THE METH PROBLEM

Brigitt Vance shouldn't have become a drug addict.

She didn't come from a broken home. She was never a pot smoker. And she was
raised in small-town Wyoming.

Yet Vance was smoking methamphetamine by the time she was 18, after she
started using cocaine with her first husband at 17.

"I was on such a suicide mission," she says.

Stories like Vance's are becoming more common around northeast Wyoming.
Campbell County law enforcement reports more than 225 meth charges in 2005
alone.

The threat is exacerbated by meth's widespread availability. Unlike most
illegal substances, meth does not need to be imported or cooked in large,
super labs using exotic chemicals. Instead, users can make the drug in
small clandestine labs, even in their homes, with readily available
ingredients, although the process is risky and mistakes often prove fatal.

Thanks to the Internet, cooks don't have to be experienced chemists. A
simple Google search yields recipes in sufficient detail to walk a novice
through the process.

The effects of such widespread use and distribution have left the area
facing a specter of addiction and associated problems unlike anything seen
here before.

"I knew the drug would help me feel good, and I felt so bad at the time."

Vance, now 37, could never be happy. She remembers sneaking out of the
house when she was 12 or 13 years old, acting out and calling her mom
names. As she got older, she continued to be loud and obnoxious. She
dressed seductively to get attention.

Vance says such actions masked deep feelings of insecurity and inadequacy.

That's where meth came in.

Methamphetamine is an illegal stimulant that gives users a longer and more
intense high than nearly all other drugs. Marty Huckins, the agency
director for Personal Frontiers, a Gillette addiction center, says there
are 13 pleasure centers in the brain. Most drugs usually only affect one to
three of these areas. Meth targets all 13.

There's a cost, though. It makes users feel good, but there's a precipitous
crash when the effect wears off. It can also take years for brain chemistry
to get back to normal again.

"If you multiply all the usual problems you have with addiction times 10,
you have methamphetamine," Huckins says.

Vance, for example, started using meth more frequently and became locked
into a worsening pattern of addiction. She originally smoked it, but
eventually started injecting it like many users for the longer-lasting,
more intense high.

Once meth gets its teeth in, it doesn't easily let go. Vance tried to shake
the addiction on her own, but usually she couldn't stay off more than three
or four days. She even checked herself in for to 30-day treatment program
at New Horizons of Casper when she was still 18, but the program had little
effect.

"It didn't touch," she says. "It was just a good night's sleep for me."

The most success Vance had prior to her final rehabilitation was when she
married her second husband. She went off meth, got pregnant with one
daughter, which gave her incentive to stay clean, and had another daughter
a year later. Happiness didn't last, though, and neither did Vance's
attempts to stay clean. She began arguing with her husband and turned to
meth to cope. The two are no longer together.

"It just took care of my problems," she says. "I could forget everything in
my life."

"I just lived for the drug. I would have sold my soul for it."

Meth addiction is inherently selfish. That's something Vance had to learn
at rehab.

As Vance drifted back into methamphetamine, her life began to revolve
around acquiring and using the drug. Everything else took a back seat.

Sheriff's Sgt. Steve Hamilton has seen the effects of this mindset
firsthand while investigating narcotics crimes. Hamilton says "filth" is
the hallmark of a meth addict's home, as users neglect everything,
including basic hygiene, to get their fix.

Dirty clothes are strewn about, food rots on kitchen counters and fetid
odors choke the air.

The bathrooms are the worst part, though. Toilets are clogged and feces are
often everywhere.

"Some of these bathrooms defy description," Hamilton says. "There's no way
to go into a judge and a jury and describe what you're seeing."

There are debilitating physical effects, as well. Vance's skin turned a
pallid, gray color. Her hair thinned. Her weight plummeted. And she
developed sores from picking at her skin.

Other addicts develop meth-related neuroses, such as hallucinations, that
are similar to paranoid schizophrenia. Russell Martin, a meth addict who
was convicted of hitting his wife in the head with a hammer, told
investigators that voices in his head claiming to be the Mexican Mafia said
his wife was going to tell the police on him.

Vance, now an attractive, healthy woman, escaped more serious health
problems, such as hepatitis or AIDS, despite sharing needles. She only has
to take medicine to restore dopamine that years of methamphetamine use have
depleted. Many addicts fare much worse.

Hamilton says everyone pays the health costs brought on by meth. Many meth
addicts lose whole rows of teeth, and prisons across the country have
reported rising dental care costs because of the problem. Health workers
too have become concerned about the growing number of meth-related
illnesses that must be treated, usually without the benefit of insurance to
pick up the tab.

"Who pays for that?" Hamilton asks, rhetorically.

Communities also pay in higher crime rates. Addicts resort to stealing or
shoplifting, anything to get enough money to buy the drug.

As her addiction increased, Vance started selling methamphetamine herself.
She'd buy "eightballs" of meth and sell what she needed to pay the purchase
price - "ripping off" people if she needed money at the time - and then
she'd use the rest herself.

"I thought I'd make money, but I never did," she says.

Vance says she even preyed on those who loved her most. She admits stealing
from her parents, conning her family, and manipulating her relatives, as
they repeatedly endured her more-and-more severe mood swings.

"I put them through so much hell," she says. "I went crazy."

"I thought I was only hurting myself. I didn't see how it affected others."

Users' children are hurt the most.

Vance frequently broke promises to pick up her children in favor of making
precious drug deals instead. She abandoned her 4-year-old son when she was
21, before she went off meth the first time. When she picked it up again,
she abandoned her 2-year-old and 8-month-old daughters. Vance is still
trying to make up for those choices.

"I was such a cold person," she says. "Unless someone was doing something
for me, I didn't have much use for them."

Other children are stuck in abusive homes with meth-using parents.

Gillette police officers who investigated a report of child neglect at the
home of Jennifer and Rodney Vandom found that the couple's 2- and
3-year-old children were locked in a windowless room without a light for
extended periods of time. The room smelled of feces that the children had
rubbed on the walls, the small palm prints still visible in the crap.
Throughout the house, police found weapons and drug paraphernalia. Jennifer
Vandom is now in the adult drug court program after pleading guilty to
child endangerment. Rodney Vandom is still awaiting jury trial.

Users are also prone to paranoia. Knives and guns are a regular find during
meth busts, Hamilton says. Homes frequently show signs of violence such as
holes in the walls and broken furniture, he says.

"During that (violent) period, the child is just another piece of
furniture," Hamilton says.

Conditions get so bad that even those involved with meth sometimes go to
police. Hamilton has known dealers to stop selling to users whose children
are being hurt. He's also gotten anonymous calls asking deputies to look in
on a bad home.

"They are so incensed about the neglect, they risk getting caught
themselves," Hamilton says. "This is not uncommon."

"I have always wanted to quit drugs, but I didn't know how to."

Vance's story had a happy ending.

She fell in love with a man who didn't use drugs, drove him away with
increasingly erratic actions, and was forced into a drug rehabilitation
program after she was charged with stalking him and appeared in court high.

Huckins says programs are most successful when users are ordered to
confront their addictions, as with enforced rehabilitation or drug court.

"Most of them end up in treatment and get sober because they get in
trouble," he says.

Vance entered Rock Spring's Southwest Counseling Center in February 2003,
still buzzing from a meth fix she got just before she checked in.

The first few months were brutal. She went nights without sleep, lying in
her bed in a cold sweat as her body struggled to recover from its meth
dependence.

The counselors attacked her selfish behavior. When Vance reverted to her
old ways during group sessions, always having to be the center of
attention, she was placed at the middle of the group circle for everyone to
look at. Patients also had to write 2,000-word essays for certain
violations. During her initial months, Vance wrote more than 120,000 words.

"There's no conning your way through that treatment center," she says.
"They called me on my crap and I needed it."

Gradually, Vance's mindset began to change. She learned to be honest. She
learned that she wasn't owed anything. She learned that hard times will pass.

"I brought my issues pretty much on myself," she admitted.

Months went by, during which her court-ordered probation expired and she
was allowed to leave treatment, but Vance stuck it out and completed the
program anyway. On April 27, 15 months after she started, she finished rehab.

Vance now lives in Wright with her two daughters, gradually reforging the
bond that was destroyed over her decade-long addiction. She's also
reconciled with her parents and other family members. Getting back with her
son has proven more difficult, though.

Storms still come, but Vance weathers them better. Old friends who are
involved with drugs still knock on her door, but they are curtly turned
away now. Vance's daughters - wary after years of separation and
reminiscent of her younger, headstrong self - often challenge their mother,
but she remains firm and intent on bringing them up right.

Even the Aug. 12 tornado that ripped through Wright and destroyed Vance's
home could not shake her. She simply picked up the pieces, moved into a
temporary home provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and
looked to the future.

"I really like who I am today," says Vance. "I could never look in the
mirror and say that before."

For others, a happy ending may more elusive. Meth continues to plague the
area. People are still addicted. Families are still ripped apart. And lives
are still destroyed.

- - By James Warden, News-Record Writer. For more details on the drug problem
in Campbell County, see Sunday's News-Record