TEENS AND THEIR FAMILIES STRUGGLE TO OVERCOME METH'S GRIP

The ominous calls are already starting.

"Is Avree back yet?" barks a gruff threat of a voice.

"Who is this?" asks Debbie Tisinger, a Simi Valley mother of three.

Click.

Tisinger is worried and angry. Her 18-year-old daughter Avree has
just been released from a stint in juvenile hall, the teen's ninth
time for using methamphetamine, a powerful drug that's carving a
canyon of crime, illness and social disruption through the county.
Now the so-called friends and the dealers are circling again.

The family is Mormon, middle-class, modest. Tisinger has no map for
this trip her daughter has taken, no guide for dealing with a drug as
potent as meth.

Tisinger made Avree hide her face and hunker down in the car as they
drove home from juvenile hall to their apartment complex off Los
Angeles Avenue. Avree says at least eight dealers live there.

In the first hour home, the phone rings a dozen times. Tisinger lets
the answering machine kick in.

"How do they know she was being released?" Tisinger asks, her voice
thin with worry.

"I call it the net. They're everywhere in this county, these meth
users and dealers. They're all connected. They make it so hard for
these kids to get out. She has to cut them all off and start over for
this to work."

Amanda Weiss chats on the phone with her boyfriend as probation
officers rifle through her clothes drawers and bookshelves.

"I told them about you, how you've been clean for four years," she says.

Her boyfriend began using meth with he was 10. Amanda started at 13.

The Thousand Oaks honor student had told her parents she was going to
a friend's but went to a party instead. She got drunk, was offered
meth, and almost immediately plunged into an abyss of addiction,
running away, expensive treatment clinics and long stays in juvenile hall.

Her father, Michael, is the chief executive officer of StreamCast
Networks Inc., the company that makes the top-selling Morpheus
peer-to-peer file-sharing software. Her mother, Chris, says the drug
devastated their family for two years before a county drug court
program helped Amanda get sober.

But the meth effects linger. Amanda is on medication for depression
and bipolar symptoms.

"I think this meth is the worst thing. Meth is all over. It's
rampant. It's so prevalent in every school, in every area, and we
didn't know that," Chris Weiss says. "This is an honor roll student,
a child that behaved, was part of the family. She stopped being that
child. She became defiant, her grades went down, she did a
180-degrees change all the way."

Juan A. also was 13 when he took his first hit of meth, the county's
No. 1 drug, a caustic concoction of paint thinner, cold medicine and
drain cleaner. It was a gift from a friend.

Now, five years later, his teenage brain is a ghost town in places.

Sitting in juvenile hall, his seventh time in custody for testing
dirty, he stumbles through his meth-damaged mind, searching for
words, recent events, lessons learned.

"Meth changed me a lot," the Oxnard teen says of a habit that started
off small and then grew to cost $300 a day. "I can't even think
right, talk right, stuff like that. I have problems concentrating,
remembering stuff. It's hard.

"It ruined my life. The first hit, I think it was the one that got me into it."

From Ventura to Simi Valley, hundreds of teenagers are using
methamphetamine, at first recreationally but then habitually, quickly
succumbing to its powerful addictive pull.

They come from every kind of neighborhood and family: middle-class
homes, foster homes, wealthy households inside gated communities.
Girls use it to lose weight. Boys use it for the energy boost it provides.

Their numbers have risen steadily in recent years and show no sign of
abating. In the past five years, the drug has reached into every
Ventura County high school, where 7 percent of juniors now say they
have used meth, according to the 2006 California Healthy Kids Survey.
That's higher than the national average of 6.2 percent, and on par
with more urban counties like Los Angeles and San Diego.

In continuation schools attended by students who have fallen behind,
one in three teenagers says they have used meth. Many are starting
meth at the beginning of adolescence - 5 percent of high school
freshmen in Ventura County say they have used it - which medical
experts find particularly alarming.

"It's easier for kids to get meth than alcohol," says Gabriel Tobias,
a probation officer with the county's juvenile drug court. "No one's
checking ID. If you have enough money, you're old enough."

One in three teenagers thinks there's little risk in trying the drug,
national surveys show. But meth, more than any other drug, poses the
greatest risk for the casual young experimenter, said Dr. Rick
Rawson, a researcher at UCLA studying the drug's effects on the brain.

"The adolescent brain is still evolving and maturing. That actually
means the structures in the brain are not fully formed," Rawson said.
"We know meth affects brain systems and neurons and interactions of
neurons with each other. What we don't know is if you produce that
kind of change in the developing brain, will the damage be greater or
permanent?"

In hopes of answering that question, Rawson will be conducting a
study this year taking brain scans of teenage meth users, he said.

Meth is a powerful stimulant that triggers the release of massive
amounts of dopamine, the brain chemical that plays a key role in the
experience of pleasure. Animal studies have revealed just how
overwhelming this dopamine deluge can be: Sex causes brain dopamine
levels to double; Cocaine use triples them; Meth shoots the
neurotransmitter to 12 times its normal level.

Meth addictive, expensive

While it's a myth that one hit of meth immediately triggers
addiction, Rawson said the risk of getting hooked is much greater
than with other drugs.

Many are genetically predisposed to addiction. Others who have had
some trauma, such as losing a parent or being abused, are also at
greater risk, he said.

"Some kids take it and say it was just too powerful, but far too many
kids take it one time and say it was the greatest experience they've
ever had. It's a real Russian roulette," Rawson said.

Kids describe the feelings like this:

"You get a big ol' rush in your head and you start craving for more,"
Juan says. "You feel it all over your body, all tingly and stuff.
What can you compare it to? Damn, it has no comparison to it."

Many begin spending $100 to $300 a day on meth, which sells retail on
the streets for about $200 a gram, according to the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration. A gram of powdered meth is about the size
of a packet of sugar, good for several hits - each of which can
produce a high lasting as long as 12 hours.

That kind of meth habit costs $30,000 to $60,000 a year.

So where does a teenager get that kind of money?

"It's inevitable - they steal it, steal cars, burglarize homes. We
had one kid who stole prescription pads from his doctor's office then
tried to fill them at the pharmacy to get other drugs to sell to buy
meth," said Tobias, who travels from one end of the county to the
other keeping watch over teenagers on drug court probation.

Avree stole from family and strangers, she said. She committed
burglaries and pawned DVD players and grandparents' jewelry - crimes
the energetic fresh-faced teenager likely would never do if the
craving for meth were not so intense.

Arrests of juveniles for possession of meth are fairly small - nearly
doubling from 44 to 72 from 2003 to 2005, then dipping again to 42 in 2006.

The more significant indicator is the number of kids being arrested
for crimes because of their meth use, Tobias said.

At least 50 percent of the kids in juvenile hall have tried meth. By
comparison, just 12 percent of juveniles getting treatment in the
community list meth as their drug of choice.

Treatment difficult to find

Therapists who counsel meth users in the juvenile justice system are
seeing a range of effects related to the drug. They say meth induces
paranoia, violent behavior, severe depression and other symptoms that
look like mental illness.

There are no inpatient clinics for teenagers in Ventura County,
private or public. Parents who can afford it send their children to
other counties and out of state to facilities that charge from
$12,000 to $30,000 a month.

Private insurance covers at best 30 days of treatment. That may work
for other drugs, but the grip of meth addiction is so deep and strong
that at least nine months of regular daily treatment is needed, said
Mary Stahlhuth, a therapist with the Behavioral Health Department
stationed in juvenile hall.

Last year, 310 children under 18 received drug or alcohol treatment
in the county. Of those, 12 percent cited meth as their primary drug.

But the need, according to alcohol and drug treatment experts, is in
the thousands.

With treatment so expensive and so scarce, the criminal justice
system has become the county's de facto inpatient drug clinic for
teenagers and adults.

The Weiss's of Thousand Oaks spent tens of thousands of dollars - "I
can't even count how much," Chris Weiss said - sending Amanda to two
private clinics in Northern California and a ranch in Sylmar for
inpatient treatment.

James Glover II / Star staff Chad Gauthier stands in his Simi Valley
home while probation officers talk with his parents. Gauthier's
parents say they spent at least $10,000 trying to get him off of meth.

The Gauthier family of Simi Valley plowed through at least $10,000
trying to get their son Chad off meth. The drug had turned the former
football player into a frightening stranger.

He ran away many times while on a meth high, sleeping in the hills
above Simi Valley, at friends' houses and for a time under a bridge
overpass. His father had to fetch him from a jail in Mexico at one
point - an experience that shocked the quiet, middle-class family to its core.

"You feel alone in this, ashamed, like no other family is affected by
this, but we learned how that's just not true in this county," said
Richard Gauthier, a businessman. "So many families just like ours are
going through the same thing."

Chad is clean now. But it wasn't the private treatment that enabled
him to kick the habit - it was jail, and the constant supervision by
his juvenile drug court probation officers.

Avree reassures her mother that this time, there will be no going
back. She's 18 now. Another misstep and it's county jail or prison.

She took her first hit of meth at 13. She was overweight and
self-conscious, and meth was a diet pill like no other.

While in custody, her naturally red hair which she had dyed a crazy
mix of blond and black began to grow back, a match for the
scattershot of freckles across her childish face. She also gained 25 pounds.

"I felt good about my body on meth," she said. "Now I don't. That's
going to be my struggle - that and starting all over."

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THE METH EFFECT

In the past five years, methamphetamine has surpassed heroin, cocaine
and other substances to become the most commonly abused illegal drug
in Ventura County. The effects of this rising tide of addiction now
touch every community in the region, from poor urban neighborhoods to
rural enclaves and exclusive, gated housing tracts.

Methamphetamine abuse has also begun to exert a powerful influence
over a wide range of public institutions, from schools and hospitals
to the civil and criminal court systems. This is the second
installment in an occasional series by The Star examining the
pervasive reach and corrosive influence of this hidden epidemic in
Ventura County.

METH FACTS

History: The stimulant known as amphetamine was developed in 1887. A
Japanese pharmacologist developed the stronger derivative known as
methamphetamine in 1893 from ephedrine.

The spread: German aviators and Japanese kamikaze pilots took
methamphetamine during World War II. After the war, its use exploded
in Japan, where there were half a million addicts and most early
research was done. It is now considered a worldwide epidemic,
sweeping Sweden, Russia, Southeast Asia and the United States.

Number of users: Two million Californians over age 12 have used meth;
10 million U.S. residents over 12 had used meth in 2005.

Effects: Increased energy, suppressed appetite and euphoria. Over
time the drug's use causes significant injury to the brain. Many
effects are reversible in adults, but the long-term impact on
adolescents and babies exposed prenatally is unknown.

Chronic use: Causes the body to essentially burn itself up. Leads to
malnutrition, paranoia, confusion, heart failure, coma and death.

Costs: Tens of billions nationwide.

Deaths: 16 caused by meth toxicity in Ventura County last year.
Hundreds reported in the state's large cities.

Sources: Dr. Igor Koutsenok, substance abuse specialist at UC San
Diego; California Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs; Ventura
County Medical Examiner's Office; National Association of Counties;
Drug Abuse Warning Network.