Crystal Meth's Weight Loss Dangers

Highly Addictive Drug Can Lead Women To Lose Control Over Lives

(CBS)  And, ironically, the drug Rizzo started taking to look better had just the opposite effect.

"My face … would just suck in," she says. "My eyes caved in, and they were purple underneath."

Rizzo's mother, Robbie Floyd, realized this wasn't just another stage of adolescence: "It got to the point where things really started to change. Her attitude would change … and then trying to talk to her about it never got anywhere, because she would become blunt, very rude, very violent."

And while Floyd grew more concerned, Rizzo's habit grew more dangerous.

"All of a sudden," Rizzo says, "two guys bust in with a gun, and they're like, 'Where is it?' And I'm sitting on an ounce of meth … and (one of the guys) sat there and he put the gun up to my head and I told him to pull the trigger. And that's when I knew that I was mentally addicted to it, too. Because I didn't care, just as long as they didn't get the ounce (of crystal meth) under my leg."

On a school counselor's advice, Floyd forced Rizzo to take a home drug test.

"It became," Floyd says, "being really overbearing parents, and you have no choice. It's either that, or you lose your child."

At first, tough love worked. Rizzo got into outpatient rehab.

Then she relapsed, once again partying all night.

"I come home," Rizzo remembers, "and the first thing she says to me is, 'You're alive?' That was when I knew I needed to stop. I knew I needed (to do) whatever it took to stop."

So she gave her mom a letter she'd written before she came home that night.

"I'm sorry," the letter read. "I need your help. …Please, Mom, help me. I love you."

The next day, Rizzo entered an inpatient treatment program.

But it wasn't easy. She ballooned to 218 pounds, and threatened suicide.

"Having your child hate you for keeping them in there, and not wanting to see you anymore, those were drives home that were not fun drives," Floyd cried. "It was very painful. But the outcome was worth it: I got my daughter back."

After a year and a half of hard work, Rizzo is back, Murphy says, and has lost 50 pounds the old-fashioned way, through diet and exercise.

She feels she's on the road to success: "I graduated last year. And I made up two years of school in eight months. So I know that if I try hard enough, I'll be able to do it."

Rizzo is holding down two jobs and plans to go to college to become either a nurse or a psychologist.

Murphy adds that, when you ask Rizzo if she regrets taking crystal meth, she says it's a case of mixed emotions since she wouldn't be the person she is today if she hadn't gone through all she did.