METH: `A DRUG THAT RUINS LIVES'

ASHEVILLE -- Erin Eastburn wants to change this time. She's tired of being
in jail, tired of the drug that got her there and tired of seeing her
2-year-old son on the other side of the visiting room glass.

"I want to be a recovering addict for the rest of my life, rather than an
addict," said Eastburn, who at 22 fits a common profile of a
methamphetamine user.

She is young, female, from a rural area, and once was addicted to
cocaine. Woman are becoming as likely to use the highly addictive illegal
drug as are men, according to U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration
statistics. Also like Eastburn, a Macon County resident, one-fourth of
meth addicts have children in the home.

Eastburn started using cocaine when she was 13, but switched to meth two
years later. The drug was cheaper, more available and offered a stronger
and longer high than cocaine -- all reasons for meth's spread across the
nation.

Arrests and busts of highly toxic meth-making labs have soared in recent
years. Law enforcement officers in North Carolina swooped in on 243 labs
last year, up from nine in 1999, according to the DEA.

The drug is often manufactured in rural areas to hide its pungent smell,
increasing its threat in Western North Carolina, a region that has dealt
with the bulk of meth lab busts in the state.

Eastburn had no problem finding the drug. She bought it from her neighbor.

Highly addictive

Twenty-six year old Kevin Taylor first tried meth when he was 17. One time
and he was addicted, he said.

Taylor never had a real job. When he needed money for his next fix, he
made meth himself.

"It's very rare to find makers that are not users," state Attorney General
Roy Cooper said. "Some of these superlabs in California and Georgia are
more of the moneymaking operations. But most cases here are small homemade
labs."

In Western North Carolina, the meth manufacturers operate small
scale. They're making the drug for themselves, and then selling whatever
is left to other users to foot their bill.

"I'm not a cold-hearted person, but I would have sold drugs to anybody,"
said Taylor, who is serving a 79-year prison sentence for multiple drug
charges. "I just didn't care. All I needed was money for my next fix."

Also called crystal, speed, chalk, ice or poor man's cocaine, meth is cheap
to make and easy to sell. The drug creates a longer high than other drugs,
and users can stay awake for days at a time.

Addiction leads to psychotic, or violent behavior and brain
damage. Withdrawal symptoms include depression, anxiety, fatigue, paranoia
and aggression.

Taylor, who has a 6-year-old son that now lives in Florida, said he often
stole to get money for the drugs, instead of finding money to feed his child.

"It makes me feel like the worst person on the Earth," he said. "He's my
world."

Users become extremely paranoid, said Watauga County Sheriff Mark Shook,
who has responded to seven labs this year.

"We've sent undercover officers to labs where the makers were so paranoid
they thought police were hiding in their bushes and watching from planes
overhead. We've seen people shoot into the woods because they thought the
FBI was watching them."

With it's growth, meth addiction has spread to other demographics,
including people in occupations that demand long hours, students who are
looking for longer mental alertness and athletes who are looking for
increased endurance, according to the Koch Crime Institute, a crime
research organization.

"These folks have jobs, have a family or are starting families, work hard
in real jobs, have children and have a car," he said. "They're trying to
own their own home or they rent to provide for their family."

Shook said he has made arrests of people as young as 15 and as old as 71.

"It's a drug that ruins lives, and more so than other drugs," Shook
said. "It's a drug that makes people feel like Superman."

Addicts will do anything to get their next fix, he said. "It's just
something they have to have."