METHAMPHETAMINE TAKES LIVES, DESTROYS FAMILIES

JESSE ESTABROOK was a tough kid. He stood 6 feet 2, weighed 190 pounds and
played linebacker on defense and fullback on offense for the Coquille High
School football team.

When he carried the ball, he would try to run right through anyone between
him and the goal posts. "He loved contact," says his 78-year-old
grandfather, Don Radford. "That was what he liked about football; you hit
somebody and you don't get in trouble for it."

Jesse lived with his grandfather and grandmother, Jean Radford, during his
high school years. They loved him like their own son. They watched him play
a lot of football and take a lot of hard hits. But none was as hard as the
hit they took last Nov. 28 when a sheriff's deputy came to their home to
tell them Jesse had died in a Coos County Jail cell at age 18.

The deputy told the grandparents it was a seizure but they learned later
that Jesse had been picked up on an assault charge that morning for
punching somebody the night before. He was carrying some plastic bags
filled with methamphetamine when he was arrested and, while sitting in the
back of the patrol car, he ate the meth before officers could find it.

An autopsy showed the contents of three to four bags in his stomach, an
amount nearly 200 times that considered to be lethal.

Jesse probably thought he was tough enough to swallow that much meth, Don
Radford says, but he was wrong.

In Search Of A 'High'

Meth kills, as more and more people in Coos County and other parts of
Oregon are finding out. And when it doesn't kill, it often destroys its
abusers' lives and the lives of those around them.

Methamphetamine has been part of the Coos County drug scene since the
1980s. Some speculate that people began turning to the drug when local
timber and fishing jobs began to disappear and unemployment soared. Now,
authorities say many of the children of meth abusers also are hooked on it.

Meth is cheap, plentiful and easy to come by in Coos County. You can buy a
quarter-gram bag - enough for one hit - for about $20. It's usually a
powder that varies in colors from milkish white to yellow to light brown,
and it has a strong chemical smell. It can be snorted, injected or, in
chunk form, smoked.

Those who have used it say the first use produces an intensely pleasurable
rush and that the "high" from one dose can last up to 24 hours.

With repeated use, users find that they need to use more and more to
achieve the same rush. They switch to injections to get it into their
bloodstream more quickly, and the injections become more frequent as they
struggle to maintain their high.

Abusers often binge to stay high for days at a time, injecting every two or
three hours, never sleeping. They're full of seemingly boundless energy.
Near the end of the binge comes a "tweaking" phase when aggression,
paranoia or depression sets in.

The body finally gives out and crashes, and the user might sleep almost
around the clock for days at a time. Withdrawal follows the crash, along
with depression, possible thoughts of suicide, and an intense craving for
more meth. That craving can lead to more injections and start the cycle all
over again.

Extended use can lead to total dependency, former users say. " I needed it
to survive," says Lisa Culver Lindsay, 36, of Coos Bay, who started using
meth when she was 19 and managed to quit it for good after a year in jail
that ended last October. "I couldn't get out of bed without it."

Addiction Leads To 'Ugliness'

Meth addicts lose weight and often look gaunt. They become indifferent
about their personal appearance and the binge-and-bust cycle keeps them
from holding down jobs, making it difficult for them to meet their family
respon-sibilities.

Drug enforcement authorities say methamphetamine can create addicts more
quickly than most drugs and leads to criminal behavior because addicts
often steal to support their habit or commit violent acts while tweaking.

In his 25 years with the Oregon State Police in Coos Bay, Detective Dale
Oester has seen a lot of the ugliness resulting from meth abuse. In
addition to domestic disturbances and theft - first from family members,
then from the larger community - it also triggers violent tendencies that
lead to assaults and sometimes homicides, he says.

People can also do "horrendous sexually deviant things" while under the
influence of meth, he says, some of which involve children.

Nancylee Stewart, a child welfare services manager with the state Community
Human Services office in Coos County, says she has seen it all: a meth
abuser's neglected 3-year-old child wandering down a major road, babies
lagging in physical and mental development because their mothers used meth
while pregnant, children exposed to toxic chemicals in meth labs, kids
slapped around by parents who are tweaking.

Seeing those kinds of things causes anger, grief and stress for people in
her agency, Stewart says. What keeps child welfare workers going, she says,
is the thought that they may be able to rescue such children, improve their
lives, and maybe help meth-addicted parents shake their habit and put their
families back together again.

Sometimes, she says, the workers know that the happiest ending possible is
to permanently remove children from a meth-shattered home and put them up
for adoption.

Support Groups Can Help

Why do people start using a drug with such a potential for destruction?

To get a new high. To escape an abusive relationship. To make up for some
past hurt. Even to lose weight. Those are some of the reasons given by
former users now participating in support groups to help them stay "clean."

Lisa Lindsay quit meth and returned to it numerous times over the years.
She gave up one of her babies to her mother and periodically lost two
others to child welfare authorities. She said faith in God finally helped
her get and stay clean. Two of her children remain with her.

Lindsay helped start a faith-based support group at North Bend's
Celebration Center, where she is a volunteer. Sexually abused as a child,
she says methamphetamine initially "filled something inside me that nothing
else filled." And when it didn't do that anymore, she found herself too
addicted to quit.

Emery Sutherland, 21, also of Coos Bay, just got out of prison after
serving time for burglary and theft. He stole to support a meth habit
developed at age 14. Now a member of the Celebration Center support group
and one other group, he has vowed to stay clean.

Sutherland was using marijuana when some friends urged him to try meth, and
he says he loved being able to stay wired for days. It pains him now to
realize that his meth use led him to cut his family out of his life for
several years, develop a criminal record and do things totally out of
character.

He and a "crime partner" used to use billy clubs to beat people and steal
their dope, he says, and sometimes while walking down the street, he would
punch a stranger just for something to do.

Jesse Takes A Wrong Turn

No one is sure how long Jesse Estabrook had been involved with meth. Oester
says he had been known to use illegal drugs and the amount of meth he
ingested the day he died was consistent with what a dealer would have.

Jesse was doing well in school and seemed to enjoy life, his grandparents
say, until he injured his shoulder during his junior year and found out he
couldn't play football his senior year.

"He loved football," Radford says. "When he found out he couldn't play, he
didn't care about nothin' or nobody. I never seen a kid go down like he did."

The grandfather says he had been concerned that Jesse might be abusing
drugs since he came to live with him at age 13. He asked Jesse about drugs,
told him nothing good could come from them, even required him to take
random urinalysis tests to detect drug use.

Jesse was a good boy, the grandparents say, but he had a temper. One day
last October, he became angry and threw a gallon of milk at his
grandfather's feet. "It scared me," Radford says.

He called the sheriff's office and had Jesse picked up. The young man went
to court, and the judge ordered him to stay away from his grandparents'
home. Although there was concern that he might be a danger to them, Radford
says they didn't fear Jesse and wanted him back.

Jesse started staying with friends, here and there, Radford says. He
dropped out of Coquille High and opted for an alternative school to finish
the one class he needed to graduate.

The meth involvement may have started then, the Radfords say, as Jesse hung
out more and more with "the wrong crowd." The fight that landed him in jail
was apparently over remarks someone made about his girlfriend.

When he was booked into jail, Jesse asked to see a jail nurse and told her
he had eaten some bad mushrooms. He refused to let her take any of his
vital signs, authorities said, and the jail staff decided to check on him
every 15 minutes.

About two hours after the checks began, he was found dead.

The Coquille High gym was packed for Jesse's memorial service. The minister
conducting the service urged the young people there to remember what
happened to Jesse and to make the right choices about drugs.

Members of this year's senior class, with whom Jesse would have graduated,
will wear a pin bearing his picture on graduation day.

The Radfords say that if anything good comes from his death, it will be to
show the community's young people what drug abuse can lead to.

They wholly support a growing community movement in Coos County to combat
meth abuse and say it's about time. Tears welling in her eyes, Jean Radford
asks, "How many more young people will we have to lose?"

Related:

Meth menace: A nonprofit agency is trying to fight the devastating drug