BREAKING DOWN METH MANIA

Buster is 60 now, with muscular, tattooed arms and a weathered face.
He admits to years of methamphetamine use. "I cooked my own at 99
percent pure," he said, then talked with abandon about the years he
manufactured methamphetamine.

Taylor is 31, with a trim beard and eyes that look straight into yours
as he talks. His full name suggests the title "Dr." could have
prefaced it, except that he, too, used and cooked methamphetamine for
years.

The immediate difference in the these two men is that one has stopped
using and manufacturing meth, served a sentence for his crimes, and is
now living free. The other sits in jail, facing a 30-year federal
prison sentence. He's been drug-free for 16 months, and that clean
time was prison induced.

When they tell their stories, there are more similarities than
differences.

Buster's tale

"My best friend and I worked through the nights and still had to be
able to open (their business) in the morning," Buster said. "Try some
of this, he said to me one day." That was Buster's first time to use
meth.

"I got hooked. I didn't know what I was getting into when I started
it." That was in the 1980s and that was California, when and where
people first grabbed hold of meth mania before it traveled eastward.

Grandiose thinking and an altruistic heart combined to put Buster in
the methamphetamine business. "I wanted to make enough money to start
a day-camp for underprivileged children," he said. He bought a lake
and built bunk houses, financed by meth sales. "Word got out about the
drug and pretty soon people were flying in from all over the country
to meet me and learn from me about making the drug."

Buster said his meth business grossed $1 million weekly, and he kept
the momentum up for about 10 years. During that time, his team
consisted of about 83 people "in the field," gathering the necessary
ingredients for him. He also maintained three bodyguards and had one
man helping him make the meth. His dream of a children's camp got lost
in the process.

He praised his own product, saying he turned out "ice" that was 99.9
percent pure for his own use. He laced meth with ether to give it
extra zip. It's also cut with Mannitol, a sugar substitute, laxatives,
and arsenic for that extra high, Buster explained.

Authorities caught up with him in Springfield, Mo., in 1992, after he
moved the business eastward.

"They (authorities) showed up at my wife's house and asked me if I was
the one producing the meth. I said yes. I came clean, in every sense
of the word," he explained.

For three weeks, jail was home as he led them to motel rooms where
he'd conducted business, to a storage shed where he stored the
precursor chemicals used to make the drug, to other labs. He worked
with their chemists. "Because I cooperated, never lied to them, I got
off real light," Buster said. He received probation, a fine, and went
through a drug treatment program.

During those years, Buster said, he lost a front tooth to a hit from a
gun. "I've seen so many families go down the tubes because of my
drugs. I started feeling remorse before I got arrested, I couldn't
stand to see it any more," he said. He talked about families who lost
everything, men who would do anything, even kill people, for the drug.
He spoke of his dealers who are in prison for murder. He spoke of a
woman, 19, he met a long time ago, now dead.

"She knew I was cooking. She was a smart girl, but stupid. Opened her
mouth in a bar in Springfield. If you know somebody who cooks, you
keep your mouth shut," he said. "They found her one day in Springfield
Lake with a bullet in the back of her head, from some other dealer or
cook, I didn't know who. But, they took it upon herself to silence
her."

People die because of drug trafficking. "It's serious money,
organizations, violent." He said he knew people who didn't think
straight or felt somebody cheated them. "They took out a gun and shot
somebody.

"I don't feel responsible," Buster said. "Everybody makes their own
choices. I made mine, I paid for them and am still paying."

Buster hangs on to his dream of helping children. "I wish I hadn't
gotten as big as I did and I could finish with that day camp. I love
kids and really feel for the underprivileged kid."

Today? Buster said, "I'm in pain a lot of the time. I think meth use
has affected my i.q. and my short-term memory. I can't think in my
head as fast as I used to." He has neurological damage, placing him on
the disabled list. "It could have been from anything, but I think it
was the meth. It didn't cost me anything - until now.

He continued, "I'm rich in so many other ways." His wife left him
immediately when he was arrested. "She was a Sunday School teacher and
kind of lost face. I don't blame her." He said they've gotten back
together and, "We've been happily married ever since."

He's had employment. "Menial labor, slinging turkeys down the line.
I've stuffed foam into a compactor and worked at a casket factory." He
finally got a job offer that relocated him to the Dallas area and has
settled in Grayson County, where he volunteers as he can with the
Salvation Army.

Taylor's tale

This man could be Buster's age when he finally walks out of federal
prison. He's looking at a 30-year sentence if found guilty of
manufacture of methamphetamine in quantities over 2,000 grams and with
a firearms charge.

He called his childhood normal. He was the son of a rodeo cowboy and
grew up around horses. He married at 19 and had two children in as
many years. By 21, his marriage was on the rocks because of alcohol.
"I drank all the time." But, he held himself together enough to join
the National Guard and buy into a relative's business.

"A friend introduced me to meth and it spiraled from there," Taylor
said. "I was a weekend warrior in both ways." At 24, he took a job in
security work and, as supervisor, began working double and triple
shifts. The meth allowed that, he said, although it ate up the paycheck.

"I fell out one day, just couldn't keep going. I lost a pretty good
job."

By then, he had built a new house for his family. "I started dealing a
little bit to pay for the habit. A friend said, 'Know anything about
chemistry?' We got a book and set up a lab." He said the first two
batches didn't work. Then someone showed him how to get it right. "He
only had to show me one time."

At first, he said, he only produced enough meth for his own use, but
later people started asking for it. "I set up a trade for dope,"
Taylor said. "I'd tell them to go get the pills or the anhydrous
ammonia. A few hours later, they'd be back."

Taylor said he never cooked around his children, but then changed that
later to, "I finally got sloppy and let it in the house." At first, he
was cautious, suiting up in a skin diving suit and latex gloves, but,
"After a while, I ignored the safety stuff, too." He went from cooking
an ounce to manufacturing five pounds a month.

During that time, paranoia hung around like skunk's odor. "It was fun
to some extent, but it gets old, looking over your shoulder and
worrying about whether you can drive into town," Taylor said. "I
worried constantly, do I have warrants? Anything I forgot about in my
truck? Did somebody leave something in here?" He said everyone is
paranoid about confidential informants. "Everybody's a snitch.
Everybody works for the cops." He said he couldn't trust and couldn't
be trusted "when I'm high."

He and others involved with him put up surveillance equipment. "Three
thousand five hundred dollars worth. We thought we could see them
coming." It didn't do any good the day deputies arrived.

On the day it ended for Taylor, he said he was outside and his cousin
looked up and said, "Oh, (expletive)" as his 2-year-old son walked up
to him. His cousin dove to the ground, and the boy kept walking toward
him, calling "Daddy." "I picked him up and backed into the shed." He
kicked it shut and barred it, he said. "The men in black (Special
Response Team) used a battery ram on the door and my son was squalling
and bawling." He was afraid to open the door, he said, because he had
an arsenal of guns in that shed, a collection he'd had built for
years. He said he took a pocket knife out, laid it on a table, then
opened the door.

"Stop, you're scaring him," Taylor pleaded.

"Put him down," a man in black said.

"I let go and went backwards. One grabbed my son and took off running.
They took me down and patted me down and put on the handcuffs."

He lay on the ground watching as officers pulled his father-in-law out
of the house and placed all four of his children on a trampoline.

"They called my dad to come get them. I signed over custody
instantly."

He later learned, through letters and visits, that an older son
regularly waked up scared at nights, dreaming about the men in black
coming in.

"I was so screwed up, I didn't think about how it affected them,"
Taylor said. He spoke with softness of a letter one son had written
him after a visit at the prison, saying he had become more like Taylor
was years ago.

Taylor received a five-year prison sentence on the charges. He said he
did all the required work in prison and was due to be released on
parole in December. Then, a brother gave him the really bad news while
visiting. "He was scanning the Herald Democrat Web site," Taylor said,
"and up popped my name." That's how Taylor learned the federal
authorities had filed against him.

Texas Department of Corrections prison has helped reshape his life, he
said. "At TDC, I accepted God." He took a theology course at one
prison. "It makes a difference. Prison ministries has got every bit as
much of an affect as the drug programs offered," Taylor said.

When asked, "What do you think will keep your kids off dope?" Taylor
answered, "I think about that every day. Sad to say, the only thing I
think of is if what is happening to me (will deter them.)" He said he
tells them with every visitation and writes them, "This is the result
of messing with drugs."

At Grayson County Jail, where he's been since July waiting federal
court trial, he plays cars and watches television. He and his cell
mate study the Bible, he says.

Asked about the other treatment programs in prison, he said, "I signed
up the first time (for a 12-step program) to get out of prison. That
wasn't so bad. But, when I went to a (required) self-help class, it
Jonesed the (expletive) out of me." He said they showed videos for two
hours each time, showing people shooting up and smoking dope. "I left
there shaking, I couldn't sleep. That's all I thought about was how I
was going to get out and do it (drugs) again." A prison chaplain
helped him through that crisis, he said.

Asked, "How does meth make you feel?" Taylor answered with two words,
"Like Superman." He once went 19 days without eating or sleeping, he
said, and dropped from 285 to 185 pounds in 30 days.

"I know one thing. It went from me not knowing anybody who did drugs
to a week later not knowing anybody who didn't do it.

"I pray to God every night he'll forgive me. I've shown people how to
do it (drugs) and that's my worst remorse," Taylor said. "I don't know
anyone who has done the dope I've cooked and walked away without doing
it again."

He offered the simple advise, "If you haven't done it, don't."