The first time I met Amber Jochem, I almost spill hot coffee all over her. I’m 15 minutes late for our interview at Caribou Coffee in Brooklyn Park and as soon as I enter the building to find her she’s on her way out. We don’t see each other and bump right into one another. She recognizes me from my Facebook messages and asks if I’m here to speak with her. I nod, and we find a spot in the small kind of cramp establishment to sit and talk.
I soon realize I’m over-dressed for our meeting in black dress pants, three-inch black heels, and a dressy cardigan. Amber, on the other hand, is dressed pretty casual in purplish pink yoga leggings, white running shoes, and a grey pullover with the words “Minnesota Teen Challenge” placed on the upper right corner of the shirt. Her brownish blonde curls hang down her back and when I finally look at her head on the first thing I notice is her nose ring. It’s pierced on her left nostril and throughout our conversation, she glides her hand up to it to check that it’s still there. I’m surprised at Amber’s appearance, not because I expected her to dress up more, but because she looks normal.
She doesn’t look like a former crank addict who spent time in jail twice. She’s attentive, well-spoken, confident, and open to all questions I have prepared for her. She’s been sober for nine years after battling a 14-year addiction to crank. Our interview doesn’t last long. As a self-proclaimed “busybody,” she’s only able to spend less than a half hour with me, but honestly the barely 30 minutes together is enough.
Born in St. Paul, Minnesota to Greg and Linda Faulkner, Amber can’t quite remember the order her and her siblings were born in, but she’s sure she’s “somewhere in the middle.” Her nor her siblings needed for anything growing up as her father owned his own roofing business, “He’d start work early in the morning and stay out until late. We had everything we ever wanted.”
Although she was raised in a “good home” and knew her parents loved her, Amber points out there was a lack of expressed affection from her parents, “There wasn’t this ‘hug me, hold me, kiss me,’ type of nurturing that kids usually want and long for.” The family didn’t move around a lot, but after a move back to Minnesota from Colorado when she was 14 is when Amber says she started hanging with the wrong crowd.
Despite having her first child, Kyle, a few months before turning 17, she never felt discouraged about her future. In fact, she says she used her son as a catapult into wanting to do better. “I was a good mom. I went to a different school to get my GED by the time I was 18 years old and then I had my second child when I was 19.” Amber second child, Alexis, came shortly after Amber got her GED.
Alexis’ father, Cory, and Amber’s sister introduced her to what was then called “crank” the night before Easter in 1995. “I’m like ‘well what does that do?’” Amber said, “And my sister’s like ‘oh, it’ll make you feel like you can get everything done, you’ll be full of energy.’”
After trying the crank that night Amber says she wasn’t hooked immediately, but soon the use would go from being a weekend deal to consuming her life, “The weekend turned into a Monday and a Monday turns into a Tuesday and the next thing you know I’m full blown using and that was my main focus.”
That night would begin Amber's 14-year cycle that included her parents taking her kids, her house being raided, abusive relationships, two stints in jail, and bouncing from treatment centers to treatment centers.
Amber said her biggest regret from that time was failing to connect the dots and see that there was a problem sooner, “Addiction is a selfish thing and its self-seeking and people that are using drugs are only looking to self-satisfy whatever is going on inside of them. I couldn’t see that my actions were affecting them.”
Amber says a long-term, impatient, faith-based treatment program at the Minnesota Adult and Teen Challenge center is what helped her. “I invested over two years into my recovery,” Amber said. “I knew whatever I was doing before wasn’t working, so I had to stick with it.”
