EX-METH ADDICT RETURNS TO SPEAK ON DRUG'S EFFECTS

Methamphetamine took its toll on Shelley Dhane and her family.

She was a slave to the drug for more than 10 years before she e-mailed The
Jonesboro Sun and agreed to talk about what she called "the real side of
drugs that haunts you forever" -- her personal glimpses of life as seen
from the wrong end of a syringe. Her August interview was included in a
series that focused on the drug and its impact on Northeast Arkansas.

Last Wednesday Dhane found herself addressing more than 50 Bay High School
Yellowjackets Against Drugs at the organization's annual awards banquet.
Educators, advisers, students and parents of students who participate in
the program were there to hear first-hand how addiction feels, how families
are ripped apart, how the 35-year-old mother of three financed their
existence with a clandestine meth lab and how, with rehabilitation, lives
once ruled by drugs can change for the better.

"The stuff engulfed me by accident," Dhane told the audience. "I didn't
plan to be drug addict."

She snorted powdered meth until her nose bled, she said. She ate it until
her stomach was in knots. She smoked it until her friends wanted her to share.

"Then I started shooting it into my veins," Dhane said. "It's a fact that
I'm not proud of. But I have to live with it for the rest of my life. When
I see these tracks, I don't see needle marks. I see the pain I've caused
everybody who loves me. For every shot of dope I did, somebody cried."

In the audience were Dhane's grandparents, Gene and Hazel Dudley; her
mother, Patty Hardin; and Dhane's two daughters, 14-year-old Rebecca
Sylvest and 17-year-old Michaela Norton, who serves as YAD's president.

"I've been clean off of drugs for almost a year now," Dhane told the group.
"My family has gone through a lot. The witnesses are right here."

Despite being sentenced in November to a year-long residential
rehabilitation program, Dhane still faces prison time as a result of a
Greene County probation violation, she said. Her fate will be determined
Tuesday when she makes what hopefully will be her final court appearance on
drug charges.

"As long as I had that dope in my pocket, I had money," she said. "I had
anything I could want" -- except the stuff that adds quality to living, she
added.

Because the drug's veil of deceit masked life's goodness, the little things
that most folks revel in slipped by her unnoticed, she said.

"These kids were growing up," she added through a stream of tears. "They
begged for my attention, and I just could not give it to them."

Drug use disrupted her entire existence and that of her family, she said.
Although both of Dhane's daughters were present at the event, her son
Michael experienced his own scrapes with the law and now seeks to turn his
life around through Job Corps. At least one of her former boyfriends
remains in prison on drug convictions.

"I ended up getting possession charges," she said. "Paraphernalia charges.
Misdemeanor and felony probation. At one time I was on four probations at
once. Craighead County. Greene County. The cycle goes on and on."

Her own addiction led her to search out cheaper avenues of supply, which
resulted ultimately in a back-yard cottage industry -- an illicit meth lab.
She had stopped dabbling and started cooking, she said.

"I was a thief," Dhane said. "I was a liar. I was a cheater. I was
everything you could imagine except honest and good."

She cleaned up time and again. Then came the final shot.

"That was almost my last breath," she said. "I overdosed. That's what it
took for me to realize I had a problem."

But her life changed when she was arrested again, she said. She was tossed
in jail, where she met a woman who taught her to pray.

"The one thing I regret is that my babies were not brought up in church,"
she said. "I never taught my babies how to pray."

Her days start at 6 a.m. with her job at a Little Rock restaurant. She goes
"home" at 3 p.m. to Recovery Centers of Arkansas, where she pays $75 a week
to live. Then comes counseling.

"I still attend AA and NA meetings, and I go on a regular basis," the
former drug user said. "Yes, and church, too."

Counseling professionals emphasized that the odds are against her. Lakeside
Mental Health Systems needs and assessment counselor Tammy Smith was quoted
as saying that statistics indicate for every 10 people who enter recovery
programs, one person succeeds, one person dies and the remaining eight relapse.

"There are a lot of things I wish I could go back and change," Dhane said.
"But I can't go back. I can only go. Today I find that there is life out
there without drugs."

But it's one day at a time, she said.

"We do a lot of praying now," she smiled through her tears. "God is good.
God has saved me from myself."