IOWAN TELLS SENATORS OF STRUGGLE WITH METH

Sen. Tom Harkin Brings Vicki Sickels To Tell Her Story To Make A Case
For Expanding Assistance

Washington, D.C. - Vicki Sickels battled her addiction to
methamphetamine for a decade, despite two short stints in treatment.
The drug was just too powerful.

"It was love at first dose for me, the first time I did it," the Iowa
woman told a Senate appropriations subcommittee Thursday. "It was one
of those drugs that makes you feel like you can do anything or
several things at once."

But the drug also nearly destroyed her life. Sickels, 41, couldn't
take care of her young son or hold a job.

She finally got clean, but only after going back to a treatment
program and spending three months in a halfway house, followed by
three years living with her supportive sister - "my sister's
three-quarters-of-the-way house," Sickels said.

"I learned to live again," she said.

She has since earned a master's degree in social work from the
University of Iowa and now works as a chemical dependency counselor
at Iowa Lutheran Hospital.

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Ia., who ran the Senate hearing, brought Sickels
to Washington to make the case that the government needs to do more
to combat meth.

"It won't go away until we do a better job of treating addicts," he said.

The government has provided $14 million in treatment money targeted
to meth users over the past three years.

President Bush's 2006 budget would kill the program and instead give
states more flexibility in what addictions they want to target with
federal dollars. Overall spending for substance abuse treatment would
go up 7 percent under the administration plan.

Charles Curie, administrator of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health
Services Administration, said rural areas in particular were not
prepared to fight meth.

Urban areas already had treatment programs for cocaine users, while
rural areas did not, he said. Treatment is similar for the two drugs.

Meth works by tricking the brain into releasing large amounts of
dopamine, a chemical that raises the heart rate and produces feelings
of well-being.

"What the brain tells you is that this (meth) is extremely important
for survival," said Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute
on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health.

Users are quickly hooked, and their lives begin to fall apart, Sickels said.

"Really what happens is you lose your mind. It gets to the point that
meth was all I was doing," she said.

The drug can damage the brain in ways similar to Parkinson's disease,
but the damage can be reversed if the user stays clean, Volkow said.

The first time Sickels sought treatment, in 1993, she relapsed after
turning down a chance to go to a halfway house. She later tried an
outpatient program, but it only required one session once a week.
That didn't work, either.

Her recovery finally came in 1998, when friends took her to a
long-term treatment program, followed by the time in a halfway house
and then with her sister.

"I'm sitting here to tell you that treatment works," Sickels said.

Still, she said it took her a year to recover from the drug's
effects. During that time, she got a job sacking groceries.

"It was all I could do to suit up and show up and just learn how to
put one foot in front of another," she said. "During that year, I
would feel really good about where I was and then really low. Highs and lows."

She tells people they couldn't pay her a million dollars to try the
drug again, but she knows she is vulnerable at the "wrong place at
the wrong time."

"I know how tricky it is," she said. "I work very hard to keep myself
from becoming emotionally vulnerable and away from the places where
it might be available."