Meth: An Insidiuous Poison, Part 1

METH'S CHAOTIC TOLL ON THE BODY

Drug, Prevalent In Area, Affects Users On Mental, Physical Levels.

Sarah Godfrey remembers a time when she would sit for 20 hours straight,
gripping a pencil, her fingers cramping as she attempted to draw the
perfect line.

Some people clean while doped up on methamphetamine; Godfrey was a
doodler. She drew. Drew and erased.

But the drawing was only part of her life on meth, a drug that totally
consumed her for years. She shot up instead of going home. She longed
for meth and ignored her children.

Such is the story of thousands of Ozarkers who have been swallowed by a
drug that started its devastating romp through here less than 10 years
ago, when a California man reinvented an easy-make meth recipe in Greene
County.

Since then, meth has skyrocketed throughout the state and the nation,
making Missouri second only to California in the number of meth labs
seized annually.

"Meth is eating away at the peace and tranquility of the Ozarks," said
Lawrence County Sheriff Doug Senecker. "It's been treated as just
another crime for too long, and it's certainly not just another crime.
Meth is an insidious poison."

The drug attacks the mind, experts say, draining the brain of essential
chemicals that regulate pleasure, stimulation and mood. The rest of the
body comes next, when the need for the drug outweighs the need to bathe
and eat. Bodies waste away and teeth rot, because addicts aren't
providing their bodies with the nutrients needed to stay healthy.

Increased use of the drug keeps people awake. For Godfrey that once
meant 21 days straight without a minute of sleep. It makes users
paranoid as they come down from a high. The lack of sleep and influx of
irrational thoughts can make a person appear wide-eyed and
hollow-cheeked.

"They'll start falling apart very fast," said Carl Dawson, a licensed
professional counselor. "The body never gets satisfied. The rat will
keep pushing to feed itself and never get enough."

Unfortunately, the users represent only a small fraction of the victims.
Fighting the drug drains resources from law enforcement; discarded
chemicals used to make meth pose serious threats to the environment; and
thousands are put at risk since the drug often instills violence in
those who use.

For the past month, a Joplin man fought for his life in court. Richard
DeLong was charged - and eventually convicted - of killing an entire
Springfield family. Although attorneys on both sides argued what may
have pushed DeLong to kill, both sides conceded that every person
involved in the killing was associated with meth. DeLong was coming off
a meth high when he killed. His girlfriend reportedly was motivated by
losing her money for meth. Another accomplice said he was promised some
of the drug as a payoff if he helped.

Ozarkers got a comprehensive look at meth as DeLong was tried for
killing a pregnant Erin Vanderhoef and her three children. His attorneys
talked about his addiction. His sister and friend told jurors about the
drug, describing firsthand how it can rip a person to pieces, tugging at
his heart and soul, never letting go.

Medical experts say there are reasons to explain why the drug known as
the "poor man's cocaine" is devastating lives.

Users have the scars from sores on their face; they describe the tension
in their bellies when they want another shot. They try to explain, as
best they can, what it means to be under the drug's spell.

"You lose touch with reality," said Godfrey, a friend of DeLong's who
testified in his trial last week. "You develop your own reality and
that's the way you see things, whether it's right or not."

A High Like No Other

Some meth users describe the high like this:

You put it in your vein, and within minutes you're in a rush you've
never had before. Complete euphoria. It's as high as you can go, the
inhibitions are gone, everything you experience is better than you've
ever experienced it.

A meth high lasts from eight to 24 hours, compared to cocaine's 20
minutes.

"The first time you use it you're up; you're going," said Christina
DeLong, a recovering meth addict who testified at her brother's trial
last week. "You're talking to anybody about anything."

But the drug is playing the role of a jackhammer on the brain. And the
body.

When meth hits the central nervous system, the brain releases three
neurotransmitters at breakneck speed, medical experts say. What's being
released is norepinephrine, the chemical that stimulates the brain;
serotonin, which regulates a person's mood; and dopamine, what experts
call the "pleasure chemical."

With repeated use, during which the chemicals continue to be released at
high rates, the brain is drained of these neurotransmitters. An
imbalance occurs. Each time a user goes for that unbelievable high
again, experts say, it's not going to happen.

"You're going to be chasing a high that doesn't exist," said Douglas
Carpenter of the Forrest Institute. "You never get to that first high
again."

When a user comes down from a high, they come down hard. Paranoia sets
in.

"A lot of times coming down from meth (the addict) will mimic being
paranoid schizophrenic," Carpenter said.

This is when users see "tree people" and believe everyone they come in
contact with - the mail man, the pizza delivery driver, the next-door
neighbor - is a police officer.

Christina DeLong put it this way: "You think everybody is out to get
you. My boyfriend I lived with, I thought he was a cop. It scares you."

Lack of sleep adds to the behavior problems.

"Sleep allows the body to rest itself," Dawson said. "When the brain
doesn't get the opportunity to sleep ... the body has a difficult time
regulating itself, and you have what's referred to as 'methamphetamine
psychosis.'

"This person becomes very, very dangerous. Impulsive. Violent."

DeLong's attorneys told jurors this is part of what affected him on the
morning he killed the Vanderhoef family.

The damage meth does to the body only increases with use. Since users
don't tend to eat, vitamins being sucked from their bodies are not being
replenished.

"They become so invested in the drug itself," Dawson said. "Users are
not frequently worried about their bodies; they're enjoying the high."

Even when the body is shot and the brain is drained of the
neurotransmitters, and the user's been up for days, the user still wants
more. The body wants more.

"You're jonesing for that other shot," Christina DeLong said. "You want
it. You'll do anything for that next shot."

Still The Drug Of Choice

Meth can be eaten, snorted, smoked and injected. The most potent - and
potentially dangerous medium - is injection.

Though meth and cocaine cost roughly the same - each run about $100 per
gram - a meth high lasts several times longer and can heighten sexual
experiences.

The majority of the meth users which local law enforcement sees now have
advanced to injecting it, meaning it gets into bloodstream more quickly,
resulting in a more potent high.

In past months, officials from Greene to Lawrence and Jasper counties
thought meth may let up with drugs like crack and ecstacy moving in. It
hasn't happened.

Meth continues to be such a problem in Lawrence County that Senecker
meets every month with all the police chiefs in his county. Their
priority has become fighting methamphetamine and the group has come up
with 58 tactics to suppress the drug's growth and send the cooks and
dealers to prison.

Senecker said he knows it won't be easy. He's talked to too many users
who have told him the meth high is too strong to let go.

"Like one doper told me, 'It's so good you should never, ever try it,'"
Senecker said.

That's because someone who tries it typically becomes addicted. Meth
carries an 85 percent addiction rate, higher than any other drug but
heroin.

And a user never forgets.

While Godfrey sat on the stand last week, just talking about meth
brought back the memories. The good memories. The cravings.

"I get butterflies in my stomach, it makes me tense up," she said,
fidgeting. "There's a tingling in your body to go do it again. Even
though you don't want to, it's like your body remembers what it feels
like."

Meth With Ozarks Roots

Even though meth has been around for decades - the nickname "crank" came
from '60s biker gangs transporting it in their crankcases - the method
for making it has changed significantly.

The drug started its Ozarks run in the mid-to late-1980s, when more
people started making the drug using what's now called the traditional
method.

Typically, they'd set up their labs - known as P2P labs - in rural areas
where neighbors couldn't detect the raunchy odor, often likened to cat
urine.

Inside, the labs were full of beakers, flasks and elaborate glassware.

Today's labs are considerably different. Ingredients can be bought at
commercial stores such as Wal-Mart. Batches are brewed in pickup beds,
inside hotel rooms or in a remote farm field. Cooks can pick their
recipe, which in the Ozarks is either a method using a base of red
phosphorous or one using anhydrous ammonia. Both methods have to mix
with many of the same ingredients including the main one, ephedrine.

Some ingredients are easy to get, like starting fluid and denatured
alcohol. But other items, like anhydrous ammonia, iodine crystals and
ephedrine tablets are getting more difficult to obtain, often resulting
in the theft of these products by cooks.

Many cooks hire "errand boys" to go get the ingredients for their brew.
Senecker recalls one man in Lawrence County who was paying kids $100 to
go round up the stuff he needed.

Other cooks have people sit and break up the pseudoephedrine tablets or
strip the heads of matches for their batches. In return, the cook will
hand over some of the finished product.

The preference in Greene County is still the anhydrous ammonia-based
recipe, which was reinvented in the Ozarks in the early 1990s. A man by
the name of Bob Paillet, who fashioned himself a chemist, researched
meth-making techniques at the Southwest Missouri State University
library and adopted some ideas from World War II when soldiers and
factory workers were given the drug to stay awake.

Paillet experimented - then experimented some more - until he concocted
a recipe with a good end product that took about two or three hours to
make. He shared the recipe with a couple of people, authorities say, who
then shared it with others. The cooks kept on sharing to the point that
the easy-make recipe, which police call the "Nazi-Dope" method, has
caught on in nearly every state in the nation.

"It doesn't seem like anyone cooks the same way," said Sgt. Jim Farrell
of the Greene County sheriff's drug unit. "Everyone seems to have their
own little preferences. With the Nazi Dope (anhydrous ammonia-based)
method, you can just go 'Bam!' and it's done."

The other recipe, known as "Red P" for the red phosphorous in it, is
spreading. It takes about an hour longer than the anhydrous method and
requires a heating source.

As Greene County deputies see just as many Red P labs lately as the
other, Farrell knows the problem is only going to get worse. Just when
they've fought one aspect of the meth epidemic, another surfaces.

"I hate to paint a dark, gloomy picture, but I think it's going to be a
long, drawn-out battle. We're going to just have to continue to fight
it."

Next Article: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01.n1222.a02.html