"METH MONSTER" DIGS IN, CAN BE VIRTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO ESCAPE

Few non-drug users have the visceral understanding of the impact and
dangers of the "monster" called meth, as do Carl Sturdy and Mike Ramsey.

Sturdy is the commander of the Butte Inter-Agency Narcotics Task
Force, and has been in drug enforcement for two decades.

Ramsey is Butte County's district attorney and has been a local
prosecutor for 30 years.

"Meth is a very, very strong central nervous system stimulant,"
according to Sturdy.

Users can smoke it, take it orally, or inject it.

Smoking and injections are the main methods because of the rapid,
intense high they create.

"They feel good. They feel strong. They feel they can conquer the
world. It is a real insidious thing," said Sturdy.

Ramsey refers to the drug as the "meth monster."

He said when "it gets its claws in someone, and those are fairly deep
claws," escaping the addiction is profoundly difficult.

"They continue to run after that same high. They burn out their
pleasure centers. They are incapable of any pleasure, any joy,
without the drug," said Ramsey.

Recent animal studies suggest recreational use of meth -- also known
as crank or speed -- actually alters parts of the brain on the cellular level.

Meth does more than addict its users. It consumes them.

Sturdy said meth users rapidly cease to function in society.

He explained he has known heroin addicts who could maintain jobs and
apparently normal lives, but, "I have never seen a functional meth
addict. It is really kind of rare."

Users usually come to law enforcement's attention not through their
drug use per se, but by what they do to get the meth.

Sturdy said meth users as a class are "heavily involved in thefts and
burglaries and vehicle thefts."

Usually they get involved with authorities because they've "been
caught stealing stuff to feed their addiction."

For a woman, access to meth is often a matter of trading her flesh
for the chemicals she wants, but even among users there is
sensitivity about such transactions.

"They will adamantly deny giving themselves up for drugs. They don't
want to be labeled a crank whore," said Sturdy.

For law enforcement, one of the biggest challenges is that unlike
cocaine, heroin and marijuana -- which require land to growth the
plants from which the drug is derived -- meth is a synthetic product
that can be "cooked" in somebody's kitchen.

"Making crank is simple. If you can follow a recipe to make a cake,
you can make crank," said Sturdy.

He said a collection of incompetent cookers are continually trying to
set up "Beavis and Butthead labs."

While the process of producing crank may be as straightforward as a
cake recipe, the ingredients involved are less benign than flour,
sugar and eggs. A recipe available on the Internet includes red
phosphorus, ether, hydrochloric acid, sodium hydroxide and methanol,
among other items.

While the drug is incredibly powerful, addiction to meth is not
necessarily a life sentence.

"Ten years ago I would have said there is no hope," said Ramsey, but
now, with better treatment programs, "there is hope."

The most essential step in breaking free of meth is desire.

"They have to have some kind of an epiphany, or some kind of a
terminal event" that makes remaining in the culture too terrible to
contemplate, said Sturdy. "They have to hit rock bottom, whatever
rock bottom for that person is."

For a woman, according to the BINTF chief, a first pregnancy can be
the necessary epiphany.

A combination of two steps can indicate how serious the addict is
about quitting.

The person has to move away, said Sturdy. "They have to cut all their
ties (to the meth culture)."

Ramsey said another step is a willingness to tell the authorities
about their drug connections, but most people don't want to do that.

Sturdy said the meth addict who is not quite committed to change is
unwilling to move far away because they think, "Who am I going to
hook up with if I have a bad day?"

Ramsey said part of the challenge to escaping the meth culture is to
some degree a fear of loneliness.

"That's your family, that's your world, and you don't want to violate
the world," he said.