Series: 3 Of 10

ANDREA'S STORY

Meth's Misery: Woman Tells How Life And Family Were Devastated By
Methamphetamine's Influence

The ecstatic rush of the methamphetamine used to hit Andrea York before the
needle was even out of her arm.

As the drug flooded her system with artificially elevated levels of
adrenaline and dopamine, she reveled in a rapturous swoon.

"I don't know how to describe it, except just completely euphoric ... it
literally takes your breath away," Andrea of Roseburg recalls.

The initial rush - which lasts anywhere from 15 seconds to an hour - gives
way to a less intense high that can last for several hours.

"Then you're staying awake in some crazy place in your head, forever
tasting what it was in the beginning and you're never getting it," Andrea
says. "It's just incredible how a sensible person can turn into such an idiot."

Methamphetamine is drawing increasing numbers of Douglas County residents
like Andrea into its addictive clutches, ravaging their own lives and the
lives of the people around them.

Andrea, now 30, began using meth at the age of 13. Her parents didn't use
drugs and were unaware of her new habit, although it frequently caused her
to miss school and, later, work.

"We didn't even talk about it until I started getting in trouble," Andrea says.

She continued using until last January. Although the mother of four says
she stopped during each of her pregnancies, her current 11-month stretch of
sobriety is her longest in 11 years. Other than that, she couldn't stay
clean for longer than two days.

"Through the whole time I was doing it, I felt guilt and shame and I always
wanted to quit," Andrea says.

Her addiction so wracked the Roseburg woman's spirit during the last six
months of her drug use that she cried every time she got high. "I wanted so
bad for somebody to stop me," she says.

Law enforcement experts say methamphetamine poses more of a problem to the
state of Oregon than any other drug. Its relatively low cost and
availability - it can be made almost anywhere using common household
chemicals - have contributed to the drug's popularity.

"You can get everybody using meth, you can get housewives, people that need
more energy, you'll get students that are using it ... you'll get
businessmen using it. I mean, it is an across-the-board" drug, said Douglas
County Deputy District Attorney Jeff Sweet.

Sweet prosecutes most of the county's bigger methamphetamine trafficking
cases, including Andrea's 2001 arrest for possession and distribution. She
was eventually convicted of possessing a substantial quantity.

"I think it's pretty stunning how prevalent it is," Sweet says. "I mean,
it's everywhere.

Drug of choice Methamphetamine - which comes in various forms and goes by
street names like "crank," "crystal," "ice," "glass," "speed," or simply
"meth" - is the drug of choice for hundreds of Douglas County users.
Sometimes called "poor man's cocaine," it's a highly addictive central
nervous system stimulant.

Nobody thinks about addiction the first time they use meth, Andrea says.

"It doesn't take long at all to build tolerance," she says. "Almost
everybody in the beginning starts snorting, and then within a few months
people are smoking it or slamming it intravenously."

"People who are snorting it don't feel like they're a junkie," Sweet says.
"But once you start strapping up your arm and putting a needle in ... it's
kind of hard to think this is recreational drug use."

After the initial rush from injecting the drug, Andrea says the drug
transports you to a state of mind where everything feels really intense.
"Whatever you're doing, you're doing it with incredible intensity, but then
with the propensity to get completely sidetracked at any moment, and then
you're doing that with incredible intensity, or 12 things with incredible
intensity, and you just kind of stay there."

This drug-induced distraction often caused her to forget obligations as
basic as feeding her children, or picking them up from school. "You have no
sense of time," she says.

Andrea has forgotten some things permanently, such as hearing her
children's first words, and seeing them take their first steps.

The worst part of the drug cycle for Andrea was coming down, which she
avoided by shooting up almost every day. As her addiction progressed,
Andrea lost herself in a crazed, blurred succession of ever-diminishing
highs and inevitable crushing lows.

"You have to use to keep going (and) therein lies the problem. If you use
during the week, even the weekend wouldn't be a long enough period to come
down, and you can't be working and coming down," Andrea says. "You just
feel like death and you have no energy."

Other side effects include an elevated heart rate, soaring pulse and blood
pressure rates, excessive excitation, uncontrollable body movements such as
twitching and teeth-grinding, loss of appetite, insomnia, anxiety,
depression, aggressive and sometimes violent behavior, psychosis and paranoia.

"I would sit out(side) and always think that there were people watching
me," Andrea recalls. "Every car behind you was a police car ... everybody's
undercover trying to bust you."

Sweet is familiar with the phenomenon. "People have been convinced that the
police have been following them for weeks ... and staking out their
residence and following their every move, and no one's been doing any of
that," Sweet says.

Chronic users can suffer from recurring skin sores, rotting teeth, kidney
and lung disorders, brain damage and permanent psychological problems.

Overdoses - some fatal - may occur.

"I lost so many friends," Andrea says. "Within a matter of two months I had
two friends OD, one died loaded in a car wreck ... two went to prison."

She finally decided the price that came with her addiction was too much to
bear.

"I knew that I only had my children left to lose," she says, "and I just
felt like I was done."

Innocent victims Andrea brought three children into the drug-driven chaos
of her life - Jessica, now 15, was born two years after Andrea did her
first line of crank, then came Jackie, 13, and Jordan, 11. She gave birth
to her fourth child, Allie Jean Stepp, on Nov. 24.

After Andrea and the father of her three oldest children split up, Andrea
continued using meth with her boyfriend of five years, Dean Stepp. He
agreed to stop using meth shortly after Andrea did and has now been clean
for nine months.

"I was going to do it with or without him. I would've had to leave him if
he chose not to get clean," Andrea says. "Evidently, he was done."

Stepp currently works in a retail store, although he previously worked at a
local mill. Over the years, Andrea supported her family alternately by
working as a bartender and as a social services worker, although it was
hard for her to hold a job for any sustained period of time.

"The only reason he could is because he had a mindless job where he could
stay loaded," Andrea says. "He didn't have to talk to people and hold a
train of thought. He was pulling green chain."

There was consequently a great deal of financial instability in their home,
which was particularly hard on Andrea's oldest child, Jessica, who for a
long time, tried to deny anything was wrong.

"I was so young and so naive to everything ... I pretty much saw that we
were the perfect little Partridge Family," Jessica says, "but everything
was so well-hidden that we didn't know."

There were aspects of their lives that troubled Jessica, however, such as
the constant traffic through their house that came with her mother's
partying and drug dealing.

"She had people at the house, all kinds of weird people that could have
hurt us or touched us," she says. "It was just kind of an environment where
you really didn't feel safe."

Jessica was the first to notice the track marks on her mother's arms, and
she watched her do drugs one day when she had to stay home sick from
school. Although she says her mother tried to shield her from it, Jessica
watched from behind the door.

"I remember looking through the crack in the door and seeing my mom snort
something," Jessica says.

Andrea does not recall the incident, but says she typically locked herself
in a bedroom to hide her activity from her children.

Her mother's drug and alcohol use put extra burdens on Jessica, and later
her sister Jackie, who both found themselves assuming duties Andrea was
neglecting, such as child care and house cleaning. If Andrea stayed up too
late partying and was hung over in the morning, Jessica knew she would have
to miss class to get her brother and sister ready for school.

"When your parents that you rely on and you trust aren't there, then you
kind of lose that for everybody," Jessica says. "I've grown up thinking
that I'm the only person I can rely on."

Jackie, too, realized all was not right in her world.

"I was scared," Jackie says. "I didn't want anything to happen to them. I
was afraid that they would get the cops called on them or something like that."

Her fears were realized on March 3, 2000, as she was taking a nap. "They
came in and just tore everything up," she says, recalling a police raid at
their home. "I was crying because I was so scared."

She watched as her mother was placed in handcuffs and put on the couch and
their house was searched by strangers with guns.

"They thought we had a meth lab, but it was all just kind of a mistake,"
Andrea said.

No lab was found, but the search did turn up paraphernalia including
syringes, plastic bags, a marijuana pipe, two residue-stained plastic
canisters and a set of scales. Police couldn't tie the materials to either
Andrea or Dean, however. She was cited for possession of less than an ounce
of marijuana and released, and he was arrested when he pulled into the
driveway for driving while suspended.

Andrea would not be as lucky the next time. A year later she was pulled
over by police and arrested for drug possession and driving under the
influence of an intoxicant after they found an ounce of methamphetamine in
the car.

" I'm an addict" Today it has been 11 months and eight days since Andrea
last used methamphetamine. As she has done almost every day since she quit
using, she devotes some of her time to sharing her thoughts and experiences
with other members of her 12-step program.

"Hi, my name is Andrea, and I'm an addict," she says to a small gathering
of recovering addicts.

"Hi, Andrea," responds a chorus of her fellow 12-step group members. Only
first names are used in the group, helping members to focus on recovery
instead of the stigma that often comes with being a recovering addict.

"Your addiction isolates you so much and you feel like you're the only
person that feels like you do, when, in fact, your addiction makes you all
the same," Andrea says. "You will all steal and you will all lie and do
whatever it takes to get high."

Andrea's first experiences with sobriety earlier this year were like a
fresh burst of sunshine in her life.

"I remember the first day that I walked outside ... it was like I'd never
seen colors before," she recalls. "I had been in a fog for so long and it
was just like being reborn. It just made me cry, and the first time that I
held my kids and I looked at them and there wasn't something between us,
it's absolutely a spiritual event."

Andrea volunteered to go public with her story out of a desire to tell
other addicts about the redemption she found in recovery. She also hopes
her story will serve as a warning to those who have never tried the drug.

"I refuse to feel like all this is for nothing, so I choose to believe that
all this has been an experience to make me stronger and to help other
people to get sober because it just doesn't feel like there's any way out
when you're out there."

She is also candid with her children about her past and brings them to
meetings with her.

"I try to have them involved in my recovery as much as possible because
they know where we were and how bad it was. I want them to know how it's
been every step of the way to try to deter them from going in the same
direction."

The lessons have not been lost on Jackie.

"It just gave me a preview of what my life would've been like and just what
I should stay away from," Jackie says. "I won't go near it. It's not cool."

She is grateful to her mother for fighting to stay clean to save their family.

"Oh my gosh, it's so much better," she gushes. "I always know where (she's)
going to be, I never have to worry ... we're a lot tighter, I tell her
everything, she tells me everything, kind of in a mother-best friend kind
of way."

Jessica says they are still adjusting to having a mother who now takes an
active interest in their lives.

"It was easier to manipulate the fact that she was always wasted ... to get
myself out of trouble and now I can't do that," Jessica says. "You get used
to living with a person and how that person is and how that person acts ...
once that person that you know so well has changed ... you have to learn
how to live with them again."

Andrea is sympathetic - and apologetic - and is still struggling to come to
terms with the damage she caused her family.

"They've grown up to be wonderful kids in spite of me, and now we're
learning how to live together," she says. "The first thing you have to do
is come to terms with all the damage you've done to yourself and to your
family ... and take responsibility for it."