LOSING IT ALL

Among the side effects of methamphetamine addiction: bankruptcy, job loss,
crime and family neglect.

Some are lured by the rush of a party drug. Others crave the energy. And
some, particularly women, grasp at a shortcut to weight loss.

Once snared by methamphetamine, though, addiction steers diverse lives onto
similar courses.

Shame. Humiliation. Mistreated children. Jail. Families ripped apart. "I try
to forgive myself for yesterday," said Lori Warden of Newton, Iowa, who
neglected her children while she and a boyfriend injected and made
methamphetamine. "I thought, `We can control this. We don't get all weird
like those other people."

That was before the stealing and paranoia began, before her boyfriend raped
her, before she lost her children.

Stories about violence, neglect and sexual abuse are common among meth
users, experts say.

Children typically are the victims.

Social workers in the Inland Empire say substance abuse figures in more than
80 percent of their cases, and meth is prominent in many of those. Neglect
is the most prevalent problem.

The signs are the same in most homes where meth is made: Rooms are littered
with mounds of trash, dirty clothes and animal feces. The refrigerator and
cupboards are empty. The toilet is clogged. And everything -- including a
child's teddy bear or blanket -- reeks with the lab's distinct odor,
reminiscent of putrid diapers or rotten fish.

In one horrific case, a Rubidoux woman pleaded guilty Jan. 10 to supplying
her 9-year-old son with methamphetamine since he was 7. One male relative
said he was threatened with violence when he tried to stop Anna Mae Urrutia,
36, from providing drugs to her son. She was sentenced to three years in
prison.

At the family's home, police said, there was no food, no running water and
no heat. But there were drugs and drug paraphernalia everywhere.

More than 70 percent of the children found in Inland Empire drug labs in the
past year were age 12 or younger. Nearly 500 local children were found
living in homes with meth labs in an 18-month period. Thousands of other
children in similar situations went undiscovered, police said.

"It's just an inuhmane condition that we"re expecting children to grow up in
and be normal," said Vince Fabrizio, a Riverside County prosecutor who
handles cases involving labs operated with children present. "You can't
expect (these) children ... to survive and function as human beings."

Aberrant behavior

Dr. Dennis Weis, medical director of the Powell Chemical Dependency Center
in Des Moines, said aberrant behavior such as paranoia is rooted in meth's
effect on chemicals and receptors in brain.

The result is like having a faulty computer, he said. Information routed to
the brain is misinterpreted. Severe problems can cause visual, auditory and
sensory hallucinations.

Users might hear conversations or see things that don't exist, he said. Or
it might feel as though bugs are crawling under their skin. The sensation
prompts the scratching that is common among addicts. "You mess up the
chemical computer in the brain," Weis said.

Paranoia and depression can trigger the violence. One patient spent six
months looking out a basement window to see if police were ready to storm
his home, Weis said.

The patient once saw his wife look both ways as she crossed the street. "He
thought that was a signal for the police, and he attacked her with a
baseball bat," Weis said.

Two years ago, Weis asked 60 or 70 patients if they had been shot, stabbed
or clubbed while using methamphetamine or if they had committed any of
those acts against someone else. About 40 percent said yes, he said.

Stimulant abuse also is linked to changes in sexual behavior and increased
sexual aggressiveness, he said. The aphrodisiac effect might occur because
of neural or hormonal shifts caused by methamphetamine, he said.

In Des Moines, police found an accountant for a large business naked in a
warehouse, surrounded by porn magazines and shooting methamphetamine, he
said. Some people high on methamphetamine engage in prostitution or
homosexual acts in which they normally would not be involved, he said. The
drug lowers inhibitions for some. Others prostitute themselves as a way to
get drugs, Weis said.

All in the family

Methamphetamine isn't always isolated to one family member.

It is not uncommon for users to span generations in the same family.

In July, one case in Riverside County touched four generations -- including
one still unborn, police said.

Acting on a tip, investigators knocked at Donna Louise Herrera's door at the
Legacy Inn motel in Moreno Valley. Inside was a methamphetamine lab.

At least one or two batches already had been cooked and another was being
prepared, said sheriff's Detective Tom Salisbury. Herrera, 35, her husband,
John Abrego, 40, and her father, Alfonso Herrera, 67, all were involved in
the operation, Salisbury said.

Deputies found open bags of potato chips, bowls of cereal and children's
clothes in the room with the lab. A second room rented by Herrera was home
for her five children, from 14 months to 16 years.

The oldest was pregnant.

During interviews with police, Donna Herrera said her father started giving
her benzedrine, a stimulant, when she was a junior-high softball player,
Salisbury said.

Donna Herrera's pregnant 16-year-old daughter told police that she had seen
her mother's drug use all her life but had not used speed herself until
recently. For several days, she had smoked methamphetamine two or three
times an hour, the girl said. She had not eaten much or slept at all and was
concerned that she had had no prenatal care, Salisbury said.

"I asked her who'd she got the meth from, and she said her grandfather,"
Salisbury said.

The girl apparently was using the drug without her mother's knowledge,
Salisbury said.

Donna Herrera and John Abrego were sentenced to five years in prison after
pleading guilty to manufacturing methamphetamine and child endangerment. An
arrest warrant was issued for Donna Herrera's father, who had not been at
the hotel when police arrived, Salisbury said. As of early January, he had
not been arrested.

Addicts often convince themselves that their families are faring well.
Salisbury said he's heard the avowal over and over: "It's not my kids"
problem, man. I"ve got to get straightened out, but my kids are doing fine."

"Most of them think that it could be better, but it's not that bad, that
they"ve seen worse somewhere else," Salisbury said.

Losing everything

That was the theory used by Lori Warden in Iowa.

She started using meth more than 2 1/2 years ago at age 24. She began
snorting it after her second child was born. The methamphetamine helped her
lose weight.

She switched to smoking it and then began 'slamming' -- injecting it into
her veins -- two years later. Des Moines police say 85 percent of the
methamphetamine on the city's streets comes from California and Mexico.

At first, the drug made her feel stupid and lost.

"Eventually, that felt normal," Warden said as she curled up in a chair,
sober for 20 days at the Powell center in Des Moines. Everything just got
away from her, she said. As the addiction worsened, Warden split with her
husband. In three months, she went through $19,000 the couple had saved.

Child-support payments, everything, went for methamphetamine. High, she
couldn't deal with caring for two children. She pawned them off on her
mother or dumped them on their father during the times she was supposed to
care for them.

"I'd call them names," she said. One day, she hit her daughter because the
little girl was blowing a whistle as she walked through the house. The girl
was not injured.

"My kids were my life to me. It went from my kids being my life to meth
being my life in probably four months," she said.

Her husband filed to get sole custody of the children and took over their
care.

Warden said she stole to support her habit and once rode with two friends to
rob a convenience store. The friends walked inside with a gun while Warden
waited in the car.

"It was just intense," she said. "I wasn't scared till the next day. I just
wanted to get high."

One day, a friend who had just been released from jail showed Warden's
boyfriend how to make speed. Warden would go out for supplies, convinced by
paranoia that she was being followed.

When her boyfriend started cooking the methamphetamine, "I'd sit at the
window for hours making sure no one was out there."

'selling was a high," she said, recalling deals with people and money. "I'd
get just as high from that as I would the dope."

But paranoia also gripped her boyfriend. He thought she was cooperating in a
non-existent police investigation. For nine hours one night, he
locked her in a room strapped to a bed with a belt, she said. Warden said
she was raped and slapped around. She thought she would be tortured.

But the ordeal ended when a relative arrived at the house. As friend after
friend went off to prison, Warden realized she was out of control.

"I used to think, how did I let this happen? How can this drug have this
much control over my life? There's nothing else in my life that meant as
much as getting high," she said.

In September, though, she was trying to regain control and fighting the urge
to leave the program.

"I"ve never trusted anyone like I"ve trusted the people here," she said. "I
feel strong here."

The hardest part, she said, has been the separation from her children. She
had a husband, a family, a job in her grandfather's business, a $180,000
home and a nice car.

"Now I have nothing," she said. "I feel so low for the things I"ve lost in
my life."