AFTER LOSS, DOCTOR FORMS MOTHERS AGAINST METH

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) - Dr. Mary Holley knows firsthand the ravages of
methamphetamine.

As an obstetrician in Albertville, Ala., she estimates about 10 percent of
her pregnant patients are addicted.

One was "high as a kite. Comes in dilated 9 centimeters. She is pushing out
her baby. I am trying to get the clothes off this woman so I can deliver
this baby and a gun falls out of her bra," Holley said.

But the methamphetamine epidemic in Appalachia has now become a personal
crusade for Holley. Four years ago, her brother Jim shot and killed himself
after a struggle with meth addiction.

"After he died, I started looking into it as a physician, as a scientist,"
Holley wrote on her Web site. "What is this drug that destroyed his life in
just two years?"

A photo of her brother appears on the Web site for Mothers Against
Methamphetamine, or MAMa, a Christian ministry that Holley founded last
year to fight the popular drug.

The group already has chapters in Tennessee, Georgia, Oklahoma, Missouri
and Ohio, and Holley said the Web site gets about 6,000 hits a month,
including about 25 a day from "parents wanting to know what to do with
their kid."

Mothers Against Meth has worked with churches to start addiction support
groups, similar to Alcoholics Anonymous. And the MAMa Web site offers
pamphlets that detail the dangers of meth.

"People don't realize what this drug is doing," Holley said. "One look at
the brain scan in my pamphlets will change that attitude."

Meth targets the central nervous system. People who use the stimulant tend
to hallucinate and become aggressive, in some cases violent. Their children
are often neglected or abused.

Meth can be cooked using cheap, over-the-counter ingredients: ephedrine and
pseudoephedrine from cold tablets, red phosphorous from matchbook strike
plates, ether from engine starter, iodine and sulfuric acid from drain cleaner.

The epidemic is spreading quickly across the country, particularly in
rural, mountainous areas. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration
estimates Tennessee accounts for 75 percent of meth lab seizures in the
Southeast.

Holley, who is a Christian, believes drug addiction is "primarily a
spiritual disease, not a social disease."

"When I talk to these kids, about 20 percent (of meth users) are basically
healthy kids who made a bad decision. About 75 percent are broken, hurting
people, abused and battered as kids," she said.

Tennessee is among 14 states picked by the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services to receive grants for expanded drug abuse treatment.