'THE WORST THING I'VE EVER DONE'

At Age 12, A Life Wrecked By Meth

'Can I get high with you?" Dixie asked her father when she was 12. He
gave her meth. She liked it.

Before long, she was doing meth more and more. She craved it. All the time.

Dixie was a happy-go-lucky kid who rode horses and dreamed of being a
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Enter meth, and Dixie stopped going to school. Stopped sleeping.
Stopped eating. Ran away from home. Started having sex with older men
who gave her meth. Started stealing cars and burglarizing homes.

More than 60 percent of the kids locked up in Arizona juvenile
corrections facilities have used meth, some as early as elementary
school or junior high. Some were exposed to meth by parents, others
through friends who told them the drug could make lose weight, stay
up all night and feel powerful. No one told them the drug will eat
away at their bodies and destroy their lives.

Dixie's "room" now is a 7- by 10-foot cell she shares with another
girl at Black Canyon School, a juvenile detention facility. Up every
day at 6 a.m., school, recreation, therapy. A couple of weeks ago,
another girl punched her in the face.

"The worst thing I've ever done in my whole life is using meth," said
Dixie, now 15. "It's the devil."

When she was high, Dixie often thought she saw "shadow monsters,"
people watching her when nobody was there. She would look at herself
and think she looked good; the drugs were making her skinny. Deep
down, she knew she didn't look good at all.

She wanted to get clean, and once, when she was 14, she did. But
after seven months, the lure of meth was too much.

"I would act so crazy and so out of control. Real stupid. It was not me."

She was caught shoplifting from a grocery store. She stole clothes
and video games from a neighbor's house. She traded her mother's
jewelry for meth.

At Black Canyon School in north Phoenix, Dixie goes to rehab to learn
why she used meth and how to cope without it.

She doesn't crave it anymore, but she can still feel its effects: She
feels sluggish. Her memory is poor. She has trouble paying attention.
Her vision has worsened. She can't breathe as well as she used to.
All are common symptoms for meth addicts.

Counselors say the entire healing process can take about two years.

But already, after four months at the school, Dixie says she has
become more confident. She wants to go to college, maybe be a
veterinarian. Her mother says she can see a difference, and Dixie gets teary.

"She really believes in me," she says.

Getting arrested turned out to be a blessing, Dixie says.

"You won't even realize how much it's hurting you until it kills you
or you end up in a place like this."