Dissecting addiction: Cycles of pain

LINDON — MarySunshyne flashes a shy smile as she climbs into her mother's lap.

She's 2 now, she proclaims, holding up little fingers to prove it. She's not old enough to remember the months she spent in a Provo recovery clinic with her mom and two older siblings.

All she knows now is that her mom is home.

And she is clean.

That was November, when Shantel Walker's thinking was clear and she was focused on being a mother — not a meth addict.

But a few days before Christmas she fell again. Hard.

December is a hard month, Walker says. Holiday pressures, plus the memory of her brother, Shayne DeWitt, whose birthday falls on Dec. 25.

It was 19-year-old DeWitt's death in 2001 from a drug overdose that drove Walker to smoke pot. Soon after, she started to drink.

Less than two years later, Walker's father died, and overnight, she says, she became an alcoholic.

"My mom would say, (I know) you're suffering," Walker said in November. "(But I told her) I was not drinking because my dad had died. I was in total denial. I would not admit one had to do with the other."

The heavy drinking warped her personality and attracted a different crowd.

All of a sudden it was methamphetamine.

Walker spent three years addicted to meth, then two years in intensive recovery. It was like a game of Ping-Pong — she'd get released from a program and end up relapsing months later.

In November, Walker had been sober for nine months. The 28-year-old's smile was bright, her eyes clear. She had finally realized drug addiction was a battle she would always face.

"I have to deal with this the rest of my life," she said. "Everybody's got something. If I had asthma, I'd have it the rest of my life. If I had diabetes, I'd have it the rest of my life. Cowboy up."

She will need that reminder now more than ever.

Relabeling addiction

Shantel is not alone.

Last year, officials documented 23.2 million Americans who needed treatment for drug or alcohol addiction. Of those, only 10 percent got help. Most of them didn't even think they needed treatment.

In denial, just as Walker initially was.