ADDICTION BATTLE DOESN'T END EASILY

In the end, Lee Lum couldn't hide his addiction. He lost 30 pounds. His
face hollowed out. His body shook like a fish out of water.

Lum hadn't worked for five years when Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics agent
Jeff Jennings arrested the 33-year-old on Jan. 5, 2000, on charges of
storing a precursor chemical to make methamphetamine at his mother's
Jackson home.

"She was real upset," said Lum, now 35, who has been off drugs for two
years and opened his own company, Crystal Clean, a painting and
pressure-washing business.

Lum faces a charge of possession of precursors with the intent of
manufacturing meth. He pleaded innocent, saying the anhydrous ammonia
Jennings caught him with belonged to a friend who stole it from an ice
company in Yazoo City.

Drugs stripped Lum of everything dear to him, now possibly even his freedom.

"Once you do that meth, there's no turning back," Lum said. "You don't care
about nothing but the dope."

If convicted, Lum faces 30 years in jail. He says he recently moved back in
with his mother, Pat Lum.

"He prayed God would take away his craving for drugs," said Pat Lum. "It's
like your son has gone away and you didn't know how to get him back."

When Lum was a shy 16, he smoked pot to fit in. It made him lots of
friends, admittedly the wrong type, he said. He tried pretty much every
street drug, but says meth was his favorite. He first shot it up at age 20.
He says he quit at 33.

"It's like everything is going 100 mph," Lum said. "I could not sit still
long. I could stay awake 20 days straight."

As the meth wore off, he felt drained and depressed. His work ethic
disappeared.

Before long, Lum lost a $65,000-a-year job driving a truck. He stopped
cutting his hair. His teeth turned gray, rotting from the inside out. He
would constantly grind them. He hocked his mother's microwave and his late
father's boat motor for a daily fix of meth.

"It's a real dangerous drug," said Lum, a high school graduate. "I'd lock
myself in a room in the dark and look outside the window for hours. I'd see
people who weren't there. It's like being a paranoid schizophrenic."

His habit cost hundreds of dollars a day. He risked his health sharing
needles with other junkies. Lum said he thought about siphoning off some of
his friend's stolen anhydrous ammonia but didn't know how to cook the meth.

Lum's timing stunk. As he drove by his mother's house Jan. 5, 2000, his
worst fear had come true. The cars out front belonged to state narcotics
agents who had gotten a tip about Lum.

He drove on. Several hours later, Jennings spotted Lum sitting in his car
behind a gas station in Byram. He had cinched a belt around his arm to set
a vein and shoot up. "He was trying to commit suicide," said Jennings, who
stopped Lum from injecting the meth.

At the Hinds County Detention Center, Lum tried to kill himself again by
wrapping the cord of a pay phone around his neck. Correction officers saved
him. "At his initial appearance, you could see the red marks on his neck,"
Jennings said.

It took 32 days for Lum to go through withdrawal from the drugs' effects.
He says the first things he asked for were a shower and a toothbrush.

Jennings visited him. Lum's mother and sister gave him complete support, as
did the Hinds County deputies and correction officers, Lum said.

"All that plays a big part in me staying sober," Lum said. "I pray on it.
(Recovery) might not have come when I wanted it, but it did come at the
right time. It's a much easier life doing the right thing."

Lum spent 1 1/2 years in the Recovery Lodge in Jackson, first going through
a 105-day program, then vocational rehab where he worked during the day and
checked back in at night. A mild stroke left the left side of his face
partially paralyzed, something he says doctors blame on his years of drug
abuse.

"It's hard to get off drugs," said Lum, who also attends Alcoholics
Anonymous meetings several times a week. "You'll pass by a road where you
bought meth. You have to keep remembering what it did to you."