Heather's mom turned her in to officials for using meth, and her brother has temporary custody of her children — boys, ages 2 and 4. For five years, White worked hard in the child-care field, taking care of other children and her own. But she took up meth a year ago and started hanging out with a guy who turned out to be mean to her kids. Her boyfriend hit her 4-year-old with a belt and then "popped him upside the head," White says.

The boyfriend is now in federal prison on a parole violation, and White is trying to put her life in order. She sees her children for two hours on Sundays. Her oldest son always asks, "Mommy, are you better yet?"

But Heather is the first to admit, she doesn't know if she's going to make it. If a judge doesn't grant her custody of the boys, she knows she'll go back. "If they get taken away, what is the point?"

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Three weeks into sobriety, Carol Morgan, 40, sat at a bus stop on State Street in Salt Lake City waiting for the Ogden Express line. The $1.35 ride would transport her 45 miles to her old life and a million miles from any chance at a new life. She knew this.

Her new life was just across the street at, of all places, the Spiking Tourist Motel. The Chelsea Street Foundation, a self-sufficiency and life skills program for drug addicts, puts up people there until they get back on their feet.

Morgan checked herself into the program to get away from the methamphetamine that had overtaken her life and caused her to lose everything — a husband, a well-paying job, a nice home and two cars. She and her two teenagers lived under an Ogden overpass for a year.

Now here she sat on a bus bench in September waiting for a ride back to meth-dom, until Chelsea Street's appropriately named co-founder, Jane Patience, pulled up in her car.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

Patience gently guided Morgan back to the motel, where she continues to make progress overcoming addiction.

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Tasha Keele calls a hotline every day. A recorded message tells whether she needs to subject herself to a periodic court-ordered urine test that comes with being a recovering drug addict. She belongs to the yellow group. A recent Wednesday was a yellow day.

Keele loads her 2-year-old son into the car and drives the few miles from her single-wide trailer in Orem to the county health center. She has never tested dirty in her more than 18 months in Family Drug Court. But she has missed five appointments, each of which landed her in jail for a day or so.