METHAMPHETAMINE EPIDEMIC THREATENING ALBERTA CITIES

Marie's flyer was propelling her to murder.

The flyer - created by Marie during a four day-long binge on crystal
meth - is a psychotic state of mind caused by the drug that leads to
hysterical paranoia and rage.

Marie had an ounce and a half of meth on her, and she was smoking,
snorting and eating meth as fast as the insane thoughts racing
through her head.

The 22-year-old woman was convinced she had to kill someone, anyone.
She had a two-foot long machete stuffed in her pants to prove the point.

Marie was with Sketch, an Edmonton pusher, whose fingers were
recently crushed by muscle in the drug world over a debt. He still
owed someone $10,000, and his fingers ached at the notion of further torture.

Marie just got out of jail four days earlier and had been high on
meth every single minute of her freedom. She hadn't slept a wink.

Sketch had his own debts to collect and wanted Marie to knock on doors.

The voices in Marie's head told her she was on a death mission to get
into Sketch's gang, and she was prepared to do anything, including murder.

Sketch made several stops at homes for Marie to collect. Each time
Marie was ready to slash any one who answered the door. No one was home.

The paranoia was reaching a crescendo. Marie was convinced Sketch
thought she was lying, and a coward for not already killing someone.

She now wanted to find anyone to plunge her machete into.

Her rage turned physical, and she crushed her glass meth pipe with one hand.

"You don't think I could kill someone - do you?"," shouted Marie
defiantly at Sketch.

She jumped out of the moving car, and with traffic buzzing all around
her, bounded towards one stationary vehicle.

The raging woman frantically attempted to open the car door. Her
machete was ready for a slaying.

The shocked driver locked the door and sped away.

Marie turned to find Sketch's car but he left her on the street to
take care of business elsewhere.

Suddenly Marie was lying on the front lawn of an unknown house,
flashing lights, paramedics and police whirling all around her. They
were checking to see if she was still alive. The cops already knew
about Marie's machete and meth.

She was off to jail once more.

Marie is not alone

Lee and Easy know Red Deer's downtown streets well.

Almost 30-years-old, Lee has managed to stay clean from crystal meth,
or "jib" as users call it, for the past 12 days.

Easy is not so lucky. The 22-year-old Cree First Nations man was on a
meth binge the night before in a downtown hotel. He was rescued from
his own flyer by a friend who pulled him out to go drinking.

Easy was "tweaking" on meth and had locked himself in the bathroom,
the high taking him to his own flyer of insanity.

"Once you sit down and smoke a couple of bowls nothing else matters
any more. I'm at the point now where I just don't care," said Easy,
munching on a sandwich at a downtown restaurant.

"I would love to quit smoking this stuff. I'm getting all screwed up.
I was up for three or four days and finally my buddy grabbed me and
gave me a good shake and told me to go drinking with him."

Lee understands too well Easy's frightening dilemma.

For the past four years he has squatted at other addicts' homes,
night crawling for drugs and committing lots of crime.

Lee has tried treatment many times, but the streets always pulled him
back, dragged him towards another scam to get a bowl of meth. He
hopes somehow he can stay clean this time around, and leave the
frightening flyers behind him for good.

"I got so paranoid I needed booze to balance me out," said Lee,
sitting across Easy.

"It was like, 'You are talking about me' even though you are not
talking about me. My own mind is creating its own chaos - everybody
is against me and, 'Why should I share my drugs with you?' It's insanity."

Easy's original home is at the Moberly Lake Reserve in B.C. He has
lost touch with his family. He thinks his mother might be in Grande Prairie.

But family doesn't really register with him on this cool, blustery
spring morning. Easy is thinking only of getting more meth, any way he can.

"All I really care about is getting high," said Easy. "You get to the
point where you are just ready to go out and kill somebody."

Easy announces he has to leave the restaurant, that he has
"something" to do. Suddenly he is gone. His quick exit does not phase Lee.

"Easy is everything I was," said Lee.

The street battle against meth

The meth world on Red Deer streets is full of shadows.

Addicts do not regularly congregate in known hot spots like cocaine
addicts do at crack houses. Meth addicts just gather at street
corners, in parks or wherever they can at any given moment. They will
use anything for a bowl, including broken glass on the street and
broken light bulbs from hotel rooms, as their tools of trade to get high.

The meth culture is unique. In fact, meth and crack addicts admit
they do not even like each other. If crack addicts can be termed
socialites of the drug world, meth heads are then the outcasts, alone
except in the shadows where their drug of choice is voraciously
consumed, a launching point for another hellish flyer.

The meth culture in Red Deer was largely ignored by Red Deer city
RCMP until Feb. 4, 2005 when 25-year-old meth addict Jesse Catellier
was gunned down and murdered near the intersection of 40th Ave. and Ross St.

"He was pretty heavy into the meth scene and we had occasion to
really frequent a lot of known locations and some previously unknown
locations," said RCMP Cpl. Steve Cormack, head of the city
detachment's Street team. "We talked to a lot of players in the meth
scene, and we were able to get a foothold into the meth culture,
which we didn't have before."

Cormack said his team has over the past year successfully shut down
50% of the mid-level meth dealers in the city.

Last week, Catellier's killer, 21-year-old Ryan Kristopher Burns,
pleaded guilty to a charge of second degree murder in Red Deer Court
of Queen's Bench and was sentenced to life imprisonment with the
possibility of parole in 10 years.

Shortly after the killing, Catellier's mother, Ingrid Braak, placed
the blame on the killing squarely on crystal meth.

"The thing he used to say, and it made him so sad, was that meth
steals your soul, and you can't get it back," said Braak.

"Meth is a different drug. It is a culture nobody understands. It is
a new experience for our world."

And for the provincial government, social service officials, and
police, crystal meth has become the number one most threatening
social and law enforcement issue in Alberta and in Red Deer.

"I would say it is the number one problem because it is so addictive,
so cheap and has such a debilitating effect on society," said Red
Deer city RCMP Supt. Jim Steele.

"It is a plague. There are a lot of other problems in the city. If
you can solve that one (meth) you can solve a whole bunch more."

The chilling truth about meth

While governments and police agencies in Alberta and Red Deer
struggle to come to grips with the scope of the meth problem,
authorities are fully aware of its composition, how it is
manufactured, its dangers and the drug's potential sweeping threat to society.

That threat is of particular concern to law enforcement officials
because of their conviction meth is becoming the hottest commodity
within the organized crime world.

Crystal meth, or methamphetamine, is an illegal synthetic drug that
acts on the central nervous system by releasing large amounts of the
neurotransmitter dopamine.

The drug can be taken orally, smoked, snorted and injected. Depending
on the amount taken, the high can last up to 12 hours, far longer
than a crack cocaine high which has a duration of about 30 minutes.

Methamphetamine is produced in clandestine laboratories - sometimes
even portable ones - that can be set up in hotel rooms or even in the
back of a motor vehicle in less than an hour.

Meth has become known as the "poor man's cocaine" because it is
relatively simple and cheap to make and inexpensive to buy.

Meth "cooks" use commonly available chemicals and over-the-counter
medications such as ephedrine, pseudoephedrine, phenylproanolamine,
iodine, red phosphorous, hydrochloric acid, ether, hydriodic acid and
anhydrous ammonia.

Chemicals used in the production of meth are highly corrosive,
explosive, flammable and toxic. Law enforcement officials
investigating meth cases say the environmental damage left from cooks
is nothing short of catastrophic. For every pound of meth
manufactured, another five to six pounds of chemical waste is created.

For the user who smokes or injects the drug, meth produces an
immediate euphoric high. Many addicts have reported they became
addicted after only a few uses.

It is then that their personal hell begins. Meth is a highly acidic
drug which causes teeth to decay at an extremely accelerated rate.
Users on a binge have been known not to sleep for periods lasting
more than a week. They suffer from dehydration and exhaustion from
all night parties and malnutrition from not eating.

Meth users frequently have itchy skin. Many have reported shards of
meth poking out of their arms, legs and face. Users often pick away,
leading to skin sores and permanent scarring.

As users come down from the high they may experience out-of-control
rages (known as "tweaking") before they crash.

Worse still, many addicts suffer brain damage after prolonged use.
Meth is now known to destroy dopamine terminals and the body's
serotonin, a natural central nervous system compound important for
the regulation of mood, sleep, emesis (vomiting), sexuality and appetite.

If meth addicts are somehow able to enter a period of recovery, they
quickly learn life will never be normal again.

An addict's inevitable bottom

Meth addicts always have a bottom. Some may bottom out when dying on
a meth run, their ravaged bodies just giving out.

Others wind up in jails or psychiatric institutions. Some, however,
hit rock bottom on the street.

A year after Marie's chilling near-murderous flyer, she attempted to
pass counterfeit money at a grocery store. Marie's four-year-old son
and another child were with her. As always, she was high on meth.

She was caught, and taken away in handcuffs in front of her child.

Marie was then 23-years-old. Already in her young life she had
compiled more than 50 Criminal Code and drug convictions. She had
spent periods in jail that totalled almost a year. Marie had
witnessed stabbings and brutality along her sordid journey to hell.

Marie's weight had dropped to 110 lobs. Everywhere on her body she
itched. The urge to scratch her already picked over and scabbed body
was constant.

Marie, whose family had long given up on her, was once again going
back to jail.

But first it was to the hospital where she thought she was losing her
mind. Doctors and nurses, who were experienced in dealing with
addicts, were even alarmed with this young young woman who exhibited
intense hysteria and paranoia. Marie was even convinced the
television set was sending her disturbing messages that someone was
out to get her.

She was more like a caged animal than a human being.

As incredible as it seemed, there was still hope.

NEXT WEEK - Part 2: The long road of recovery