PERU MAN: NEED FOR EARLY DRUG INTERVENTION AMONG YOUTH

Editor's Note: Five inmates serving prison sentences for
methamphetamine crimes agreed to talk to the NewsTribune about meth
in the Illinois Valley. This is the third part in a four-part series.

VANDALIA -- Many nights Carl Schinkey sat in the dark woods watching
people "cook" methamphetamine. The illegal stimulant, he saw, wasn't
difficult to produce.

As his addiction worsened, he was compelled to make his own meth but
also knew better than to attempt it without additional research. One
bad batch can produce toxic fumes or a fiery chemical explosion.

The 24-year-old didn't have to look far for pointers. Available on
the Internet were underground meth-making publications written under
pen names to avoid prosecution. One author published under the
pseudonym "Uncle Fester," Jackie Coogan's character from TV's "The
Addams Family."

"Personally, you're playing with death if you tried to read from
instructions," Schinkey warned, speaking from Vandalia Correctional
Center where he is serving a 10-year sentence. "You're playing with
fire. You're very likely going to get burned."

Though heroin remains the Illinois Valley's scourge, methamphetamine
has finally migrated to North Central Illinois from Missouri and
southern Illinois. Meth labs have popped up in recent years and while
police and prosecutors say the illegal stimulant has yet to reach
epidemic proportions, recovering addicts warn that it is as addictive
as heroin.

Schinkey, who split his time between Kewanee and Peru, managed to
avoid getting burned and getting caught when he tried his first batch
of meth. It took him less than six hours and the results were good.
Getting hold of the ingredients was even easier; anhydrous ammonia
was the only one he had to steal. He became quite proficient and
enjoyed the challenge of trying different methods.

"Making meth is more addictive than doing the drug itself," he said.
"It's so interesting."

Schinkey's luck ran out on June 28, 2005. He and codefendant Owen
Byrne had stopped at the home of Schinkey's girlfriend (and mother of
his two children) on Wenzel Road in Peru and were sleeping when
police busted in and seized parts of an inactive meth lab. (Byrne did
not acknowledge a request to participate in this series.)

Schinkey said he doesn't remember the bust. He had collapsed into a
near-coma after 17 straight days with no sleep. Without food his
weight plummeted more than 30 pounds to a sickly 124. During the
bender he suffered a stroke and temporarily lost the use of his right
side. It would take three months in a medical unit, and another year
of convalescence, to regain his mobility.

"I was literally half dead," he said. "I knew how I got there. I
realized how I got there. But I didn't wish to face the pain.

"Actually, I don't think I ever would have faced the pain until I
ended up where I am now."

Schinkey once was a good student and grew up in a stable household
with parents who remain married 34 years. No one in his family
touched drugs or condoned their abuse.

At age 15, however, he fell in with the wrong crowd and began taking
acid (the hallucinogen LSD). He gradually escalated to harder drugs
and eventually developed an addiction to heroin. As his heroin
problem worsened, he sought a substitute to wean himself off. The
most readily available and tempting choice was methamphetamine.

"It's hard to say how long it took to be hooked on meth," he said. "I
kicked heroin by starting to do meth. I was going through the
physical pain of coming off heroin, and I just picked up where I left
off with meth."

Schinkey ingested meth by eating the crystals, a less euphoric but
somewhat less damaging means of ingesting it than through snorting,
smoking or injecting meth. (Some addicts also ingest the drug by
dissolving the crystals in liquids, usually high-caffeine beverages
such as coffee.)

Schinkey said he specifically avoided using a syringe because he
recognized that injection intensified the experience -- and that
there was no turning back after using a needle. "It's almost like a
dream," he said of injection. "If you think something, you're
automatically going to believe it. If you think you see something,
it's going to appear to be there -- especially after you've been up for days.

"I've seen people personally trying to move walls because they truly
thought they could."

Though Schinkey acknowledged dealing some methamphetamine, most of
the meth he produced was to support his own habit -- and to keep him
off heroin. The meth addiction progressed, however, and he would
ingest it up to six times a day. He took meth for about 18 months,
starting when he was about 24, and quit only after the bust in Peru.

The drug task force obtained a search warrant and seized a number of
meth-making materials. Prison was a near certainty; there were two
children present in the home and the house was within 1,000 feet of a
church. He was eligible for sentencing enhancements of up to 60 years.

Schinkey insisted that he always made meth on the outskirts of
Kewanee and never in the house -- certainly not with his family
present -- and that what police recovered were lab remnants, not an
active lab. In Schinkey's sentencing record, state's attorney Joe
Hettel said Schinkey didn't show much repentance.

"It should be noted that he has told law enforcement that he looks
forward to the day of his release from the IDOC (Illinois Department
of Corrections) so he can start making meth again," Hettel wrote.

Schinkey denied that.

"It was a relief," Schinkey said of his arrest. "I was tired."

As if to prove the point, Schinkey has embraced prayer and the
recovery programs offered to him in the prison system.

"I'm here by the grace of God," he said. "I've welcomed death in my
time. I don't maintain the heart to even put myself in this position again."

Prison has, in many ways, been good for him, he said. He attends
daily drug treatment programs and is completing his GED. He hopes to
earn college credits and get a bachelor's degree. He's also patient,
recognizing that he might be ready for his scheduled release in 2010
but currently is "far from cured."

Schinkey said he feels he should have been offered drug treatment
while awaiting trial in La Salle County Jail.

"Out of the six months I did in county (jail), the only thing I
learned in that county was how to gamble and how to play cards
better. I shoot dice a little better. I always stayed in the
addictive mentality, and it's ridiculous."

La Salle County Sheriff Tom Templeton countered that the prison
system is intended to offer rehabilitation, which may include drug
treatment, whereas the mission of a jail is to hold suspects facing
trial and awaiting a determination of how to rehabilitate them.

"We don't have the facilities here to offer rehab," Templeton said,
"and we are not a treatment facility."

Nevertheless, Schinkey said meth can't be eradicated from the
streets; people can only stave off addiction by catching it at early
stages. "In the 10 years that I've lived with this disease of
addiction, not once was I asked if I needed help by that county," he
said. "If anything, people are scared to ask for help because they're
scared of the consequences they're going to get, and it's really not
their fault. It's a disease.

"Ask these kids if they need help -- and help them."