Colleen Muir had been living in a $250,000 home in Bonney Lake, Wash., with her third husband and two younger children. After a divorce she moved to Tacoma and fell in with the wrong crowd. She began using, then cooking and selling meth. Often she sent her children to stay with a friend who was a social worker, knowing they would be taken care of as she lived from couch to couch. The friend threatened to send Muir’s children into foster care if she didn’t complete an in-patient rehabilitation program and clean up. Muir complied. A month later she was reunited with her children and began piecing their lives back together.
Encircled by friends who were also recovering from drug and alcohol addiction at Kitsap Recovery Center, Colleen Muir goes through her coin out. This ceremony marked her last days of inpatient treatment.
Muir is frustrated as she tries to hook up the Internet to a computer she got from a friend at Agape Unlimited, a recovery assistance center. Colleen wanted a computer since she was in Kitsap Recovery Center. She thinks surfing the Internet will help distract her when she has the urge to use meth and will enable her to go to school.
At Kitsap Recovery Center, Muir shows a friend photos of herself after being mugged in her car while lost in West Las Vegas almost a year ago. Muir was high at the time. The attacker stole her purse and suede coat.
Muir is comforted by her friend Catherine Anderson at Kitsap Recovery Center after she reads a letter from her mother. Muir hadn't been in contact with her mother since she left Las Vegas in nine months ago.
Recovering addicts gather for group discussions each day at Kitsap Recovery Center. In a few days, four of them will be graduated out of treatment and back into society. Colleen is among the four.
Muir is reunited with her children Teylene, 8, and Jamie, 10, when they came to pick her up from the Kitsap Recovery Center. "I can't believe this day is already here," she said. Jamie visited her at the center twice, but Colleen hadn't seen her daughter since she began treatment a month ago.
Muir takes a break from filling out forms to enroll her children in school. She lived in Agape's women's house with her two children for a couple of weeks before being transferred to another transitional apartment in Bremerton. She is waiting to move into a duplex.
Muir is helped by various agencies to help her get started in a new life. One form of assistance is food stamps, which enable her to buy groceries for her family.
Muir picks up her children, Jamie and Teylene from an after-school science program at Kitsap Lake Elementary School before going to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.
Muir hugs her daughter, Teylene, after checking out of the Kitsap Recovery Center. Her main incentive for going through the program was to get her children back.