Mother of three
regains custody,
heals addiction

By Misti Drew
Tribune-Courier Reporter
mdrew@tribunecourier.com

BENTON – Pregnant at age 16, drug addicted at 17 and in jail by age 21, Jessica Thorn has led a troubled life in her young 24 years.

Judging by her long wavy sun-kissed curls, smiling face and healthy glow, you’d never guess the young mother of three was a raging methamphetamine addict just a few years ago.

Born and raised in Benton, Thorn moved to Hardin at the age of 17 where she and her fiancé lived along with his two small children.

The young couple’s lifestyle quickly turned destructive.

“I started drinking and then smoking pot,” Thorn said of how her problems began. “I had friends who were doing methamphetamine and I decided to try it. I was only going to do it once.”

But Thorn quickly lost control of her life and soon her drug addiction was spiraling out of control.

Before long, Thorn was using methamphetamine on a daily basis and was pregnant again.

She claims to have stopped using drugs while pregnant at the age of 19.

Her second child, Brynden, was born Feb. 25, 2005. He died four months later on June 18.

Thorn recalls that day.

“I had been up with him all night,” she recalled. “He had finally fallen asleep about two o’clock in the morning.”

But by 8 a.m., the sound of silence in the bassinet at the end of Thorn’s bed awoke her.

“I told my fiancé to check on Brynden,” she said. “When he got up to check on him, he told me not to get up.”

Thorn said she jumped out of bed to see what was wrong with her baby. “He was purple all the way down one side of his body,” Thorn said while fighting back tears. “I just panicked and fell on the floor crying.”

County Coroner Mitchell Lee pronounced Brynden dead at the scene and ruled the cause of death to be Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

“You can’t describe to someone how that feels,” Thorn said. “It was the worst day of my life.”

Thorn turned back to her comfortable norm of abusing drugs to escape reality.

“While using the drugs was like a relief to me, I still had this voice inside my head telling me it wasn’t the right thing to do,” she said.

But Thorn wasn’t ready to listen. Shortly after Brynden’s death, Thorn discovered she was pregnant again. She and her fiancé had their second child, a daughter named Kyrsten on Feb. 9, 2006.

But bad decision-making would lead to more turmoil and heartache for the young family.

Thorn’s fiancé was arrested for manufacturing methamphetamine and went to jail on Feb. 25 – Brynden’s birthday.

“It was one thing after another,” Thorn said of her tumultuous life. “I remember his mom coming to get his kids and my mom coming to get mine. I went to get high. It got really bad from there,” Thorn said. “That is when my drug use hit its peak.”

She and her two children moved back to Benton a few months later. That’s when Thorn said she began selling drugs.

Coincidentally, social services had become involved in Thorn’s life due to a prior report of abuse concerning her fiancé’s children. It was through that investigation workers discovered Thorn’s habits and questionable lifestyle.

In March 2007, Social Services removed the children from her home and awarded Thorn’s parents temporary custody.

“In some ways that made it worse,” she said. “I no longer had to worry about finding a place to take the kids and drop them off.”

Thorn said she began manufacturing methamphetamine.
Her actions soon caught up with her.

Thorn was pulled over on Sept. 28, 2007 for various traffic violations and subsequently arrested for drug possession. It was there deputies discovered an anhydrous tank stowed away in the trunk of her vehicle.

“By the time I got arrested, I had lost everything,” she said. “I was broke, had lost my home, my car and my children.”

But it still wouldn’t be enough to make Thorn decide to turn her life around.
An uncle posted her bail and Thorn went to stay with her father in Calloway County.

“I remember it was a Friday. I had told my dad I wasn’t going anywhere that night. I had just been arrested a week ago and I was staying home,” Thorn said. But all it took was a phone call from a “friend” and Thorn was out the door again.

Probation officers were waiting for Thorn when she arrived back home. They conducted a search of the house which turned up drug paraphernalia. Thorn was arrested again and sent to jail for two months on nine different drug charges.

“You lose everything when you go to jail,” she said. “You lose your freedom, your right to privacy and your right to do what you want to when you want to do it. The only thing you can do in jail is sleep and think.”

Thorn said she did a lot of thinking while behind bars. One of the things she said she thought of most was the fact that she was pregnant again.

Thorn was released early from jail to the custody of her parents. It was this go-round that Thorn said changed her life.

“I decided to check myself into the Four Rivers Drug Treatment Rehabilitation program,” she said. After being treated for nearly a year, Thorn was released from treatment.

That was a year-and-a-half ago.

Today, Thorn has regained custody of her three children, is living in her own home, has purchased a vehicle and is employed full-time, recently earning a promotion. “Being clean for so long has made me not want to go back to living the way I used to,” Thorn said. “I feel like I am finally an accomplishment.”

But Thorn knows the road to recovery will be difficult. “They say relapse is always right around the corner,” she confesses. “But for me, being a parent is the only drug I am going to need.”

Thorn continues to make progress by attending substance abuse meetings and is working to obtain her GED through the Marshall County Adult Education Center.