Family, Faith Pull Centralia Mother Away From Lifetime of Drug Use

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No one has the benefit of knowing where they’d be today had their life not taken a certain turn. But Brandi Ellsworth has a pretty good guess.

If she didn’t kick her drug habit four years ago, her three sons likely wouldn’t be in her life today, and one may have lost his life.

Her life story is one that zigzags across the country before it landed her in Centralia in 2014, and is laden with on-again and off-again meth use before some key relationships within the Gather Church community lent her a much-needed hand.

Ellsworth, sitting in the pantry of the Gather Café in Centralia, surrounded with some friends instrumental in her recovery, told her story.

She was born in California, but grew up in Colorado, where she was raised by a single mom. Her mom was a heavy drinker, Ellsworth said, who liked to have a good time. Unfortunately, much of it was in the presence of her daughter.

“I remember being a little kid and walking into a room, and there’d be a pile of people on the floor. And walking into rooms with her in bed with people naked,” she said.

She was pretty young at the time, maybe too young to fully absorb what was happening. But still, something didn’t add up. Being surrounded by addiction — in whatever form it took — was somewhat normalized. But at the same time, Ellsworth said she didn’t invite friends over to her house because she was embarrassed and scared of the drying marijuana in the garage — something that’s maybe not as taboo today.

“I was in Catholic school, so I couldn’t have friends over. You know, what I mean? It was very confusing, and I didn’t know about addiction. I didn’t know you could become an addict. It didn’t occur to me,” she said.

Everyone around her seemed to have some sort of vice, she said. Maybe that’s why it didn’t occur to her to say no the first time someone offered her meth at the age of 17. At that point, she had moved from Colorado to Washington state, to live with her dad and stepmom.

Her mom was tough to live with, she said. But during one summer when she visited her father, he gave her a hug and a kiss. It was a nice change of pace, she said.

“My mom reached, and I ducked,” she said. 

But when she moved in with her dad during her freshman year, she still found herself feeling unwanted. When she went in to hug her stepmom, she turned away.

“It was like my dad married the same woman twice,” she said.

That feeling, of not being wanted did nothing to curb the years of addiction that would follow. And the first time she tried meth, it was fun, she said.

“Everything I cared about, I didn’t care about anymore. It’s like people enjoyed me. I always felt kind of weird and odd and uncomfortable with myself and I didn’t feel that stuff anymore.”

She added later: “I think the payoff for me was better than the pain I had being clean. I had no life skills. I had a lot of stuff — trauma — in my life that needed to be worked on. I had no idea how to deal with it. I didn’t have parents that knew how to deal with it in their own lives.”

She described the scene that unfolded the first time she was offered hard drugs. It was a simple scene: She was at a coffee shop with someone. They asked if she wanted to give it a try. She said sure.

From there, the story gets convoluted. Ellsworth lived in several different states, had a son when she was 20, used drugs on and off. When she was pregnant with her kids, she made sure to point out, she was off drugs. She lived with her uncle for a bit. It took her about 10 minutes to realize he was a dealer 

“That was pretty bad,” she said.

There was a stretch of time — around six years — when she only used a few times. 

She always relapsed, she said.

“Always,” she said. “I am not somebody who can just be in the house with somebody and be like, ‘Oh, no man, I’m good.’ That’s just not who I am,” she said.

Throughout the conversation, Ellsworth mentioned a few motivations fueling her efforts to stay clean during those intervals of sobriety. Some had deeper connotations than others. First, there was her oldest son. She didn’t want this to be his life, too. And addiction will take you to some seedy places. Being in a house where people are armed and breaking the law isn’t a great environment to be, she said. That was another motivation: She wasn’t enjoying the people she came in contact with. They weren’t much fun. Then again, she said, neither was she.

At one point, she was turned down for inpatient treatment due to a combination of insurance and legal reasons.

“And I’m sitting there with track marks asking for help,” she said.

She ended up in Centralia in 2014, at this point a mother of three sons, with the father of her two younger boys. He’s the one who discovered Gather Church.

They went into the café and saw a slew of young kids there one summer day, and thought it would be a good environment for the boys. When her relationship with the boys’ dad fell apart, Ellsworth went to the church and spoke with a member of church administration.

They talked about her life situation, and Ellsworth found the woman spoke her language. She knew exactly what questions to ask and where Ellsworth was coming from. She was legit.

Ellsworth got in a class at the church dealing with recovery — not necessarily from drugs specifically, but life in general. That’s how she met Triss Stanfield, a person who would become a huge help and good friend. For the class, she needed to find someone other than a student she could be accountable to. Stanfield filled that role.

During the holiday season, she found herself using heavily. Meth was her drug of choice, she said. But when pickings were slim, she found herself none too picky.

In the midst of what’s commonly called an opioid epidemic, meth has maintained a strong presence, said Centralia Police Chief Carl Nielsen, primarily because it’s cheaper than a lot of other options.



“It’s a high that’s a lot cheaper than cocaine,” he said.

A vast majority of the meth that comes into the area originates in Mexico, Nielsen said. While there may be some home-cooked stuff on the market, the Drug Enforcement Agency made obtaining precursors, such as Sudafed, enough of a pain that outside sources became the norm.

According to the Lewis County Coroner’s Office, in 2017, seven people in Lewis County died of overdoses. Five of those deaths were tied to meth while the other two were from opiates. Those five were among 476 state residents who died from meth that year. Ten years prior, 98 people died from meth, according to a study from the University of Washington.

Cole Meckle, pastor at Gather Church, was concerned for Ellsworth’s kids and wanted to meet with her.

“Cole met me on the staircase and he’s like ‘What’s going on?’ And I just showed him my arms. That’s how I chose to tell him. Sometimes it’s easier just to not say it, I guess.”

“… He told me to keep coming around. Like, I never had anybody say, ‘Come on over.’”

Jump forward a bit, and she found herself sitting in church on a Saturday night, listening to Meckle give a sermon. It was something to do with faith that can move mountains, but Ellsworth said the memory is kind of fuzzy. She was high at the time.

Regardless, what she heard hit the spot.

“I just remember sitting there thinking ‘I just have to quit. If I’ll just quit. If I can just quit. Then who knows what can happen?’ And I’m sitting there just bawling.”

Some people gathered around her to make sure that she was OK, and she knew then and there that she was going to call it quits.

“I wish I was that person that I went home and dumped all my dope out. I’m not. I went home and did it all. … And once it was gone, it was gone.”

Ellsworth isn’t sure exactly when she used for the last time. She believes it was some time in January, making it four years next month, if that’s the case. She needs to use events at the time to best triangulate the right date.

“I was clean for the playoff game before the Super Bowl,” she said.

She left the apartment she had been staying in (and paying for with a gifted inheritance) and went to live in Twin City Mission with her kids for about four months. It was strict, she remembers, but it was needed. She started picking up life skills she hadn’t yet.

She also made an alarming discovery. Her son had a tumor growing on his neck. The tumor was cancerous, and required treatment. Ellsworth said, had she not gotten clean when she had, she doesn’t think she would have been in a place to catch the tumor. Her son might not be around today, if she hadn’t.

Getting him to treatment was the most important unchecked box on a lengthy to-do list — one that she was tackling with newfound gusto. She went to her own treatments, met with social workers, got her driver’s license, took care of an active warrant for driving without a license, etc.

She got everything checked off her list, and was a volunteer at Gather Church along the way.

Meckle, who was sitting and listening to an interview between Ellsworth and The Chronicle, said: “What … we’ve heard about is the way Jesus has taught us to love one another. It’s really what it is. It’s dedicated … it’s there. We’re going to support you in the midst of your struggles and messes and, yeah, seek and want and compel you to something better, but even doing something better isn’t a contingency for the ongoing love and support.”

Her other friends had things to say, too. Stanfield said watching Ellsworth has been life-altering for her, too. Without a personal knowledge or background in addiction, their friendship has been a learning experience.

Stanfield said her house caught fire and burnt down a while back, and Ellsworth was the first person her kids got on the phone. They knew she would be there, she said.

“And she was. In her pajamas.”

Holly Renner, an administrative assistant at the church, said when she first met Ellsworth — who she now calls her best friend — she did not like her.

“I did not like her at all. And she knows it,” she said. 

Renner’s a kids’ person, and she didn’t care for the environment Ellsworth was putting her children.

Things are different now — really different.

“She depends on us for things, but we also depend on her. It’s a mutual thing,” said Renner.

Ellsworth recently applied for courses at Centralia College. She wants to go into social work so she can help families. Families are better when they’re together, and she wants to help them stay that way, she said.

And hers easily might not have stuck together. When asked where she would be now if she didn’t get clean she responded: “I don’t think I would have my kids. And if that didn’t happen quick enough, I’m not sure one of them would be alive.”

She said later: “I don’t know what the future looks like … but I know who’s in my future. … My kids are going to be OK. And that’s a huge thing. My kids are going to be OK.”