AGENCIES TOIL TO HELP METH USERS

Across Arkansas, substance abuse recovery centers are straining to
accommodate an influx of methamphetamine addicts, and some say the rising
tide of meth users turned 12-steppers will have a lasting effect on the way
they do business.

In fiscal 1999, 1,925 meth addicts were admitted to state-funded substance
abuse centers -- 14.4 percent of all patients, according to statistics
provided by the Bureau of Drug and Alcohol Abuse Prevention.

That's a 56.5 percent increase over the 1,230 meth users admitted during
fiscal 1997 -- the year the viciously addictive drug, often home-brewed,
first really made its presence felt in Arkansas. The sharpest one-year
increase, 41.7 percent, occurred in fiscal 1998, when 1,744 such addicts
were admitted.

Along with a recent report that Arkansas is now first in the nation for
meth-lab seizures per capita, the numbers add to the parade of grim
statistics emerging from the meth outbreak.

"Each year, we are trying to treat more people with less," said Larry Raper,
director of program compliance and outcomes monitoring at the prevention
bureau. "The level of funding has remained the same, and each year that
money doesn't go as far."

For Kenneth "Muskie" Harris, a former Arkansas Razorbacks defensive back and
former candidate for lieutenant governor who now works at Sober Living, a
residential substance abuse center in southwest Little Rock, those numbers
translate into a stack of phone messages half an inch thick. Almost all of
them alert him to a caller's uncle, brother, cousin, mother or an inmate
with a meth emergency.

"I saw the change coming, and it is not going to go away," Harris said. "In
the last solid year, we have been dominated by crystal meth users."

Harris said he could recall only three meth addicts showing up in 1997 at
the doors of Sober Living, which provides recovering addicts with a place to
live, counseling and job help. Last year, up to 80 of the center's 110 beds
were occupied by meth users, he said.

"This is a drug like I ain't never seen in my life before," Harris said. "It
just won't let you go. They inject it, and it goes right to body and the
brain with high intensity."

Meth use is especially prevalent among 12- to 24-year-olds, who track down
its recipe on the Internet and try it at home, said Chris Harrison, a
forensic drug chemist at the state Crime Laboratory. And the drug has taken
such firm root in Arkansas partly because the state's rural nature lets meth
makers prepare the drug in remote areas, concealing its stench from law
enforcement officers.

Because of the drug's strong hold on its users, meth addicts tend to stay
longer at recovery centers, putting bed space at a premium, said Wayne
Shipp, a counselor at Serenity Park, a residential recovery center in Little
Rock.

"There's always more users than we have space for," said Shipp, who guessed
that 60 percent of the center's current clients were there to break the meth
addiction.

Meth patients also have an especially high relapse rate, Raper said, partly
because of the drug's easy availability and low cost.

And a meth addict's behavior can be far more erratic than an alcoholic's
because the drug acts as a stimulant to the central nervous system, fueling
the potential for violent behavior, said Carole Baxter, executive director
of the Recovery Centers of Arkansas.

Partly because of the deluge of meth patients, Harris said he plans to lobby
during the next state legislative session to extend from 30 days the length
of time an insurance company will pay an addict's treatment and recovery
costs. He also plans to lobby for more state money for residential programs
like Sober Living.

"This is going to get worse before it gets better," Harris said. "But we've
got a chance to be in the forefront on this, to adjust to the problems
developing in our community."