Women In Recovery Program Wants To Raise Awareness Of Meth Addiction

Right now, more than half of those in Tulsa's Women in Recovery Program are addicted to meth.

With a lot of attention on Oklahoma's opioid crisis, Women In Recovery wants to raise awareness about the state's meth problem that doesn't get the same attention.

Opioids are expensive and sometimes harder to get but meth is a cheaper alternative and highly addictive.

"It's definitely not been easy, it's been worth it, but it's not been easy," said recovering addict Tara Kuhn.

Tara Kuhn is now 31-years-old and nearly two years sober. A time of celebration after years of addiction. At 14 years old she started drinking alcohol, self-harm at 15, followed by cocaine, ecstasy, marijuana, and painkillers.

At 27 she started using meth and didn't stop until she was 30. Tara says she spent half of her life battling addictions.

"Anger was the emotion that I knew, anger was the emotion I was comfortable with," said Tara.

Through her recovery, she learned how to love herself and to stop blaming herself for how she was raised.

"My mom was an addict, is an addict and so for me, I felt like it was my fault or there was something I could do or should've been able to do to make her stop using and each time that didn't occur I would hate myself a little more," she said.

Tara described those years as broken with an inability to trust herself, to love herself or love others but thanks to the Women in Recovery Program she's learned to think differently.

"I learned how to tear all that down and understand that it wasn't my fault and it had nothing to do with me," said Tara.

Feelings that she didn't want her 7-year-old daughter, Lyric, to feel as she got older.

"The things I've learned here I can instill in her, so she doesn't ever have to go through what I went through because, reality is you know, I've put her through having a mother with addiction also," said Tara.

Women in Recovery is a court-ordered program and is an effort to give women a chance at recovery rather than prison time.

If Tara didn't go through the program she was faced with 66-years in prison for her first-time conviction.