One man's struggle with methamphetamine addiction

When Dale Robertson gets out of prison, he’ll have to start his life over at 50, with nothing to his name but the clothes on his back.

Robertson, a 49-year-old Sidney native is headed to prison for his second felony drug conviction after around 35 years of drug and alcohol abuse.

“I’ve been around the drug scene my whole life,” Robertson said.

His introduction to drugs occurred when he was in 7th grade. At 13 he started smoking marijuana, drinking and skipping school. Robertson spent his time with older kids and ended up dropping out of school at 16. Although he started with alcohol and marijuana, in the 1980s he moved on to cocaine, and then began using methamphetamine around 10 years ago. He explained his decision to use methamphetamine for the first time in the simplest terms.

“It was something different, I’d never done it before,” Robertson said.

His methamphetamine abuse soon escalated from snorting, to smoking to injecting the drug intravenously. At his worst point, Robertson was shooting up several times a day. He began selling meth to support his habit.

“You don’t sell drugs to make money,” he said. “Not on the small scale like this. You kid yourself into thinking that you are, but you’re not. You’re selling it for your habit. Because when it comes down to it, you’re not making money or anything. You’re hurting yourself.”

Drug use took an immeasurable toll on Robertson and those who depended on him.

“I hurt my family huge,” he said. “I hurt my family, I hurt my kids. I hurt me, physically, mentally.”

Robertson has six children, but two of his sons are minors—ages 13 and 11. After caring for them for several years, Robertson’s mother, Sidney resident Susan Ross, adopted the boys.

The situation has caused Ross a lot of heartache, she said. Since Ross’s husband died two years ago, she has to take care of the kids and do work around the house on her own.

“Everything falls on me now that he’s gone,” Ross said.

In the past, Robertson did not consider the ill effect his drug use would have on his family. Since he’s been in jail, Roberton has already missed his two youngest children’s birthdays. He also knows that he’ll miss the holidays with them this year. His step son recently got married, across the street from the jail. Robertson couldn’t attend.

“I never thought about this stuff before, but life goes on and I’m sitting here behind bars,” Robertson said.

Those who use methamphetamine don’t realize what they’re missing out on until it’s too late, he said.

“I think the long term effects are the worst thing there ever is,” Robertson said. “It’s aged me.”

Although Robertson himself has to deal with the physical ramifications of years of drug use, the effect his habits have on his family are far worse than anything he must endure. His mother is 70 years old with two adolescent boys in her care. One son is just coming into his teenage years without a father around.

“I should be there for him right now and I’m not,” Robertson said.

Drug use was always about the rush for Robertson.

“I was always chasing a high,” Robertson said. “I could never get high enough.”

He would use methamphetamine all day and all night. He would go days without eating or sleeping. Then, when he ran out of the drug, he would sleep for days while coming down from the effects of the stimulant. Eating after the come-down could be painful because he hadn’t consumed food or water in so long.

“It’s awful,” Robertson said.

Even though he might be able to endure a day or two without the high, Robertson would soon be looking for another fix. He held down a job on and off for the past 10 years but some of the time he would sell just enough methamphetamine to put gas in his vehicle, pay for hotel rooms and to buy more drugs.

“I was always on the move, I didn’t want to get busted,” Robertson said.

He described the paranoia that often comes with methamphetamine use. Some see shadow monsters. Robertson often heard people outside his house who weren’t there. At one point, when Robertson lived in a camper in his mother’s back yard, he thought he heard someone outside. He called his mother’s house and woke her up at 2:30 a.m. so she would turn on the back porch light. There was no one there.

“I’m worried about him all the time,” Ross said.

The euphoria that Robertson experienced when using methamphetamine was not limited to the physical affects of the drug. He also enjoyed the high of having it, selling it and being around the people he did it with. Part of the allure of drug culture for Robertson was the thrill of the chase.

“Then, once you do get caught, then you’re going, ‘Holy crap, what did I just do?’,” Robertson said.

Another draw for Robertson was the popularity that seemingly went along with meth. He was the type of person who only ever had a handful of friends.

“When I was selling drugs, everyone was my friend,” Robertson said.

He started to believe that all the people he sold to really liked him, when the truth was much darker.

“They like what they can get from you,” Robertson said.

He knew drug users who would steal from stores and even from their own children to have something to trade for drugs.

“It don’t matter what it is,” Robertson said. “If you want it and they want the drugs bad enough they’ll go out and get it.”

Robertson’s life now is full of regret. He wishes he could be with his children.

“I’ve missed so much in their life that I will never get back and they’ll never get from me,” Robertson said. “It’s horrible and it’s all because I am a drug addict and I was too busy getting high and selling drugs and not paying attention to what really matters.”

The inability to hug his children and have father-son talks bothers him most.

His mother agrees that his time in prison is difficult for the whole family.

“It’s hard on the boys, not having their dad around,” Ross said.

Robertson wants those who might use methamphetamine in the future to know the downfalls of abusing the drug.

“I don’t want other people to have to go through what I’ve gone through, and feel the way I feel right now,” Robertson said. “ It’s horrible.”

Robertson encourages current users to take a hard look at themselves and realize where they’re headed.

“Stop using it or don’t do it because you’re headed down a path that here’s the end, where I’m at right now,” he said. “My kids live with my mother, I’m incarcerated.”

Knowing he’ll have to be away from his kids for a year is difficult to swallow.

“It’s the most painful thing in the world,” Robertson said. “I’m really close to my family.”

His sons are disappointed in him, always asking why he continued to use drugs. Robertson has no good answer to that question, just that he was a drug addict who wasn’t thinking about the consequences of his actions. The last time he was in prison, he didn’t consider quitting. This time, he decided to re-evaluate his life. He thinks he’ll be able to stay clean this time because he truly wants to.

“Day by day, I’m gonna give it everything I have in me to never be around it again,” Robertson said.

He hopes to go back to work in construction after prison and get his life together.

“I want to repair my relationship with my kids and my mom,” he said. “I’m going to be clean. I wanna be with my kids. I wanna have a normal life. I’ve never had one of those, without drugs in my life.”

His mother lamented the unnecessary burden Robertson’s choices have put on those who care about him.

“He’s turned our life upside down and that could have been prevented,” Ross said.

It’s been so long since drugs weren’t a part of his life that he can’t remember what it was like to be without them.

“They always say the grass is greener on the other side of the fence,” Robertson said. “I wanna see what it’s like.”

He admitted that it will be a daily struggle and that he won’t be able to live in Sidney because he can’t be around the same people and places he haunted when using drugs. Just to be a normal person is his most fervent desire.

“It might seem like fun now, but at the end of the day when you’re all alone, and looking in the mirror, ain’t nobody gonna like what they see,” Robertson said. “I know I didn’t.”

He has grown children with kids of their own who won’t speak to him because of the drugs, alcohol and arrests.

“One of my boys is in the Air Force, has done two tours in Iraq, has been to Afghanistan, put his life on the line,” Robertson said. “I could have lost him three different times and he won’t even talk to me because of this.”

Although methamphetamine used to be known as poor man’s cocaine, now abusers come from any socioeconomic background.

“It’s infected all walks of life,” Robertson said. “And I say infected because it’s a disease. It’s a disease, because once it gets into your life, it’s there for good.”

If he hadn’t been arrested, he doesn’t think he would have quit.

“I look at this as kind of a blessing, actually, because it was a major wake-up call,” Robertson said.

Local law enforcement agreed that methamphetamine abuse was incredibly detrimental.

“It tears families apart,” said Cheyenne County Sheriff John Jenson in a previous interview.

After his release from prison in 2010, Robertson stayed away from drugs and did well for a while. Then he started hanging with his old friends again and spiraled back into drug use, Ross said.

She hopes that this time is different.