Meth emergency: Use soaring among Utah females

In 2003, 45 percent of women arrested in Salt Lake City tested positive for meth, up from 38 percent last year, according to a research program funded by the National Institute of Justice.

Most addicted women get limited or insufficient prenatal care because they don't want their drug use detected. Their babies are born small and cry a lot because of early injury to tiny brains and nervous systems.

"Even if you know you have another life inside you, my child wasn't more important to me than the drugs," said Monique Knudsen, 27, who has been off meth for two years and has four children, two of whom live with her.

Like Knudsen, most women are the primary caregivers for their children. Typically, they are single women with unattached males living in and out of the house.

Many of the women interviewed by the Deseret Morning News say they began using speed in small amounts to get more done or to control body weight. They initially obtained the drug from friends or family members. Eight of 13 women in treatment at the Cottonwood Family Treatment Center in the valley's south end used meth with parents, director Susan Mitchell said.

The women reported that as their habits grew, they obtained the drug from boyfriends or dealers they call "the dope man." Some had children by the dope man.

Counselors and social workers in contact with female meth addicts say the meth users are typically depressed, dependent on a male for financial support, relatively uneducated and unskilled and overwhelmed with child-care responsibilities.

"The number of people touched by this problem is bigger than any other," said Pat Fleming, director of substance abuse programs for Salt Lake County.

After all that treatment, all that therapy, all those meetings and all that work identifying the "triggers" that would send her back to her old habits — here she is again.

Last week, Tina and two friends smoked and injected $300 worth of methamphetamine in one day.

But the 31-year-old mother of five doesn't want to dwell on these things tonight. In an hour she'll be on the road, headed to Las Vegas. She needs to get away, she says.

So, she doesn't want to think about her children or her overdue rent or her boyfriend who is in jail. She doesn't want to talk too long about her three other children — ages 7, 10 and 14 — who are no longer hers because of a drug she calls The Devil.

"It's like there's a hole in the sidewalk down this one street," Tina says. "You know the hole is there. You know you have to steer clear of it, or you're going to fall in. You know if you fall in it's going to be so hard to climb out, but you walk right down there anyway.