SEX APPEAL PART OF METH'S CHARM

CHATTANOOGA - Doctors and government officials don't like to talk much about
it, but there's an obvious reason people get hooked on methamphetamine: sex.

The drug eventually destroys the sex drive, but doctors say for a short
while meth can boost sexual appetite and performance - in a way that's much
stronger than stimulants such as cocaine.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Laymon said he has interviewed hundreds of meth
users, and a startling number - men and women - say the drug enhances sexual
performance and desire.

''Who wouldn't want to use it? You lose weight, and you have great sex,''
Laymon said recently at a meeting of Tennessee's meth task force.

But Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, who attended the meeting, winced when
Laymon called the drug an ''aphrodisiac'' and said his description ''just
set us back quite a ways here.''

For obvious reasons, government officials facing an epidemic of meth abuse
in rural Appalachia want to focus on the misery meth causes and not its
aphrodisiac effect.

But Dr. Mary Holley, an obstetrician who runs a Mothers Against
Methamphetamine ministry in Albertville, Ala., said sex is the ''No. 1
reason'' people use the drug.

''When you first start using this stuff, it makes you want sex all the
time,'' Holley said.

The effect doesn't last long.

''After you have been using it about six months or so, you can't have sex
unless you are high,'' Holley said. ''After you have been using it a little
bit longer, you can't have sex even when you're high. Nothing happens. It
doesn't work.''

Dr. John Standridge, an addiction specialist with the Council for Alcohol
and Drug Abuse Services in Chattanooga, said meth and other stimulants
initially ''rev up the dopamine nervous system in the brain. They rev it up
and burn it out.''

Meth users can never recapture the feeling of that initial high, but they
keep trying in ''a vicious downward spiral,'' Standridge said.

''It's the same way with sexual arousal. At first, users report greater
sexual arousal and prolonged stamina, and if they are of the right
personality, they get into compulsive sexuality. That leads to an inhibited
sexual desire.''

Its sex appeal is part of why meth is so hard to fight.

U.S. taxpayers spent more than $37 million on meth lab cleanups in 2002-03.
The Drug Enforcement Agency has reported 1,253 meth labs cleaned up in
Tennessee in 2003, the most in any state for the third straight year.

A meth task force appointed by Bredesen is recommending tougher penalties
and expanded treatment for addicts. The governor is expected to push the
measures in the General Assembly next year.

Meth is also easy to make. It's typically cooked from ordinary household
products and cold tablets that contain ephedrine or pseudoephedrine.

Holley, who has interviewed men and women addicted to the drug, said it
stimulates the ''pleasure center'' in the brain.

''Its technical name is 'nucleus accumbens,' and that is where everything
feels good, including sex. That's where music sounds good and a plate of
food tastes good. Everything that feels good feels good in the nucleus
accumbens,'' said Holley, whose brother was an addict who killed himself.

''Methamphetamine makes a direct hit on the nucleus accumbens with its
favorite chemical, dopamine,'' she said. ''The effect of an IV hit of
methamphetamine is the equivalent of 10 orgasms all on top of each other
lasting for 30 minutes to an hour, with a feeling of arousal that lasts for
another day and a half.''

Holley said the body ''doesn't have enzymes to metabolize this stuff, so the
dopamine high lasts for 20 hours. That is 10 times longer than cocaine.''

She said meth abusers can recover their ability to have sex ''if you quit it
soon enough. If you have done too much damage to the nucleus accumbens, it
doesn't always come back.

''It's vicious,'' Holley said. ''It gives you a hallucination of being in
control, power, confidence, intelligence and endurance. You feel great, but
it is all a hallucination. You think you chose to use it again, but you had
a desire to do it again and you couldn't control that desire. You didn't
choose it. It chose you.''

John Walters, the drug czar for President Bush, said meth's reputation as a
sex drug is not unique.

''All substance abuse is frequently marketed as enhancing sex life or making
you more attractive or a better social companion,'' Walters said, but he
added that buying meth as an aphrodisiac is ''buying under false
pretenses.''

''Hair falls out. Teeth fall out,'' Walters said. ''That's not sexy.''