Toxic Addiction: ‘Meth is a plague of our day’

It is Friday afternoon. Sherill Calhoun, emotionally and physically exhausted, turns the key in the front door lock of the north Hanford home and opens the door -- the first sense of relief she's felt in days.

She has just returned from a psychiatric clinic in Clovis with her adult son, Clinton, a 31-year-old methamphetamine addict. He would start in a long-term out-patient drug recovery program there in a few days.

Unsure of how he will do, she prays her son would end the addiction for good this time.

It's been a long enough struggle for the family. Ten years, at least.

Because of his addiction to meth, Clinton has gotten into more trouble with the law in his adult life than his mother and father, Ron, Kings County's district attorney, would probably like to remember. Clinton is married with two young children, and his wife is also a meth addict. Inevitably, the cycle went on for as long as they've been together.

More run-ins with the law in 2005 led him to spend some jail time in Stanislaus County. But it prompted him to finally go through a publicly-funded rehab program in Modesto.

He is one year into his probation. Clinton has managed to stay clean and even maintain a job, while living with his parents back in Hanford.

Everybody in the family thought his recovery was going well -- until earlier that week, when he returned home high and delusional after disappearing for a night.

He had obviously relapsed, and worse yet, he was showing the symptoms of psychosis.

In a panic, Sherill takes her son to an emergency room, where he was declared 51-50. He eventually gets transported by ambulance to a mental health facility in Clovis.

There, she somberly asks the doctor: Is he mentally ill?

The doctor tells her: No. But he's a 100 percent meth addict.

Madness must end here, for his sake and his children's sake, Sherill tells herself.

Sherill finds a reputable private recovery program in Clovis and urges his son to give it a try. Clinton agrees and promises to put himself back on the path of recovery.

Then one Friday in April of this year, the mother and the son came home with a lot of uncertainty. But one thing was certain: Clinton was going to start the program the following Monday.

Back at the house, Clinton washed his car and helped a neighbor move furniture. Things seemed ordinary and calm.

Then he told his mother, "Mom, I'm going to go to see the boys," indicating he was going to his wife's house down the neighborhood where his sons stayed.

He never came home that night.

Sherill knew then something went horribly wrong.

"I know we're going to get a phone call that he's been arrested," she told her husband. "I know we will."

The phone rang the next day.

This chain of events leading to the most recent arrest of Clinton Calhoun represents a pattern of life frequently observed in those addicted to meth who are in and out of the system.

He is currently in jail, charged with assaulting a woman that April day at the Hanford Mall while on meth. He has a rap sheet that goes back 12 years, and meth has undeniably played a big role in his troubled background.

"For us, it's just been heartbreaking," Sherill said. "Some of the joy of our life has been zapped out."

The Calhouns belong to one of the many white-collar, church-going, middle-class families in the Valley whose lives are robbed by an epidemic called methemphetamine. The spread in meth addiction has led to increases in crime rates in many communities, including Hanford.

"Meth is a plague of our day," Sherill Calhoun says. "Meth steals a person's soul."

Sherill Calhoun, the wife of Kings County district attorney, went public with her story because she wants "our community to be aware and take a stand."

She hopes her disclosure would provide moral support for parents in a similar predicament and are "often left feeling helpless."

Today, she is a major advocate for all things related to meth. She chairs the methamphatamine committee for Kings Partnership for Prevention -- the largest local coalition of agencies committed to community wellness.

But she would readily admit that she was just as ignorant as she could be 10 years ago about the danger of meth, when she first suspected her son was using the drug.

Clinton Calhoun grew up like any other kid in north Hanford. He played soccer when he was young. In high school, he played football.

But, according to his mother, he had one bad habit: Binge drinking.

Having a history of addiction on both sides of the family, Sherill Calhoun warned her children more than twice about the danger.

For Amber, Clinton's younger sister, that might have been an enough deterrence, but not for her older brother.

In his sophomore year, Clinton was already partying and drinking "until he passes out," when he wasn't playing football.

But at the time, Sherill says, she and her husband simply hoped their son would eventually "grow out of it."

The fact is, it only got worse.

"He is an addict. If meth wasn't alive in this world, it would have been alcohol," Sherill says.

Although she would come to understand this much later, Sherill Calhoun says she knew her son had trouble maintaining a focus in school.

In his junior year, Sherill took her son to see a counselor because she thought her son had a case of ADHD.

The counselor told her Clinton was intelligent but was extremely bored.

But nothing was said at that time about his predisposition to addiction, according to Sherill.

Clinton turned 21 without much intervention.

Then one day, Amber, his sister, confided to her mother: "Mom, somebody told me that Clint is doing meth."

Sherill asked her: "Meth ... what is that?"

Around that time, Clint had met his wife, who was also a meth user.

In retrospect, Sherill says that's when Clinton began showing symptoms of meth addiction.

"I didn't know much about methamphetamine at all," Sherill said. "In fact, I couldn't figure out why he was looking the way he was for such a long time."

When she confronted him, Clinton denied using meth.

"It wasn't until he actually met his wife, who is an addict, that we understood what the problem was," Sherill said. "That was when we began to understand what meth was about."

As a mother, Sherill Calhoun has her regrets.

"Ron and I probably just weren't trained as well as we could be about how to deal with an addictive child," Sherill said. "We were like most parents. We were angry at first."

Calhoun says her experience is a cautionary tale for working mothers whose lives tend to revolve around their career.

She won't criticize working mothers, but she advocates now that mothers stay home to raise their children and work at home if possible.

"I worked for 30 years, so I didn't have the chance to be around him as much as I could," she said. "I really think that's a vital issue with our situation with Clint.

"I would never have gone out to Corporate America. I would stay home and have a home-based business that would leave flexibility to be with my family," she said. "Although we thought we did a lot with them, I still think they just needed to know that someone was there for them

(Sept. 26, 2007)