Meth addicts find new life after intensive rehab program

By Misti Strader
Tribune-Courier News Editor
mstrader@tribunecourier.com

MURRAY – David McCain has spent the majority of his life addicted to drugs — living in and out of the consequential confinement of jail cells and prison walls.

Battling a raging drug addiction and suffering in continual turmoil, it would be some 22 years before the Drug Court program would be able to offer McCain the necessary help to effectively turn his life around.

“I started using drugs over 20 years ago and alcohol way before that,” McCain said. “I was in Missouri when I started using methamphetamine intravenously. Everybody cooked it. I watched a few of them do it long enough that I learned how to do it my way.”

He told of how he began manufacturing simply to support his habit. “I would maybe sleep once a week and take Valium if I had to make myself come down. I didn’t sell to many, but I showed a lot of people how to cook meth, and now I wish I wouldn’t have. Everyone I have shown how to cook it has ended up behind bars.”

It would be four years before his actions caught up with him.
McCain had moved to Kentucky and was one of the first persons to be charged with and found guilty of manufacturing meth.

His first jail sentence was probated, but it was not long before he was again charged with manufacturing methamphetamine.

This time, he was able to bond out of jail where he said he “skipped town,” fleeing to Indiana.

In a chance run-in with the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) during a drug raid at a friend’s residence, McCain was captured.

He was sent to federal prison for conspiracy to manufacture more than 100 grams of meth.

“My first day in the federal penitentiary, I saw a guy get stabbed in the neck six times. Later that night, I saw a guy’s head split wide-open in a fight; his brains were literally hanging out.

“There was blood on the floor every day in the pen. They locked us up long enough to clean it and then they let us right back out.”

But even witnessing such atrocities as the ones he’d seen was not enough to discourage McCain from again falling prey to his drug addiction.

He was released and said he managed to stay clean for four or five months. However, it wasn’t long, before familiar habits were once again very much a part of McCain’s life.

“The first time I went back to hanging out with old friends, I was hooked again.”

Just one year later, McCain was in trouble with the law, but this time, he was not alone. He and his wife Shawna were stopped by police as they drove around searching for anhydrous ammonia.

They were charged with conspiracy to facilitate anhydrous for the production of methamphetamine.

This time, they both went to jail.

The couple’s three children were left in the care of David’s mother while the two were serving out their time.
Shawna was pregnant with their fourth child, Emily, at the time of their arrest.

This was not Shawna’s first run-in with the law on drug charges. She had already spent a year of her young life in jail.
But due to her expressed desire to work towards rehabilitation, she was accepted into the Drug Court program.

“You have to want to change before Drug Court can help you. I remember having to look at my son through the glass window while I was locked up in jail,” she said. “I could not even touch him. I knew then that I never wanted to have to do that again. I wanted to change my life.”

While serving his sentence in jail, David said he remembered words that his wife had spoken, words that motivated him to also make a commitment to change his life. “If you can’t stay clean, then we can’t stay together,” she said to him.

David said the final breaking point for him though, came on the day his daughter was born. Confined behind bars, he was unable to be there when she was born.

David described that day as the worst of his life.

“I remember waiting to be able to talk to my wife on the phone,” said a remorseful David. “I have so many regrets in my life; regrets of things that cannot possibly be changed. But I promised my wife from that day forward that I would never leave her again.”

David said that he too was determined to follow in his wife’s footsteps, getting clean and working to change his life.

“I knew it would not be easy,” he said. “Prison was easy; changing old habits is not. But I was tired of doing time, and I was tired of living the life I was living.”

They both successfully followed the strict guidelines set forth in the Drug Court program.

“Drug Court teaches you how to change your life,” Shawna said. “I had tried to quit doing drugs so many times on my own, but just did not know how to do it. Drug Court taught me how to get my life back together.”

While in the program, David went back to working full-time in his family’s logging business, and Shawna enrolled in college and is working towards obtaining her license as a nail technician.

The two have emerged as “poster children” for the Drug Court program, both returning to a healthy, productive lifestyle by working, attending school and becoming active in their local community.

Recently, with the help of David’s two teenage daughters, the McCain family chaired a team for Relay for Life.

They organized bake sales, sold cook books and candles, sponsored car washes and held various other money-making fundraisers for the cause.

“We loved being able to give back to the community,” Shawna said with a genuine note of enthusiasm.

“These days, we find much better ways to spend our time than we used to. We also spend a lot of time at home with our family, which is a greater high than any drug can give you.”

The McCains have spoken at engagements on behalf of Drug Court and continue to try and teach participants of the program’s effectiveness by sharing their own individual success stories.

The couple’s fourth child Emily, was born drug-free. The family has been completely reunited once again, and they are said to be on the fast track to living healthy and productive lives.

For more information on the new 42nd Judicial Circuit Drug Court program which serves Marshall and Calloway Counties, call 753-2414 Monday through Friday, 8-4 p.m.