Employers and landlords are leery about taking on recovering drug addicts, many of whom have felonies on their records.

Job applicants are required to disclose that information. Elizabeth Sutton, a Catholic Community Services social worker, encourages her clients to make the disclosure along with the phrase "will explain in an interview." That at least gives them a chance to explain themselves to an employer face to face, if the application doesn't go straight into the trash first.

Tasha Keele, 29, doesn't have a job. A newspaper opened to the want ads sits on a lamp table in her double-wide trailer. Finding a job, she said, isn't difficult "if I get off my butt and do it." Keeping a job is the hard part. She lost her last one on a production line after a minor scuffle with a co-worker.

For now, she feeds herself and her son on food stamps.

Finding a place to live is probably harder than getting a job, said Casey Christopherson, 4th District Family Drug Court administrator.

"It's one of our obstacles that has been there from the beginning," he said.

Christopherson sometimes writes letters to the local housing authority on behalf of drug court participants.

Children also are a challenge. In many cases, moms and children have been separated for months. They are getting to know each other again.

"I was scared because I had never been clean and been a parent," said 22-year-old Amanda Evans, a pregnant mother of two who successfully completed family drug court.

She receives help from "peer parents," a couple who visit her apartment twice a week to teach parenting skills.

"I want to try to have boundaries," she said. "I want to try to have rules."

For all their efforts at a new life, the craving for meth still lurks in the shadows. Some will dream about smoking or slamming. Some will awaken reaching for an imaginary meth pipe or snorting an imaginary line.

"I still jones to use," Evans said. "That's going to be there the rest of my life. I've decided not to use."

Chante Bishop, 22, could use a little more help in her recovery. The mother of two feels a little abandoned by a system that tracked her for a while, but now has left her on her own. "When you are so into it, all your friends are using, everyone you know uses, and it's really hard to break out of that."

After admitting she had used meth during her pregnancy, Division of Child and Family Services became involved. That action got her attention, but now she is learning how to live sober. She's been clean for seven months and off monitoring by DCFS for two months, but every day is a struggle.

"My kids keep me going," she says. "I just spend all my time with them, trying to be a good mom."