By Mark Millican
Editor’s note: The name of the primary person quoted in this story has been changed to protect the identity of the individual.
Methamphetamine made Dee Smith terrorize his wife and her mother, stay a step ahead of the law for months at a time, and live with different dope dealers every night to stay off the street.
“I felt like I was going to die,” he said, taking a break from his chores at Providence Ministries on Friday. “I started drinking when I was 21 and then I got involved with pain medications after my mom gave them to me. I didn’t even know what they were at first, I just knew they made me feel good. I was going through a divorce.”
Smith said it was “funny” the way his meth use came about — he was actually chastising his aunt for using it.
“I was visiting her and she had a cold sore on her nose, and she asked me if I had any antibiotics,” he recalled. “I said no, but if you’d stop snorting that ---- up your nose, you wouldn’t have that problem. She told me she didn’t snort it, she shot it up (with a hypodermic needle).”
Smith said he became “curious” at that point.
“I knew what the alcohol and pain meds did for me and the feeling I got off that, so I wanted to try something new,” he said. “When I first tried it, I felt great. I didn’t have any worries and it pushed everything to the back of my mind. I had no troubles, but that only lasted for a little while.”
He began mixing booze, the pain killers and the meth all together and “really felt good,” but soon found he was in trouble for writing bad checks to support his habit.
“I wasn’t working, but I drained $7,600 out of a 401(k) account I’d had at another job,” Smith said. “I paid off $3,200 in bad checks and used the rest to buy drugs. My mom and dad were going through a divorce, and she got $60,000 out of that. My mother had taken meth for 10 years and I didn’t even know it. We ran through that money in about two months.”
Meanwhile, his now ex-wife had a temporary protective order (TPO) taken out against him because of his harassment against her after the divorce was finalized.
“I was giving her a hard time, and didn’t have any place to go,” he said. “My mind wasn’t right, and I went to jail for violating the TPO and stalking. I went to jail, got out, but didn’t go to court. The law found me about two months later in a motel. My mom actually turned me in because she saw where I was going.”
Smith stayed a year in the drug rehab program at Providence, but when he went back home to Summerville he began drinking again.
“I got a job at Walmart, but I still wasn’t happy with myself,” he said. “To be honest, I’d never been happy with myself, coming from a broken home and two alcoholic parents. I started doing pills, and then one day I ran into a guy with some meth. He asked me if I wanted to get high and I did. They say when you go back (on meth) it gets worse, and it did. I had gotten another job after Walmart and was making good money, but I blew it all on dope. I started the whole cycle over again just five months after graduating from this program (at Providence).”
After being arrested for meth possession, he ended up back at the ministry in the transitional living program but was still using.
“It was a lie,” he said. “I thought I could drink and not do anything else, but the drugs took over. (My relatives) in Summerville thought everything was fine, and I couldn’t move back there. I lost my job and came to the end of the road again. I called (Providence chaplain) Wesley (Noland) and we sat right here in this (conference) room with Roy (Johnson). I had no hope in the world, but they let me back in.”
Smith talked about why the program worked his most recent time through it — he’s now been clean for 18 months, he said.
“The difference has been my willingness to accept that I have a problem and to realize I can’t face it without God,” he revealed. “The only way it’s going to work is through prayer and with God’s help.”
Evidently he’s hit on something. Smith said he asked his ex-wife’s — and his mother’s — forgiveness, and they’ve accepted it.
“My ex-mother-in-law hated the person I was,” he said. “You can’t take your actions back and at times it leaves scars on people, but when I asked her forgiveness we both began crying. And I actually saw my ex-wife and my kids on Thanksgiving Day. I’m not the same person I was when I walked in here.
“Is every day good or great? No, but now I have hope.”
