Meth, Shattered Lives, Part 2A

INMATE FINDING HOPE IN LIFE BROKEN BY METH

HOLDENVILLE - Larry D. Andrews has found something to cling to in a life
gone wrong.

The answer has been staring back at him 24 hours a day ever since it
arrived on May 31. And when the lights go out each night at the Davis
Correctional Facility, it's the last thing on Andews' mind.

The letter from his 14-year-old daughter is attached to a magnet at the end
of his metal-framed bed.

He wishes she would still call him "Dad," but he knows all too well why
he's "Larry" instead. He officially gave up that luxury six years ago when
he signed away his parental rights.

What's more important is that she said she would forgive him because that's
what God would want. And then came a brief postscript, a few words that
barely added up to a complete sentence. "She said I could write back if I
wanted to," he said. "I tell you, that was better than any feeling I ever
got from using meth."

In prison, where privileges are few and most sentences are long, Andrews
realized that he was getting the best sentence of all - hope.

Of course, this isn't the first time Andrews has had something special
going for him, only to foul it up.

"I've always been the one in control, the leader of the pack - and that was
without using dope," Andrews said. "I've had a lot of luck laid on the
table for me, and I've created some of my own luck."

Six years ago, Andrews' gift for words and his quarter-million-dollar
income bought him a lavish lifestyle. That was before he used his money to
buy a lot of methamphetamine and, ultimately, 100 years in felony charges.

As a high school football star in Washington, Andrews could get away with
popping two "yellow jackets" or speed before a game and turn his
aggressiveness into 295 yards rushing and 25 tackles.

An independent claims adjuster who traveled coast-to-coast from one major
catastrophe to another, Andrews was on his way to becoming rich in 1995.

Even after crystal meth became his only obsession, Andrews refused to
become a run-of-the-mill drug addict.

"I had nice clothes, a nice car and still had my teeth," Andrews said. "One
time when I got arrested the officer said I was one of the first ones he
had ever seen who carried on a full conversation."

For a long time, Andrews, 39, believed he had the power to control his own
drug use the same way he had always controlled the conversation in a
roomful of people or the way he controlled other addicts with a bag of dope.

When he was a student, Andrews paid $15 for his first bag of marijuana,
purchasing it in the ag barn at school. But he didn't let pot or "speed" or
anything else, for that matter, get in his way.

His priorities changed one day in Sacramento, Calif., where Andrews had
been sent to investigate claims in the aftermath of the 1994 California
earthquake.

"An ol' boy had some, and I smoked it with him," Andrews said. "He told me
it was a social thing - like having a good cigar after dinner."

At first, Andrews didn't like the tiny silvery crystals that looked like
shattered glass.

But within a year, he was buying dope in California and bringing it back to
Oklahoma. Work, meanwhile, was piling up on the floor.

"I had all those companies, from Texas to Iowa and Indiana, calling me to
go to work," he said. "They'd fax me information, but all that paper just
wound up under the fax machine."

Within five years, his marriage, his triple-A credit rating, the Mercedes
and his daughter were all gone, replaced by more than two dozen criminal
charges and a string of possible life sentences.

"One day when I went to court I was handcuffed to another ol' boy at county
jail," Andrews said. "They took the cuffs off me because it was going to
take so long to read the charges."

Andrews smoked dope every day. Behind on his child support payments and in
trouble with the law, he was high on meth the day he gave up his daughter.

"The whole town knew me and every time I turned around, I was in the
courthouse records," he said. "I knew I was embarrassing her."

Andrews thought he could con the world - he completed an 18-session
outpatient drug treatment program in Oklahoma City just to spite those who
said he couldn't do it.

But he underestimated the power of meth.

Shortly after getting out of treatment, Andrews was playing golf one day
when he found a quarter-ounce of crystal meth in the pocket of his golf bag.

"I was looking for golf tees and there it was," he said.

And there he went - straight downhill to the penitentiary.

In February, Andrews pleaded guilty to manufacture and possession of meth
and receiving and concealing stolen property before District Judge Tom
Lucas in Cleveland County. He is serving a 20-year sentence at the Davis
Correctional Facility.

Prison is prison, and every day Andrews puts on his blue shirt and pants
like the rest of the men in the high-level medium security facility. But he
said he doesn't despise the razor-wire-topped walls of Davis or resent the
people who put him here. \ Andrews says he has found freedom in his
confinement.

"Being here is an eye-opener, but at the same time it's like going back to
college and playing football, except that there aren't any sports," he
said. "I'm going to class, but I don't have a vehicle to jump in; I don't
have any money in my pockets; and there's no women to go chase."

Like many others who walk the four corners of the prison yard, Andrews, now
tapping his fingers on a maroon Bible case, claims to be a changed man.

He was in the chaplain's office the day he saw an article about reuniting
with loved ones. It gave him the courage to write his daughter.

"It may be premature to say this, but I've learned my lesson," he said. "I
was smoking crank the day I went to court, and I don't know why I did that.
It's been offered to me right here on this yard since I've been here. But
if you told me I was getting out tomorrow and there was 10 pounds, or even
100 pounds, waiting for me, I'd walk right past it.

It's a promise he's already broken more than once.

"There will be a bunch of people in Washington who say, 'Yeah, he's full of
it,'" said Larry Speer, his lawyer and friend. "Talking to him now, he's
changed, and he's focused on what he has to do. I hope it works out for
him, but we won't know until he gets out."

When asked why the justice system, not to mention his family, should
believe him this time, he sits motionless for a minute. A voice on the
prison's public address system pierces the silence, but it does not break
Andrews' stare.

Finally, he answers:

"I think about my daughter and my mom and dad and how I treated my dope
dealers way better than I did them. I've lived this life from here to
there. Out there, I was a maniac. I like the life I'm trying to live now."

Unless his sentence is reduced, Larry D. Andrews, prisoner identification
number 255767, won't be eligible for parole until 2007.