THE PROBLEM WITH METH

She lowers her head as she comes up the steps. Her dull, stringy brown
hair falls in front of her face shielding her from the flash of
cameras. She is one of more than 30 suspects arrested in an undercover
sting operation in the City of Amity. The early morning raid on Oct.
26, 2001, had law enforcement officials from at least six different
departments taking into custody suspected methamphetamine users,
addicts and manufacturers.

The woman can be no older than 30, but she has the face of someone
twice that age. Her emaciated body could not make scales tip at 100
pounds. Though it is a crisp, cold fall morning, she wears only jeans
and a dingy white, short-sleeved, midriff sweater. Her exposed arms
and navel reveal a body covered in sores -- some healing, some fresh,
some infected -- all telltale signs of her addiction. Her teeth are
decayed. Her cheeks sunken. Her complexion has a sickly hue like that
of a person with jaundice. Her eyes show no emotion at all. She has
the vacant stare of someone whose soul has been lost to the drug
methamphetamine.

""Mommy has to take her medicine.' Their kids will tell you that every
time," said Brian Roberts (not his real name), who assisted in the
Amity arrests. "With meth addicts, you get in, and there's no food in
the house, no heat, no air. You look around the kitchen counter, and
there's sex toys where pots and pans should be. You talk to the kids:
"Where do you sleep?' "Well, I sleep wherever a pile of clothes is
at.'"

Roberts, Clark County's undercover Group 6 narcotics agent, has worked
not only in the Amity drug bust, but with meth cases throughout Clark
and surrounding counties. He can attest to the way the illegal drug
methamphetamine can very quickly take over someone's life.

Meth, known on the street as crank, speed, crystal or ice, is a
psychostimulant that produces a euphoric high accompanied by increased
energy and attention and decreased appetite. Scientifically, the drug
works by releasing high levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the
parts of the brain controlling the sense of pleasure. In a more
practical sense, "it exhilarates you," said James Cole, (not his real
name) a former meth addict turned police informant.

"I thought it was the greatest high that there ever was," Cole said.
"I mean it gives you energy.

"You just want to go and go. It makes you want to talk a lot -- talk
about certain things that you're feeling and experiencing. You'll sit
and talk for hours."

The burst of energy and the feel-good high keep users coming for more
of the drug. Methamphetamine can be snorted, orally ingested, smoked
or injected, and each method produces a slightly different "high."
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), smoking or
injecting meth causes a short-lived but extremely pleasurable and
intense rush. Snorting and oral ingestion create a long-lasting
euphoric state, but it is less intense.

"I think people just have a natural tendency to want to have a good
time, and that's how it starts," Roberts said. "Nobody thinks "I'm
going to get addicted.' They think, "Well, I'll do it a couple of
times, and then I won't do it any more.'"

Unfortunately, Roberts said, a couple of times can easily turn into a
habit or even an addition. The addictive power of meth is debated, he
said. A user wants his drug, but there is not always the physical
dependency for it that comes with other drugs such as cocaine, he
said. That was the case with Cole.

"I don't know if I could sit here and say I wasn't an addict. It has
just always been that I could shut it out. I would say "yeah, a person
that's done it that long was an addict,'" Cole said. He used
periodically for more than 20 years and habitually for more than two
years.

Cole's story, Roberts said, is typical. A number of people can use and
never reach a state of dependency on the drug, but others claim meth
is just as addictive as cocaine. It depends on the person, he said.
The universal agreement, however, is that they always crave the high,
to a point that it controls their lives.

"That's the problem with these drugs. These people lose their will to
work, so they don't have any money and their house goes to pot. They
spend whatever they earn on ingredients to manufacture meth. Their
kids are living with them, and they don't care if they see or live in
it or know anything about it," said Clark County Prosecuting Attorney
Henry Morgan.

The drug creates a cycle of addicts, Morgan said. The first addicts
run out of money, so they begin manufacturing meth to sell to support
their addictions, and, in that way, more meth addicts are born.

"When you're on meth, you don't even want a job, you don't even want
to think about a job," Cole said. "I would work for a week, do meth
for a week. Work for a week, lose my job, go to another job."

One of Cole's jobs was as a truck driver. A drug that keeps you awake
can be almost beneficial to a truck driver keeping long hours on the
road, he said.

"On a truck, you're going to do what they call road dope. It's high
speed chicken feed to stay awake and get your hours in," he said. "You
can buy meth and other uppers at just about everybody's truck stop."

The euphoric high and increased energy of meth come with serious side
effects. The drug suppresses the appetite, increases body temperature
and increases respiration, according to the NIDA. Meth is a drug with
which addicts commonly binge, taking repeated hits to stay high for
extended periods. Eventually, every person reaches a point, called
"tweaking," where no amount of meth can maintain a high, and the user
crashes. The crash may not come for days or even weeks.

"If someone's been on meth for a while, after about four of five
hours, you want another one," Cole said. "I've been up for 17 days at
a time, no sleep, no sleep at all. Eventually, it doesn't matter how
much you've done, you're going to go out -- if it doesn't kill you."

He said that he has seen people stay high as long as 24 days without
sleep. While on meth, users typically don't eat. They become
malnourished and sickly looking. Typical meth addicts, Roberts said,
will have a dramatic weight loss. Their hair becomes dull and
lifeless; their teeth begin to fall out; and their complexion changes
to a yellow hue.

Persons high on meth might have uncontrollable shakes; their eyes
twitch and they are unable to stay still. They may appear nervous,
Roberts said. The end result is that a meth addict ages quickly.

"I've seen friends go from looking 25 to looking 70 in a year," Cole
said. "Within a year's time, I've seen 15-year-olds look 40."

Another striking sign of methamphetamine abuse is sores all over the
body. Meth is a mild hallucinogenic, and users commonly think bugs are
crawling on them. They continually pick at themselves to get rid of
the bugs.

"They call it "crank critters,'" Roberts said. "It's part of the high.
They think something's on them so they just keep picking. Next thing
you know, they're all ate up and bleeding everywhere, and they keep
doing crank, keep picking at it so it gets infected."

Coupled with the "crank critters," meth users are also paranoid.
Morgan said that they believe that everyone is out to get them. A meth
user typically will not easily trust anyone. A user might become
something of a recluse.

"You're peeking out the windows, and you're always thinking someone is
there," Cole said.

According to Cole, a meth user's paranoia is realized in the image of
the "Ol' Meth Monster."

"They have the old saying the "Ol' meth monster's gonna get ya,'" he
said. "I tell you one time, I was sitting in a pick-up truck on a dead
end road at three in the morning. I did some meth, and all the sudden,
I looked up, and there the "Ol' Meth Monster is," he said. "He's
sitting on the hood of this truck talking, wearing an ole big hat and
an ole long coat. I go to locking doors, I turn the headlights on, and
he's gone. Turn them off, and he's right back out there talking to me,
pointing that finger. It's a trip."

A hallucination that real indicates a person has "over-amped" or
overdosed, Cole said. He admitted that the dream scared him.

Another effect of the drug is decreased inhibitions and increased
sexual awareness. The result -- meth and sex are common companions,
Roberts said. Cole recounted that oftentimes those who manufacture
meth will sell the drug for sexual favors. Older men might lure
teenage girls to the drug for that reason.

"When you've got meth, you've got sex." Cole said. "With everything
I've seen, a man manufacturing meth, he's got his eyes scoped on 14-,
15- and 16-year-old girls. He gives young girls a little bit of meth,
and then he's got them."

A meth addiction also creates a culture of crime, Morgan said. As
users become addicts, they run out of money to support their habit.
They begin to steal. In Morgan's mind, the complete elimination of
meth would mean the county would not need a bigger jail and law
enforcement would be less strained. There would be an overall
reduction in crime and even talk of increased taxes would disappear.
Streets would be safer without drivers high on meth. Many children
also would be better cared for, he said.

"All things considered, if they just did their drug, it would be
different. But when they don't have a job and they need that drug,
they pawn everything first. When everything's gone, they start
stealing. They start causing a major problem to society," Morgan said.

Cole agreed. In his case, however, it was not stealing, just fencing
stolen items. He said he found it safer and more profitable to
purchase stolen goods from thieves and sell them for a profit. In the
early days of his meth addiction when he was living in California, he
said that he lost a home and at least two vehicles to meth in just
seven to eight months. He came to Arkansas from California to get away
from the meth problem, but found that the drug was as pervasive here
as it was on the west coast. He said it took losing his son to walk
away from the drug.

"My oldest came to me and said it was either him or the meth. He was
18 at the time, and he left home. I didn't see him for four years,"
Cole said.

As a police informant working to develop charges against meth addicts,
Cole is required to stay clean. He said he and his son are close and
visit daily, but for other addicts he has this warning: "If you're a
user, you might as well face it, you're going to lose everything
you've got, from your possessions all the way down to your children."