Jade Barth, Director

Anacortes American Article

Page Photo Mom versus meth
By Gordon Weeks, News editor

Addiction brought on battle for her daughter's soul!

Something was amiss with Kristina. The 16-year-old Anacortes girl was once passionate about playing sports, but no longer cared. Her robust appetite, which earned her the family nicknames "The Garbage Disposal" and "The Bottomless Pit" was gone, except for the occasional binge on cookies smothered in milk.

She had always been "even-keeled, mellow, happy," said her mother, Catherine Weygandt; these days, she was acting aggressively toward her 13-year-old sister. Usually fussy about her appearance, she now picked at the skin on her face.

When Weygandt asked her daughter if she was using methamphetamine, she didn't reply. Then came Mom's discovery of a pipe fashioned from a Gatorade bottle and other drug paraphernalia. When Weygandt discovered her daughter in her bedroom with her boyfriend--the subject of a restraining order by the family--Kristina and her boyfriend took off.

Kristina had been missing for six days when her mother described how methamphetamine was rocking her family.

"It's like when someone dies--the grief, the endless crying, the anger," she said.

Methamphetamine "takes our children's souls. It tests my faith. I feel like I'm in a battle for my daughter's soul."

Catherine Weygandt is not alone. Methamphetamine use is on the rise here and around the country. The fallout fractures families and fuels crime. Meth labs pollute homes and back yards and tax the resources of frustrated law enforcement officials.



More than a battle, it's a "war," said Alice Byer, social services director for the Anacortes Salvation Army.

"Every single parent wants to believe their child isn't doing it ... The denial is so huge."

Kristina--who declined to comment on her story, but agreed to be named--was a cheerleader and active in sports before she lost interest in athletics, began sleeping more, and seemed more depressed, said her mother. She had always "pushed the envelope," especially when her father was away for long stretches working in Alaska; "when he's home, he's got the more authoritarian voice ... the fear factor," said her mother.

"We can't talk now--it's just confrontation," Weygandt said. "It's the drugs."

Weygandt witnessed what the drug did to a close relative who was a daily meth user for two years before managing to quit.

"The meth makes you not care about anything," said Weygandt. "You don't care if you live or die."

"I don't know when I'll be able to trust my daughter. Will I ever get that back?"

Seven days after her daughter's disappearance, Weygandt received a phone call from the Mount Vernon Police Department. Officers had found Kristina with her boyfriend and another teen in a motel, where she had given her cousin's name. She was high when her mother arrived to get her.

"She didn't care. It was like, `Why are you here?'"

Once back home in Anacortes, "She was bouncing off the wall for three hours, and them bam, she was out," Weygandt said. By the time Kristina woke up 24 hours later, her father had flown home from Alaska.

The couple took their daughter to a recovery center, where she tested positive for methamphetamine and marijuana. The counselors recommended treatment. Kristina signed aboard for 28 days at a treatment facility in central Washington, rather than face the prospect of juvenile detention for obstructing justice by lying to police. The couple spent two days at the facility with Kristina.

The Weygandt's wanted their daughter to receive treatment far from Anacortes.

"Kristina admitted 100 percent of her peers do drugs and alcohol. How can we bring her back when 100 percent of the people she hangs around with, people she's grown up with, are using? It's setting her up for defeat."

Weygandt, who visited Anacortes throughout her life before moving here in 1982, believes gang members from Mount Vernon and Burlington used the bus system and cars to spread meth use to Fidalgo Island. Police ignore known meth houses because they're afraid of violating civil rights, she said.

"People are complacent," Weygandt said. "They say, `Theres nothing that can be done, we just have to live with it." No, we don't!"

"This is a small town. There's no reason we can't get rid of this problem."

Weygandt said she hopes to understand why her daughter turned to drugs.

"I want her to get her self-esteem back, because that's obviously the number one thing."

A moment later, the phone rings. The drug treatment center is calling to say Kristina is being evicted for breaking rules; she needs to be picked up that day. She spent a few weeks in California with a relative, a former meth user now clean for six years, and the two attended Narcotics Anonymous meetings. Kristina is back in her hometown, receiving counseling.

"We're just taking it one day at a time," said her mother.