The years between 1995 and 2002 were a time of great personal chaos. My marriage was rocky. My finances were shaky. I had a young child to raise, at a time when I thought I would be free of parental responsibility. I had been lied to. Stolen from. Left deeply in debt. And figuratively slapped in the face by the very person largely at fault for the turmoil in my life—my middle child and oldest daughter, “Kristina”¹—and her decision to flirt with the monster drug methamphetamine, or crystal meth.

It wasn’t a new story. Many parents lose their children to addiction. On the flip side, many children lose their parents to substance abuse. The problem is multigenerational, and will continue to be until we can educate our youth honestly about drugs, and how they affect not only the user, but also everyone who loves him or her, not to mention society in general. My generation to a large degree led the charge toward “it’s my life, I’ll do what I want with it” experimentation, and my own teen years weren’t completely untouched by the “sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll” credo.

But this was my child. My beautiful, brilliant, talented daughter. The A+ student with an amazing artistic gift and the potential to not only dream big, but to realize her dreams. Instead, with one wrong turn, her dreams disintegrated, one by one. And, despite every effort to turn her around, she would never be the same.

When her slide started, it didn’t take long to recognize that something was up. She had never brought home anything less than an A, and  …