METH IN ALABAMA: THE DRUG'S EFFECT

Instant Allure Of Meth Countered By Debilitating Aftermath

Shelli Garner lost everything by her 30th birthday. Her job, her child, her
family, each disappeared in four years, as methamphetamine transformed the
loving mother into a desperate addict, one whose criminal record stretched
from Georgia to Texas.

Then, in a burst of flames on one September night, Garner nearly lost her
life. She has the scars to prove it, though her recollection of the years
sometimes remains blurred, a haze.

It all stretched back to one night when Garner, at age 26, went clubbing
with one of her girlfriends. She felt empty, alone. The divorce was final,
and she wanted a drink. She never realized her life would soon change for
the worst, that it even could.

Garner was divorced, and working another dead-end job at a sock mill in Fort
Payne, in northeastern Alabama.

A man in the club approached the women, and they soon began drinking and
talking. He invited Garner and her girlfriend back to his place, an offer
she would ordinarily never accept. But these were extraordinary
circumstances. He had meth.

Since the late 1990s, the illegal stimulant methamphetamine has drawn more
and more users into its grip in Alabama because of its strength, cheap cost
and highly addictive nature. The presence of the drug has grown to epidemic
proportions in the state, destroying families and testing law enforcement
agencies, while spreading every day.

Users can smoke, snort or inject the drug. A gram of meth costs less than a
gram of coke, and the highs can last hours longer.

GETTING HOOKED Garner smoked it. She took her first hit inside that man's
home, and was instantly hooked.

"It was what I had been looking for my whole life. It filled up the
emptiness inside," Garner, now 32 and no longer using meth, said. "I always
wanted to feel like that, I was hooked from then on."

During the next few months, Garner worked through the week, and used meth on
the weekends. She lived with her mother then, and her 2-year-old son, in a
trailer in Ider, a small community in northeastern Alabama.

After about eight months, she started using on weekdays, and then every
chance she got.

"I met a guy that I was addicted to, too, and he was addicted to meth,"
Garner said. "He used it intravenously, so it didn't take me long after that
to get into trouble and for everything to come crashing down."

LOSSES BEGIN During the first year of her addiction, Garner's ex-husband
talked her into leaving their son at his place. Soon, he filed for, and was
granted, complete custody. It was the first in several personal blows to
strike Garner because of her addiction.

Once in early 2000, Garner and her boyfriend sat outside Sam's Club, the
wholesaler, in Beaumont, a small city in Texas, and debated whether one of
them should go inside and buy matches. They didn't want just one or two
boxes, but 2,000, enough to carry back home and trade to one of the meth
cooks for some dope.

By now, Garner, unemployed and in the depths of a miserable and costly
addiction, had begun making such trades regularly. She'd drive to Sam's Club
and other stores and, if she had the guts at the time, go inside and buy the
common household ingredients used in making meth, such as matches, cough
syrup, Red Devil lye and batteries.

She and her boyfriend had also started mixing together chemicals inside a
back bedroom at Garner and her mother's trailer, though they had yet to try
to make genuine meth.

Security guards in such retail giants had started keeping an eye out for
anyone buying large amounts of these products. They'd call the police, and
by night's end, the person buying the meth ingredients could be in jail on
manufacturing charges.

Since the late 1990s, meth labs have become an increasing presence across
the nation and in Alabama, where anyone can set up shop following simple
recipes from the Internet. The labs can be small enough to fit inside a
briefcase or car, but are mostly found inside rural homes. They're extremely
dangerous because of the chemicals involved in the cooking process.

FIRST ARREST In front of Sam's Club, neither Garner nor her boyfriend could
get up enough nerve to go inside. They hadn't slept in days, their minds
were strung out, and their bodies tired, so they decided to leave Beaumont
and return to Alabama.

But while driving out of town along a Texas highway in the early morning,
they met face to face with the police, who trailed and then stopped them
after Garner's boyfriend apparently swerved the car. An officer asked
Garner's boyfriend if he could search the car, and he consented. Beneath the
front passenger seat, where Garner sat, the officer found about 1/4 of a
gram of meth and some syringes.

"I didn't know what to think," Garner said. "I'd never been in any trouble.
Of course, it was all my fault ecause I didn't put that stuff in my
britches."

Garner was locked in jail 36 hours. She thought about the terrible turn her
life had taken, and resolved to do better. She would quit meth, and she
would stay away from her boyfriend.

"But that didn't last long," she said.

Nor would the Texas arrest be her final. During the next year, Garner would
face possession charges three more times, once in Georgia and twice in
Alabama. Each time, she would resolve to do better, to quit the drug.

BACK TO ALABAMA After her release from jail, Garner reunited with her
boyfriend. She also returned to an empty mobile home in northeastern
Alabama. Her mother, unable to handle Garner's behavior, went to live with
relatives in Texas.

"I could see what I thought at the time was disgust in her face, but really,
it was sadness," Garner said. "She told me in a letter that she wasn't
coming back, that she was moving to Fort Payne. Up until the day she took
her stuff, I honestly didn't believe she would. Everything went straight
down hill from there."

Garner hung around dealers who let her watch them cook meth, and she picked
up on the simple recipe. She returned home and tried to copy the procedure,
basically troubleshooting. Soon, she went from mixing chemicals in the back
bedroom to operating her own full-blown lab.

She perfected her technique, and made her own meth. The first time she made
the drug, she recalled, was more enlightening than the first high.

"I thought, eI'm finally going to have what I want and not have to worry
about buying it from somebody,'" she said.

So she cooked. She cooked and she used, and her life slipped further and
further into decline. She lost weight, from 130 pounds to 118. She rarely
slept, and the days meant nothing, so bills went unpaid, court dates
forgotten.

"I looked like a skeleton," she said. "I never looked in the mirror. I hated
what I saw, and I couldn't handle it."

NIGHT OF TRAGEDY In the fall of 2000, the power company shut down the
electricity to the mobile home. Garner had failed to pay four months' worth
of power bills, and she faced losing the trailer to foreclosure. Still, she
refused to stop brewing meth.

One night, some male friends, including her boyfriend, lugged a power
generator up the hillside. Garner lit candles inside the mobile home, and
set about making some meth. She said she needed the drug. They all needed it
bad.

While mixing the ingredients, Garner placed Coleman fuel over one of the
candles, on an open flame. She'd always warned others about being cautious
with open flames, and now found herself making the same dangerous mistake.

"I had just been up so long and so messed up and when I did I flung my arm
up ecause I knew what I had done and it went all over me," she said.

The flames shot over Garner, engulfing her arms, her chest, her face. She
rushed away, screaming.

One of the men ripped off her sleeveless shirt, then her bra, also engulfed
in flames.

Garner ran through the trailer, striking walls, swiping at her burning
chest, her face. Chasing behind, blanket in hand, her boyfriend snatched
Garner and threw her to the ground. Somehow, whether with the blanket or his
own body, Garner's boyfriend smothered the flames. She screamed. She cried,
she screamed. She cried.

"Be quiet, you're going to wake up the neighbors," one of the men barked.

When Garner grabbed the hose in the yard, she drenched herself, thankful the
utility company hadn't shut off the water. She stood there, for who knows
how long, as the men cleaned the trailer, trying to get rid of the meth and
the ingredients.

"I was standing alone with the hose over me," she said. "When I got to
crying too much, they put me in the truck and drove down to my boyfriend's
mother's home, and they put me in a tub of water."

They planned to leave her there in the tub, with no hospital treatment,
which meant no questions or police suspicions. But it hurt. She tried to
tell them, but her teeth only chattered. She tried again, but slipped into
shock.

They filled gallon jugs with water and carried Garner to the pickup. It was
at least 25 miles to the hospital in Chattanooga, so they poured water on
Garner the entire way. She ached, the flesh along her arms, her chest and
her face toasted.

"This girl was pouring water over me, and I remember asking her how much
longer and she said, eHoney, we still lack so many miles and we're running
out of water,'" Garner said.

Everything went dark.

Then she suddenly woke.

"What happened," the doctors in the hospital asked. "What happened?"

The only truth to come out was her name, birthday and Social Security
number. She can't remember exactly what she told the doctors o maybe the
burns came from a "house fire."

It took the doctors six days to stabilize Garner before even considering
surgery, because she had eaten nothing during the past week. The doctors
took nine skin samples from her legs and performed skin graphs on her arms,
chest and stomach, each suffering third-degree burns.

Garner remained in the hospital two weeks, despite the doctor's request that
she stay six. She had no insurance, and she wanted to go home.

RELEASE AND RETURN She lived with her sister after leaving the hospital,
signed up for the local treatment center and walked around bearing witness
to folks about the dangers of meth. Then the boredom and pain became too
much for Garner, and she took another hit.

"It helped with the pain, you know, what had happened easier to take, or so
I thought," she said.

It seemed she would once again spiral downward.

But help came from what she considered an unlikely source.

In the months after the accident, Garner was arrested for possession of meth
in Georgia.

"I was sitting in the back of the cop car, and I prayed," Garner said. "I
told (God) I couldn't do it anymore, and surrendered to the fact that I was
an addict. A calm and a peace came over me and it was unreal."

She spent 38 days in jail, which gave her enough time to clear her head,
more than a month of being forced to avoid meth.

And because of the two arrests in Alabama, Garner enrolled in drug court.
She attended regular counseling and took regular drug tests, and, in
exchange, avoided serving more time.

Because of drug court, the 38 days in jail, her desire and her faith in God,
Garner said she was able to quit meth.

"I still wanted to get one more high in before I started drug court, but God
was looking out for me because I couldn't find none," Garner said. "Now, I
haven't done meth in two years. God was looking out for me."

She hasn't had meth since June 28, 2001. She continues to stay busy, to
remind herself of those four years. She works during the week at a new job,
one she enjoys, and she lives with her mother again.

Garner spends most weekends with her son.

"You've got to have something higher in your life," Garner said.