METH MANGLES USERS' MOUTHS

Dental Practitioners Find Many Drug Users Are Losing Their Teeth

In his early 40s, after several years of heavy methamphetamine use, Carl
Mann started losing his teeth.

"My teeth didn't abscess or anything," he said. "They would just get loose
and come out."

By the time he was fitted for full upper and partial lower dentures about a
month ago, only 10 teeth remained, five of which were pulled. The rest fell
out.

"I had a smile only a jack-o'-lantern could love," Mann said, adding that
half of his front teeth were missing, likely as the result of smoking meth.

Severe dental problems linked to meth, such as Mann's, are so common that
they now have their own nickname, "meth mouth."

"We do see it a lot," said Ron Guderian, the program director for Northwest
Medical Teams' dental van, which travels throughout Northwest Washington.
It serves low-income patients who can't pay for dental service.

As meth use has increased, "suddenly this is a side effect no one thought
of until you start seeing it," Guderian said.

At first, Mann said, he was mildly surprised by losing his teeth. "Then you
get used to it," he said.

"I mean, to tell you the truth, I expected to overdose and die," Mann said.
"I wasn't planning on sticking around."

Mann, 44, said he worked for 25 years as a structural steel painter. He
said he's been off drugs about two years. He's finishing a one-year Bible
study and discipleship program at the Everett Gospel Mission and getting
help to rejoin the workforce.

Northwest Medical Teams' mobile dental van visits both the men's and
women's shelters run by the gospel mission once a month, just two of its
regular stops in the county.

The dental van added the missions to its routine stops "when we saw the
severe damage done by meth," Guderian said.

One case involved a 20-year-old "who had nothing left but stubs."

"You can imagine the pain," Guderian said, in addition to the damage being
a major social barrier. "Getting back to society was totally impossible."

It's not just meth, but also drugs such as heroin and cocaine that can
cause dental problems, said Linda Renner, dental director for the Community
Health Center of Snohomish County. Although meth use has received lots of
media attention in recent years, cocaine and heroin are widely used in the
county, too.

In part, the problems are caused because good dental care, such as brushing
and flossing, "is the least of their worries," Renner said.

"These people don't care about themselves and their physical bodies
anymore," she said. "Then, on top of that, when they're high, they tend to
clench their teeth," which grinds them down. "There's a lot of things going
on at the same time."

Mann said he used cocaine for about six years before switching to meth when
he was 39 because it was a cheaper and longer high. Cocaine may have
contributed to his dental problems as well, he said. "Drugs came before
anything else," he said.

"My teeth were bad when I was using coke, but they were falling out when I
used meth," he said.

Mann said he had problems with alcohol as well. He lost his driver's
license but continued to drive.

Meth gave him more energy to work the long hours that came with running a
mobile mechanic business that required going to people's homes to fix their
cars, he said. He sometimes stayed up for five to six days at a time.

"I didn't realize it was so addictive," he said.

His drug use evolved into a gram-a-day habit.

"After a while, I started dealing. It was a lot easier to deal than to
work," Mann said.

Along the way, he said, he racked up three felony convictions for
attempting to elude a police officer and possession of cocaine and meth. He
said he was in and out of jail for 10 years.

After trying about five times to quit his drug use, he said, a six-month
jail stint helped break his addiction. When he got out, he decided to stay
off drugs and went to the mission.

During the past year, he has done volunteer work at its laundry and
donation departments and at the front desk.

He can stay at the mission for up to four more months. He knows his felony
convictions are a big barrier to future employment. Nevertheless, he wants
to get a job, perhaps at a hospice service.

Mann said he tries to share his drug abuse experience with others at the
mission.

"They're going through the same thing I went through," he said.

"They believe it," he said of their reaction. "But they come in for about a
week, and then they're gone for a while."