Meth, Shattered Lives, Part 1E

NO SHORTAGE OF VOLUNTEERS FOR DOING DRUG

Give it about six months and methamphetamine can rot your teeth and make
your skin crawl, strip you of your morals and reduce you to skin and bone,
genetically alter your brain and make you a prime candidate for hepatitis C.

Even so, there's no shortage of volunteers to be Oklahoma's next "Got meth"
poster boy. As addictions go, it may have no equal, substance abuse
treatment experts say.

"Meth isn't like smoking pot or having a few beers," said Dr. Hal Vorse, a
physician and medical director for A Chance to Change. "The degree of the
high correlates with a high degree of craving, which makes meth as
dangerous and addictive as anything out there."

Many meth users say they graduated to it from alcohol and marijuana,
confident they could control their urge.

Melissa was 15 when her high school crowd switched to meth.

"We were drinking and started using drugs," she said. "I didn't know what
it was. I didn't know anything. I just knew I liked the feeling."

Deral was 18 and on his way to a cockfight with his brother-in-law and a
truck full of chickens when he tried crank. It was supposed to help him
take his mind off his cocaine addiction.

"The first thing it immediately gives you is an instantaneous sex drive,"
he said. I felt like I had ... to have more and more to get that feeling back."

Meth produces a long-lasting "high" -- up to 12 to 18 hours -- compared to
about 30 minutes for crack cocaine, and cranksters often boast of not
sleeping for two weeks or longer.

Oklahoma City police Sgt. Vanessa Price hasn't forgotten the time she
raided a meth house and found 150 disassembled bicycles in the back yard.

"They liked to stay busy taking them apart, but they couldn't remember how
to put them back together," she said.

Methamphetamine is a potent form of the stimulant amphetamine that chemists
have been perfecting since the early 1900s. Amphetamines were used to treat
"sleeping sickness" and extreme cases of obesity in the 1930s, typically in
dosages of 2.5 to 15 milligrams per day.

Meth users may consume up to 1,000 milligrams every three hours, triggering
physical and psychological exhilaration.

In World War II, the Germans gave it to their troops to keep them alert for
battle. In the 1960s, the Hell's Angels bikers in California did "speed,"
sometimes transporting it in the crankshafts of their Harleys.

Then it caught on with truckers making cross-country hauls and cramming
college students.

Today, some of the purest methamphetamine on record is being produced in
Oklahoma by "cooks" using coffee filters and hot plates instead of test
tubes and Bunsen burners.

Pill-popping and smoking have largely given way to syringes and the
faster-acting intravenous route.

As a result, the sharing of dirty needles has led to a hepatitis C outbreak
and an increase in liver failures in Oklahoma, which, if unchecked, might
be a bigger crisis than meth.

Tina scratched her skin raw trying to get rid of the "meth bugs" so she
started injecting herself in the soft skin between her fingers. She kept at
it, even after her hands became so swollen they looked like a baseball
catcher's mitt.

Because of its effects, meth makes users think they are sexier, smarter and
stronger than the rest of the world.

To keep someone from ripping him off, one crank cook got 24 toolboxes and
locked all of his equipment in a shed. As an extra precaution, he put a
rattlesnake inside each toolbox, authorities said.

The point when a crankster goes from clever to paranoid is seldom evident
to the user, said Linda Williams, a recovering addict and drug counselor.
She has been clean for eight years.

"Drug users seldom know what they're doing to their lives," she said. "The
thought process is subtle. To them, doing drugs and taking care of their
family are two separate things."

Williams joined the PTA and read bedtime stories to her four children. At
the same time, enough meth was usually cooking in the back yard to blow up
the house and everyone in it.

New research shows that meth also causes long-term changes in the brain
that are associated with impaired memory and motor coordination. In a
finding that might explain the high relapse rate among meth addicts,
researchers said the effects were still prevalent in addicts who had been
off the drug for 10 months or more.

Another study revealed long-lasting brain changes caused by the drug,
including an unexpected increase in cellular activity in certain areas of
the brain.

"The results underscore the serious nature of methamphetamine abuse and
emphasize the need to alert users and potential users to the long-lasting
profound effects of this drug," said Dr. Alan Leshner, director of the
National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Researchers are having difficulty predicting what the future holds for meth
addicts. It's hard to keep them in treatment long enough to study them, and
it's hard to keep up with all the dangerous chemicals being mixed in the
latest meth concoctions, said Dr. Linda Lantrip, medical director for
Central Oklahoma Community Mental Health and Substance Abuse.

"It's not like it is with alcohol and other drugs where they do 30 days,"
Lantrip said. "After 30 days, meth users are still hostile and trying to
beat the fire out of you."

Brenda (not her real name) is 21 and has been using meth for four years.

"Everything I have done has revolved around meth," she said. "I've quit
jobs, school and almost forgot my little girl. The dope, it's like a god
right before it takes you and everyone around down.

"I'm facing 15 years in prison for manufacturing meth. And even though so
much has gone wrong doing it, sometimes I still want it more than anything
else in the world."