OFFICIALS CONCERNED ABOUT GROWING USE

Jay Dagenhart felt like he was on top of the world.

As a budding Manhattan residential real estate mogul, Dagenhart had
just brokered his first million-dollar sale, but the euphoria he felt
had little to do with the massive commission check he'd earned.

That morning, as it seemed he had done nearly every morning for
months, Dagenhart had snorted crystal methamphetamine and he was
charged with a profound bolt of energy that made him feel like he
could accomplish it all.

Dagenhart had tried a litany of drugs in the past but never anything
like "tina," one of the slew of street names for methamphetamine. For
years, he had struggled with self-pity, a life without a father, his
sexual insecurities, an abusive relationship with a married man when
he was a teenager and his place in this world.

But, when he tried tina for the first time in the late 1990s, all
those problems went away.

"It removed all my inhibitions," said Dagenhart, 37, of Philadelphia.
"There are things that I would never do when I wasn't on the drug,
but when I was on it, it was kind of no-holds-barred."

In a matter of weeks, he'd spent his entire commission check from
that million-dollar sale on his meth habit. He eventually lost his
apartment, his friends and his connection with reality.

Dagenhart would go on days-long binges on meth, an aggressive
stimulant that gives its user a massive bout of energy and stamina
for anywhere from three to 12 hours. During one binge, Dagenhart
said, he didn't sleep for eight straight days, finally crashing so
hard that he tried to kill himself.

"Everything I'd seen in a nightmare was right out in front of me," he said.

In August 1999, he learned he was HIV-positive, likely from one of
the many chance, anonymous sexual encounters he had in one of
Manhattan's gay bath houses on his endless quest for more meth.

"It was just such a vicious cycle, over and over again," he said.

"A Growing Storm"

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, methamphetamine was the drug
of choice in Bucks County, but was slowly replaced by cocaine and
crack cocaine, according to Timothy Philpot, a prevention manager
with the Bucks County Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence Inc.

Is Bucks poised for a major meth comeback?

"Is it a problem? Yes, it is," Philpot said. "Is it a crisis in Bucks
County at the moment? No, but it is a growing storm."

Meth was first synthesized in the late 1880s in Europe and was
investigated in the 1920s as a cure for everything from depression to
nasal congestion. The drug is now produced everywhere from home
basements to Mexican super labs.

Drug enforcement agents claim the drug is much purer, more powerful
and much more highly addictive than the meth that was distributed by
bikers and other outlaw gangs throughout the late '70s and early
'80s. Then, Bucks was known in some law enforcement circles as the
"Meth Capital of the World."

Around the turn of this new century, the drug became en vogue within
the urban gay community, throughout the Midwest and along the West
Coast. Now, users are popping up in every race and every economic class.

"There are poor black women that use it; there are rich white men
that use it," Philpot said. "It crosses all boundaries and anybody
can become addicted to it."

"West Moving Eastward"

Lured by the hours of euphoria and energy the drug gives users, 12.3
million Americans ages 12 and older have tried meth at least once in
their lifetime, according to the 2003 National Survey on Drug and
Health. In 17 states, more people were treated for meth addictions in
2004 than cocaine addictions, according to the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services.

In Missouri, a state with one of the country's largest meth problems,
5,065 people were treated for meth addiction in 2004. That's an
increase of nearly 4,400 meth addicts in just 10 years, according to
the federal department's statistics.

In comparison, about 325 people were treated last year for meth
addiction in Pennsylvania treatment facilities. That's less than 1
percent of the people treated for drug and alcohol addictions in this
state a year ago and 36 more than were treated for meth addiction a
decade earlier, according to the federal data.

Still, federal, state and local officials said they have grave
concerns that meth could make major inroads into this state.

Rick McGoldrick, a spokesman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration in Philadelphia, said drug experts see the meth trade
as "west moving eastward."

"We haven't been hit nearly as hard as they have been in the
Midwest," McGoldrick said. "Still, we are concerned."

Officials interviewed at five drug treatment centers in Bucks County
said they have yet to see a wave of meth addicts seeking treatment at
their facilities.

Todd Barlow, director of Drug and Alcohol Services for the Penn
Foundation Inc. in Sellersville, said his center has treated only
"two or three" meth addicts in five years. The center treats about 45
people a month.

The Ripples Begin

Ted Millard, executive director of Good Friends Inc. in Morrisville,
said about 10 of the 120 patients his facility has treated this year
said they've used meth. And not one patient listed meth as his
primary drug of choice.

"We've heard a lot that this is the new wave of drug use," Millard
said. "We have not seen that yet, but we're starting to see the ripples of it."

William Lorman, clinical director of Livengrin Foundation Inc. in
Bensalem, said "only a handful have used meth" out of the 2,400
patients Livengrin treats for alcohol and drug abuse on an inpatient
basis every year. Only one in the past year used meth exclusively.

Still, he said, in two months, Livengrin has treated five patients
for meth - which is five more than just a few years ago.

"We're not seeing it as a crisis yet," he said, "but a couple years
ago we hadn't really seen it at all."

Dagenhart, who has been clean and sober for one year and seven
months, believes the small evidence of meth use in Bucks is simply an
early indicator of a growing meth problem here.

About a year ago, Dagenhart co-founded the Philadelphia Crystal Meth
Task Force, a program aimed at educating the city's gay community
about the dangers of crystal meth.

He likened the growing meth problem of this century with the AIDS
epidemic of the 1980s - a problem most of society believed would
forever be contained to the gay community. Now, meth use is starting
to seep from the Midwest farms, the Manhattan gay bath houses and the
downtown clubs into the suburbs, he said.

"It's not something that's going to go away," he said. "It's a
problem that's here and it's going to affect everyone."