LIVING LIFE LOST IN DRUG HAZE

Bad memories are what keep Jonathan from using drugs. Now 27, clean for a
year and recently moved from a halfway house in Attalla, he realizes that
he lost six years of his life to drug addiction and running from police.
"When you're there and going through it," he said, "you get hardened from
being that way, you know? You don't realize this is not normal.

People don't do this, have to arrange times for people to call your house
and be so secretive and keep up with lies." Jonathan swishes when he walks.

His saggy jeans drag the ground. It seems to be an effort for him to move
each foot forward with the denim dragging along, as if he were walking
through mud. He has walked through a sort of mire - a haze of cocaine and
other drug abuse spiked with moments of terror - and is just in the past
year scraping off the muck and starting over. Jonathan, like most children
who become addicted, tried his first beer at a young age, around 12 or 13.
Adults who have never done drugs might find it surprising that children in
this area say they have tried alcohol and cigarettes as early as fourth
grade. Drug use is widespread in this area, if one can judge by the number
of arrests made. In 2001, 729 adults were arrested for selling or
possession of controlled substances in Cherokee, DeKalb, Etowah and
Marshall counties, according to the Alabama Criminal Justice Information
Center Web site. Sixty percent of those arrests were made in Marshall
County alone. The largest number of both juvenile and adult drug-possession
arrests were for marijuana, but Marshall County had 153 adult arrests in
the category of other drugs besides opium, cocaine, marijuana and synthetic
drugs.

Marshall and Etowah counties each had two juveniles arrested for possession
of opium or cocaine in 2001. Selling drugs isn't confined to adults.

One juvenile was arrested for selling in Marshall County last year, and
another was arrested on that charge in Etowah County. Statistics were not
available for drug manufacturing arrests, but Marshall County Drug
Enforcement Unit Director Rob Savage said his agents have discovered 16
crystal methamphetamine labs in the county so far this year. An estimated
8.8 million people have tried methamphetamine at some time in their lives,
according to the 2000 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse quoted on the
National Institute on Drug Abuse Web site. In a 1999 survey by the
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 14.8 million of
the 287 million or so people in the United States said they had used
illicit drugs in the previous month.

Almost 67 million said they had used tobacco, and 105 million reported they
had used alcohol. Unlike most people who try alcohol or cigarettes at an
early age, Jonathan didn't quickly move on to illegal drugs.

He was strongly anti-alcohol and anti-drug throughout high school in
Decatur. After graduation he went to college.

The weekend after a long-term relationship ended, he got very drunk.

His resistance to drugs disappeared quickly. "Within three weeks I had
tried crystal, pot, coke and crack," he said. Then 20 years old, he used
drugs on the weekends.

Then he decided to sell meth. "It's not hard, once you're in the culture
for a while," he said. "People know you. It's just like working a regular
job. They know to come to you; they know they can trust you. Once you get
accepted, it's easy." Life in the drug culture is secretive and paranoid,
he said. "The hardest part was the constant fear of something happening:
the fear of the police coming in; the fear of being watched; the fear of
getting robbed; the fear of getting set up by somebody; the fear of being
followed," he said. "It's constantly something.

The fears are usually justified because you can't do that and get away with
it. There's just no way." Living in Marshall County, Jonathan was working
two jobs, and the owner of one of the businesses apparently thought so
highly of the young man that he was going to let him buy into the business.

That idea ended when Marshall County Drug Enforcement Unit agents arrested
Jonathan for selling drugs from the business. "At the time, it was when
crystal was just starting to kick up in Marshall County," he said. "I was
one of two people around the area that people knew of to go to (for it)."
The arrest didn't stop him. While waiting for a court date, he "floated" -
moved from place to place - still selling drugs. "I had stepped up
selling," he said. "I figured it's either all or nothing, so forget trying
to do anything right.

I went from selling crystal to selling everything." Acid and ecstasy were
the big sellers in his hometown of Russellville, while Marshall County was
"knee deep in meth." Not only was he in danger of being arrested again, he
was in danger even from his friends.

The paranoia that surrounds drug abuse can be a hazard for abusers. One
night he and his friends were using drugs and thought they heard a prowler.

Later that night Jonathan went to the car for something, got confused and
tried to go into the house next door. His friends heard him, thought they
had caught their prowler, and beat him senseless without realizing who he
was. "There (are) a lot of things that make me want to go use drugs, but I
don't have to now," he said. "People say they had this excuse to use or
that excuse to use. I didn't have to have an excuse.

I just wanted to be that way. "There was no morning after.

I used until I collapsed.

I woke up with my face in the drugs.

I would stay up until I passed out. When my body gave out, that was when it
was time to quit." Jonathan coasted along, disregarding his court date. The
courts issued several warrants for failure to appear, but he avoided arrest
until 2000, when he was stopped for a traffic violation and then jailed for
all those warrants. "I'd come to the end the last few months before I went
to jail," he said. "I was homicidal, suicidal -- I didn't care. There were
three years that every day I was messed up. In the end, the cocaine habit
was $100 or $200 a day, $500 on Friday and Saturday. "I never knew about
12-step programs, and I automatically assumed if I went to a treatment
center I'd have to pay." After serving short sentences in various city and
county jails, Jonathan went to court on the drug-trafficking case. His
attorney pleaded it down to a possession charge, and Jonathan was given a
four-year suspended sentence. A person in the Marshall County court system
found him a bed in a rehab center. "I still had thoughts of using, but
something told me it was time to quit," he said. "Being so alone in the end
turned me away from it." It's been a rough road to recovery. "There are
constant reminders of what you can't do," he said. "One of the hardest
things is know how easy it is to go out (and get drugs). Sometimes that
choice will ruin a whole day."