After the death of her 19-year-old daughter, Bethany, of a drug overdose in March 2006, Julie Woodworth avoided the subject that took her daughter's life.

"I didn't want to talk about drugs because I wanted that chapter of my life closed," Woodworth said. "I didn't want people identifying my lovely daughter with drugs. It wasn't her. It was a dark part of her life, but it didn't define her."

In the days that followed, however, Woodworth felt the need to share her experience. She has since become active in the Alaska Meth Education Project and is a Kenai Peninsula representative for the project's task force. The project began in 2006 as an effort to prevent youth from trying methamphetamines and to educate all Alaskans about the state's meth problem.

"As time passed, I just thought if I'm not part of the solution, then I'm part of the problem because I'm not doing anything about it," Woodworth said.

Tonight, Woodworth and others will share their experience and their insights into the world of drugs at a community meeting held in the Chapman School gym in Anchor Point at 7 p.m.

"The goal is to educate people, to raise the awareness on the whole topic," Woodworth said. "I don't have any easy answers for anybody, but if it at least gets people talking, then we've achieved something."

This evening's panel includes Dr. Charles Burgess, psychiatrist and medical director of South Peninsula Behavioral Services, also known at Homer Community Mental Health Clinic; Trooper Travis Bordner with the Alaska State Troopers in Anchor Point; parent Jan Mullen; Lilly Ohse, probation supervisor for the Kenai Peninsula Youth Facility in Kenai; Steven Kiefer, superintendent of the youth facility; and Tess Dally, clinical social worker with Cook Inlet Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse in Homer.

"Basically, what we're going to do is be available to answer questions, just try to get people aware of what's going on, be aware that it can happen to anybody," Dally said.

Through her role at CICADA, Dally has witnessed that meth is a drug that has long-reaching impacts.

"I have people come to me that are prominent in this community, people that are indigent. It doesn't make a difference. It's a drug that reaches everyone," she said. "IT doesn't matter how much money you make. It doesn't matter what your race is. It doesn't matter what your gender is or if you're pregnant or have children or have a home or if you don't or if you're employed or not.

In the last nine months, Dally has seen people as young as 14 using IV drugs that include meth. As mightily as it cuts across differences, meth also is able to quickly destroy unsuspecting lives.

"It'll literally take everything away from you your family, your job. Everything's gone. I've seen it happen in 40 days," she said. "Addiction is very, very quick."

Marijuana as a doorway to meth addiction also is happening in the area, according to Dally.

"I have seen people who have mixed meth into marijuana that they're distributing and introducing it that way without people realizing it," she said. "A lot of young people that say they'd never cross the line and take meth were introduced that way. They go back to the people their purchasing marijuana from and then they're told that they're getting high off of."

In addition to tonight's meeting, Kiefer also is carrying a message of how to keep teens safe in other peninsula communities and schools. IN fact, it was a threeart series on the subject that he will be presenting at Kenai Middle School later this month that caught the attention of Chapman Principal Sharon Conley.

"She had the school secretary (Debbie Poindexter) contact me and ask if I wouldn't mind coming down there," he said of his involvement in tonight's panel.

For three years Kiefer has worked closely in the central peninsula with the Community Action Coalition.

"Our main focus is drug prevention, reducing substance abuse among our youth," he said. "We've had inquiries form Seward and Homer, different people saying, 'Why don't you have a coalition spread out to this area?' That is not beyond the realm of possibility."

Raising community awareness about drug use is a good step toward addressing the problem, Dally said.

"We need to educate ourselves. We need to be aware of it. We need to start at home. And we need to be supportive of each other," she said. "If you're a parent, you can't do it on your own. You have to have the support of other parents."

For Woodworth, sharing her experience is her gift of support.

"I don't want another parent to go through this. It's not the cycle of life. We're supposed to marry off our daughters and hold our grandbabies. We're not support to exchange that for community meetings," she said. "I never, ever want anyone else to go through this."

McKibben Jackinsky can be reached at mckibben.jhackinskyt@homernews.com.