ADDICT TELLS HIS DRUG TALE ABOUT METH

It should have been a simple and not all that uncommon of a drug run.

A quick trip to Cody, Wyo., drop off methamphetamine, pick up the money,
and high tail it back to Montana.

But for Harley (not his real name), this was one drug deal that would not
be simple.

"They didn't want to pay for the drugs, but they wanted the drugs," Harley
said.

Harley didn't know the people he was selling to, but the people he was
hanging with at the time wanted him to go ahead and make the deal. After
all, it wasn't the first time Harley had sold drugs.

"I was just broke enough and just dead dog desparate enough at the time to
go ahead with the deal," he said.

Things didn't go quite as planned for Harley as he left his truck to make
the exchange.

It soon became apparent Harley was in over his head. The buyers weren't
going to pay for the shipment and soon emphasized the fact at the point of
a gun.

"I had to run to my truck and get my own gun just to get out of there,"
Harley said.

Shots were fired as Harley sped through Cody racing to get out on the
highway so he could get back to Montana.

"Do you know how many highways there are between Cody, Wyoming, and
Billings" he asked. "Can you imagine what it was like traveling all that
time with your eyes glued to the rear view mirrors - paranoid, scared,
high, light sensitive."

Harley's trip to Wyoming was just one of many tragic and even terrifying
events that typified more than 30 years of his life as a user and dealer of
drugs.

Two failed marriages, numerous stays in various city and county jails, and
physical damage that is probably permanent are just a few of the
consequences of Harley's life with drugs.

Harley's experiences with drugs started during a Thanksgiving dinner when
he was only 8 years old. His parents let him drink some wine. "I threw up
all that wonderful stuff and I still found something magical and mystical
about the effects..." he said.

Harley was 12 when he first tried LSD and was getting drunk at least
monthly. At 14 he had his first experience with marijuana and pot soon
became a weekly, if not a daily, drug of choice. He soon started doing
various hallucinogenic drugs, left home at 15, and started dealing drugs to
his acquaintances in high school.

He dropped out of school half way through his senior year. By then he had
already experienced amphetamines, or cross tops, as he called them.

When 18 Harley had his first experience with meth. His friend told him that
it was just like speed, but way better.

"I snorted it the first time," he said. "There was a bit of a burning
sensation in my nostrils and within two or three minutes it was like, WOW!
I was up and going - total excitability."

Harley said there was a lot of the feeling that he could do pretty much
anything. His peripheral vision was cut down by about 30 percent, but what
he lost in vision was made up for with the intensity of light and colors
which seemed so much more intense and magnified.

"I'd used speed before, but not like this stuff," he said.

Harley struggles to find words to describe the sensation.

"Everything was sparkly," he said, raising his hands to the side of his
face and smiling like a radiant sun. "It was like there was a gleam about
everything."

But Harley acknowledges the good feelings - even the longer lasting good
feelings, were temporary. And what followed was less than pleasant.

"Then there were those times too when you're doing it for a number of days
and you're so ... paranoid of everything around you that you suspect
everybody of everything," he said.

The immediate answer for Harley was to do more of the drug and try to
recapture the original feeling of euphoria.

Getting meth was no problem. Harley knew a lot of people making what he
calls bathtub crank.

Drugs, in whatever form, were also a factor in Harley's first marriage.

"I had someone I could drink with, someone I could do drugs with, and I had
a sexual partner, and there was somebody else working in the home so there
was money coming in," he said.

Harley said he doesn't believe now that he understood all of the
ramifications of marriage.

"I'm sure I was in love, at least as far as I could understand the concept
of love at that time," he said. "It was just like another party."

Violence ended the marriage when during a party he hit his wife.

Harley's parents attended the party and witnessed the violence. Harley
admits that he was under the influence at the time.

Harley's second marriage would also end in failure some years later when he
said his wife ran off with one of his drug suppliers.

"Why shouldn't she have run off," he asked, "I delivered her right into his
hands."

The reasons Harley said he married the second time were the same as the
first - someone he could drink with, someone he could drug with, a steady
sexual partner, and there was another income.

The two marriages produced three children and a fourth child from a woman
Harley knew for only about two weeks.

Harley said when he was using, everything family came down to a matter of time.

"I didn't have time to be a husband, I didn't have time to be a father,
(but) I had plenty of time to be an addict," he said.

As with many drug users, Harley was a poli-drug user - meaning it was not
uncommon for him to be under the influence of more than one drug at a time.
Nor was he exclusive with any one drug.

"My only drug of choice at any given moment was more of anything you've
got," he said. "If it's there, I'd do it."

While Harley was a successful drug user, his abilities as a distributor
were less than fruitful.

"I was a horrible salesman," he said. "I'd always end up using more of the
product than I'd sell."

His failure as a salesman, however, made it difficult to stay ahead of the
bill collectors or the drug dealers.

"It was always the next one where I was going to catch up," he said. "The
next one never came."

Harley said he constantly owed somebody or was robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Quite often when that failed, he would run.

"And running like hell was something I did consistently," he said. "You
were less likely to run into somebody you owed when you were 200 miles away."

Of all the drugs Harley has experienced over his lifetime, he considers
methamphetamine to be one of the worst.

Primarily because of the health factor, he said.

The intensity of the experience, the paranoia, and the way the body is
affected all couple together to create a very dangerous combination.

Harley said his body would break out in sores that were bleeding or infected.

His skin would constantly itch and the last thing in the world he had time
to do was take a shower.

Harley also fears the impact on a heart that is artificially stimulated to
run faster than it should for long periods of time and the consequence of
possible nerve and kidney damage.

Harley has been clean and sober for six years. He has remarried and has
worked hard to build a relationship with his children. But He knows he is
still an addict - engaged in a day to day struggle with himself and his
very nature.

He is fond of reminding those judgmental few that think they know who the
addicts are of the simple word YET - Your Eligible Too.