ADDICTION HARD TO FIGHT

Amanda Dunnington has six teeth left.

Not long ago, the 25-year-old was homeless, sleeping in basements
with spiders and digging in garbage bins food. Her son and daughter
were taken away from her. Bruises from plunging needles into her
legs and chest covered her body.

Methamphetamine does that to people.

"If I would have had any idea ... I never would have dreamed of
doing it," she said. "It gets to the point where you think you have
to have it to stay alive. You feel like you're dying."

Despite such horror tales, people still pump the toxic mix of
fertilizer, Drano, hydrochloric acid and cold pills into their
bodies. It's mind-boggling to folks who don't use it.

Addiction isn't easy to explain or understand, says Roger Curtiss,
clinical manager at Gateway Recovery Center.

"People ask why would anyone fathom the idea of trying it?" he said.
"Most people understand that smoking a cigarette or chewing tobacco
will shorten their lives. Even though they know that in their head,
they'll still smoke.

"It's the same with meth. They say 'it's not going to happen to me.
I can handle it, just like I can handle beer.'"

But methamphetamine isn't beer; it isn't even cocaine. The stimulant
produces a high that lasts 8 to 12 hours, as much as four times as
long as cocaine.

Few can turn away from it.

A 2004 National Survey on Drug Use and Health reported that 12
million Americans had used meth in their lifetime -- 600,000 of them
in the past month.

That's 4 percent of the population. Focus in on teens and young
adults, and those percentages go up.

In a 2005 Montana Youth Risk Behavior study, 8.3 percent of teens
admitted to using meth, compared with 7.6 percent nationally.
Roughly one in every six teens and one-third of young adults said
they were offered meth in the last year.

'Profoundly addicting'

There are many reasons people try meth. It helps them stay awake, it
gives them energy, it causes them to lose weight, it enhances sex,
and the high is very powerful.

Unlike some other drugs, as many women as men use meth. And among
teens, it doesn't seem to matter if their parents are poor or middle class.

Experts say three common threads appear at the heart of most meth
use: low self-esteem, depression and drinking and smoking pot.

Dr. Dan Nauts, director of Benefis Addiction Treatment Center, said
many of the people he treats suffered some kind of trauma.

They shut down and are never really happy. Meth is their escape. It
releases a surge of dopamine in the brain's pleasure center.

UCLA researchers measured the dopamine released when people ate
chocolate, smoked a cigarette, had sex and used cocaine.

Meth packs a pleasure punch that's four times more powerful than the
next strongest stimulant, cocaine, and is six to seven times
stronger than an orgasm.

"That's why it's so profoundly addicting," Nauts said. "The sense of
pleasure is so far beyond anything they've experienced."

'Losing my life'

Steeped in depression from a divorce, Mike Dunnington's partying
lifestyle led him to many different drugs. One was meth.

That was the early 1990s, before the anti-meth advertising campaigns
and prior to police cracking down on the drug.

"I liked it. I really enjoyed the high," the 43-year-old retired
military cop said. "Coming down was so hard. I didn't want to ever
come down. It's a fast track to self-destruction."

Like many people, he confined his meth use to weekends for the first
few months. But it wasn't long before he couldn't wait until Friday
night, and he couldn't get up to go to work on Monday without a hit.

Within nine months, he lost his towing business and his home. He
worked to pay for meth and then would disappear for days seeped in the high.

"I ended up losing my life," he said.

He overdosed twice, the second time waking up in a hospital to see
his crying friend -- that was his wake-up call.

Years of sobriety later, he met and married Amanda, who had been
through her own cycle with meth.

Curtiss sees low self-esteem as the common characteristic in most meth users.

"People who have high self-esteem wouldn't even think about doing
that. Why would I put something in my body that would influence me
that way?" he said.

When people imagine an addict, they see a skid-row bum and tell
themselves that they would never let it go that far. Just like the
Montana Meth Project ads -- they're not going to be like that guy.

"People can say, 'I'm going to be the one that tries it and walks
away,'" Curtiss said.

'I knew I was hooked'

Both Curtiss and Nauts warn that no matter how logically a person
approaches meth when sober, alcohol and marijuana can lower their
inhibitions enough for them to try it.

That was the case for Vance LeDeau.

By the time he tried meth at age 15, he was smoking pot daily.

He'd seen meth users and was scared. One addict was pointing a gun
at someone and talking like a crazy man.

But then his friend came to school high on meth, saying he stayed up
all night drawing.

"I thought that doesn't sound too bad," LeDeau said. He tried his
first quarter gram behind a business on 10th Avenue South. Two hours
later he had his second hit.

"It was a head rush. I felt awake and aware. Tingly all over."

At first he only used meth on weekends. Before long, he needed a
bump to wake up enough for school on Mondays.

He was skeleton thin, dropping from 224 pounds to 150.

LeDeau, now 18, sold drugs to buy more drugs. And he stole.

"It's really powerful," he said. "I would have dreams that I was
smoking (meth) and I would wake up with nothing in my hand. That's
when I knew I was hooked."

When his girlfriend got pregnant, he cleaned up for a few months,
only to start again shortly after his daughter was born. It was when
the Department of Family Services got involved that he finally
decided to get his life together .

His last hit was Oct. 10, 2005, the day before he started treatment.
He works full time, lives in the Agape Youth Center and is planning
for college -- he wants to be a detective.

'Total loss of control'

LeDeau didn't realize he was hooked until it was too late.

Curtiss said that's typical of addiction. People try it, like it and
try it again to chase that first great high. But it's not quite as
good the second time, so they try it again.

"People do not realize they are addicted -- it comes in stages,"
Curtiss said. "They've stepped over the line and don't realize it."

That's why the meth-prevention campaign slogan "Not Even Once" is
more true for meth than any other substance, Nauts said.

Researchers don't know how many people try it and walk away, because
those aren't the people who end up in jail or in treatment, where
they get counted.

The national survey showing that 600,000 people used meth in the
last year also reported that more than half of them are hooked. That
number more than doubled between 2002 and 2004.

In 2005, more than 1,200 meth addicts were admitted into Montana's
state-approved treatment providers compared with roughly 700 in 2000.

"Yes there are people who have experimented with methamphetamine and
not gone into full-blown addiction," Nauts said. "But the risks are
so much higher. The people I work with all speak to literally first
use, total loss of control.

"Why would you take the risk and even try and do this drug once?"

While you can find people who smoke pot on weekends and still get
good grades in college, you won't find their equivalent among meth users.

Slow or fast, the drug takes hold and destroys lives.

'There is light'

For a decade, the images in the ads were Amanda Dunnington's reality.

Her mom gave her that first hit at age 13. She figured that if her
daughter used, she couldn't tell police. By 14, Amanda had a needle
in her arm.

Throughout her teens and early 20s, she used meth off and on -- off
when she landed in jail or another corrections program, then on
after she was released and with her family again.

She cooked and sold meth to support her habit. She landed in jail,
and her son was placed in his paternal grandparents' care.

Two years later she was with Mike. But he took away her newborn
daughter when her pot use slipped once again to meth.

She still hadn't hit bottom.

Amanda ripped out her hair and her eyebrows. She began imagining
that she was being followed, noting license plate numbers of other
cars at stop signs. She thought she saw a helicopter flying above
her car and would drive for miles to escape it.

"I knew I had a problem. I knew what coming off it felt like. The
drug was stronger than my will."

Eventually she got treatment through the prison system and has been
clean for more than a year.

She has dentures and liver problems. She battled cancer and wonders
whether it was related to her meth use. Her son remains with his
paternal grandparents.

But Amanda also has a job and a new baby after reuniting with her
husband and now 4 1/2-year-old daughter Mikayla.

"I couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel, but there is
light," she said. "I think Mike and I are living proof of that."