Addict’s story confronts teens at meth summit

Published 9:00 pm Tuesday, February 13, 2007

EVERETT – Kyle Cook didn’t have far to walk Tuesday to get to his speaking engagement at a statewide Youth Meth Summit.

His current home – a cell in the Snohomish County Jail – is just across the street from the Everett Events Center, where about 700 students, teachers and counselors from both sides of the Cascade Mountains gathered to learn more about the dangers of drugs.

Clean-cut in blue jeans and a striped shirt, Cook, 19, blended in with the gathering of middle and high school students.

“I just had a normal life like a lot of you do right now,” he told them.

The teens saw a clean and sober version of Cook and pictures on a large screen of a happy, active childhood. Then, they saw the detached, ashen-faced mug shots of a meth addict.

Just a week before high school graduation less than two years ago, Cook had his cap and gown, but the addiction that had started two years before was too strong. He couldn’t even wait a week to get high and back to his old ways.

It was one more disappointment in a long string of heartbreaks for his parents, Rick and Brenda Cook, and his brother, Tim. Brenda Cook and Tim Cook attended the graduation ceremony to watch Kyle’s friends get their diplomas – but not Kyle.

“How sad is that?” she said.

Not that long ago, “we were just an average Snohomish County family,” Brenda Cook said.

She has worked at the same Everett printing company for 27 years; Rick Cook has worked at Boeing for 28 years.

The family went hiking, boating and skiing together. Kyle Cook was a strong downhill ski racer, and his mom served on a ski racing board at Stevens Pass to support her son’s passion.

The family began to notice changes in Kyle, but figured it was just teenage moodiness.

He quit skiing and grew withdrawn. He had frequent outbursts and started getting in trouble. Brenda Cook would go out to look for her son at 3 a.m.

What the Cooks didn’t realize was that their eldest son had started drinking and smoking marijuana in about eighth grade.

One summer day of his sophomore year in high school, he went looking for marijuana. A friend offered him meth instead.

It was the beginning of a horrible ordeal for his family.

Kyle Cook became easily enraged, screamed hateful words, punched holes in walls and threatened his family when confronted.

“We were afraid of this creature in our house,” his mother said.

The self-described “average Snohomish County family” resorted to desperate and expensive measures to try to help their son, but eventually felt compelled to get restraining orders against him.

They moved from the home Kyle Cook once threatened to burn down. He took refuge in a wretched house filled with drug addicts and stolen auto parts.

Along the way, there was a family-led intervention, a pricey wilderness camp in Utah and in-patient treatments. The tab: $60,000 the family didn’t have.

After getting released from different drug inpatient centers and jail, it would take Kyle Cook anywhere from an hour to a week to get back on meth.

Brenda Cook borrowed from her retirement savings to try to help her son and was actually relieved when he was locked up in jail.

Today, the family is hoping for the best. Kyle Cook has been on work release, passing breathalyzer screenings and random drug tests.

Every day, he thinks about drugs and knows he has a tough challenge ahead.

“I think it could take years,” he said. “It goes through my mind every single day, using dope, but I talk myself out of it.”

His mother can only hope.

“I forgive him, but he will have to earn his trust back, and he knows that,” she said.

Tuesday was the sixth annual Youth Meth Summit in Snohomish County. It is planned by students, for students.

Organizers made it a statewide event this year, with students from 12 counties on hand. They hope other communities will host similar summits to discuss ways to stop meth and other addictive drugs.

Reporter Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446 or stevick@heraldnet.com.