better and off it, but it’s a long road.

I will write more on My Kid Does Meth another time. You can send us a message and or talk on our Facebook Community page here if you have questions.