Pubdate: Thu, 08 Dec 2005
Source: Phoenix New Times (AZ)
Copyright: 2005 New Times, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/640
Author: Sarah Fenske
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/testing.htm (Drug Test)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment)

Series: The Perfect Drug

METH TREATMENT

Meth addiction isn't impossible to beat -- but the treatment's not 
cheap. And good luck finding it

Pretty, blond, and poised, Jamie doesn't look like a meth addict. But 
she's been using for four years, since she was 19. She smoked some 
this morning. She smokes some every day.

She has to.

"I need it every morning to get started, and then on my lunch hour," 
she confesses. After her shift ends at the Phoenix call center where 
she works, she sometimes smokes again. "It depends on how much I have."

In some ways, Jamie is a meth success story: She has a job. She's 
never been arrested. She's not hideously pocked. Her teeth are 
straight and white.

But she knows full well the toll meth has taken on her: the cars 
repossessed, the jewelry pawned, the jobs lost.

Most of all, she hates that she's still under its power.

This is the most stable she's been in years. When she was with her 
boyfriend, the guy who got her started, things were crazy. He stole 
her mother's credit cards to buy meth.

They'd get spun on meth for days on end.

She didn't realize she was pregnant until she was almost six months 
along. He gave her stolen money orders to pay Planned Parenthood for 
the abortion. (She later repaid the money.)

A "friend" shot him, right in the gut. Still, they kept using.

She loved the high.

"I felt like I could do anything," she says. And she loved that it 
made her thin. She'd never been fat -- curvy, maybe. But her mom is a 
flight attendant, with the model-thin body that goes with the job. 
Jamie loved being just as skinny.

Her mother, Connie Irvine, was devastated.

She'd been a hands-on mom, even moving from Tempe to Ahwatukee 
because she thought the old neighborhood was going downhill. She 
wanted to shield her daughter from gangs and drugs.

Jamie, Irvine recalls, was a good kid who graduated high school a 
year early. Before she started using, her bedroom had prominently 
featured a "Tweakers Suck" poster.

"For all this to happen to my girl because of meth -- it was like she 
was bulletproof," Irvine says. "She was so ambitious. Everything was 
perfect for her. She was so determined. And then . . ."

There was hope for Jamie. She wanted to quit. With the right program, 
both mother and daughter are convinced she could have made it.

But both times Jamie packed her bags for rehab, the day ended in 
disappointment.

She never actually made it through the door.

At the first place, the director said they'd take her, but only if 
she tried Narcotics Anonymous first, and then outpatient therapy.

Jamie thought that was ridiculous. She knew she needed a total 
lifestyle change. She was smoking again later that day.

Later, mom and daughter went to the Salvation Army, which runs one of 
the few inpatient rehab centers for people who can't afford to pay.

But they wanted Jamie to pass a drug test before they'd admit her. 
And since she'd smoked that morning, she couldn't pass it.

That was on a Thursday. If she could stop using until Tuesday 
morning, they told her, they'd let her in.

Connie Irvine fretted.

"I'll call in sick," she told her daughter. "I'll be your shadow all weekend."

Jamie vowed she had it under control.

And so she did, through the weekend. She made plans to come to her 
mother's house Tuesday morning and they'd drive over together.

That morning, Connie Irvine got up and got ready to go.

She waited, and then, as her heart sank, she waited some more.

Jamie never showed up.

She was smoking again.

For the families caught in the middle, meth addiction can be a 
horrific roller coaster. Every promise to quit seems so sincere -- 
and maybe it is.

Often, though, it all ends in letdown.

"It's not even so much a matter of fun," says Mark, a construction 
worker who says he used meth "daily" from 1997 until a year ago. 
"Over a period of time, it's just impossible to get out of bed without it."

Politicians will tell you the drug is almost impossible to kick. 
"It's so highly addictive, you use it once, and you could be hooked," 
says Phoenix Councilman Dave Siebert.

Siebert's not alone. The idea of meth being a "super drug" that traps 
one-time users for life gets repeated again and again by lawmakers 
and their spokesmen. One oft-quoted statistic claims that no more 
than 1 to 5 percent of meth users manage to get clean.

It's one reason, perhaps, that politicians are so willing to ignore 
the treatment issue and instead focus on easier initiatives, like 
busting meth labs (see "Bad Medicine"). Treatment, the theory goes, 
is just a money pit.

The only problem?

It isn't true. Statistics overwhelmingly point to a more complex 
reality: Meth addiction is hard to treat, but can, in fact, be 
treated as successfully as drugs like cocaine and pot.

Which means that 5 percent figure is pure bunk.

"When asked about the source of numbers, speakers are uncertain about 
their origin," Richard Rawson, associate director of the UCLA 
Integrated Substance Abuse Programs, writes in a recent report on the 
topic. "In fact, no such data exist."

Rawson questions the motives of politicians who insist crystal meth 
can't be treated.

"The resulting conclusion is that spending money on treating 
methamphetamine users is futile and wasteful."

As treatment advocates point out, what Health and Human Services data 
actually show is that more than 12 million people have used crystal 
meth at least once. Only 5 percent of those 12 million -- fewer than 
500,000 -- have used it in the last month.

How is that possible?

The others didn't get hooked after one snort. Or they managed to quit.

That's a better percentage than people who tried cigarettes, notes 
Reena Szczepanski, executive director of New Mexico's Drug Policy 
Alliance, which pushes for legalizing marijuana but not harder drugs 
like cocaine and meth. The group is committed to fighting all drug 
abuse through treatment rather than prosecution.

"It's not helpful to say meth is so powerful you can't treat it," she 
says. "We've been through this with cocaine, with crack. It's 
something we say with every drug that comes along and is suddenly popular.

"But we've talked to treatment providers. And overwhelmingly, they 
say, you can treat this."

For example: The Iowa Consortium for Substance Abuse Research and 
Evaluation surveyed 362 drug addicts who were treated in 2003. Six 
months after discharge, 65 percent of meth users were still clean.

That was higher than pot smokers (only 53 percent managed to stop 
completely) and alcoholics (43 percent).

That doesn't mean that it's easy to kick meth addiction -- or that 
there's even overwhelming research in support of the programs 
considered most successful.

Scientific studies of alcohol rehabilitation models are relatively 
common; studies that look solely at meth users are not. Some studies 
do measure how many meth addicts complete treatment, or how many pass 
drug tests at the end of the treatment period.

Few follow up with their subjects even a full year later.

There are some things that people in the treatment community, 
however, mostly agree on.

One is that meth addiction is, in fact, more difficult to treat than 
alcohol addiction.

Another is that it's more expensive.

And the third is that no one -- from insurance companies to taxpayers 
-- wants to foot the bill.

Like cocaine, crystal meth is not physically addictive. Someone who's 
coming off a bender will have to sleep, sometimes for days on end. 
But they won't be experiencing a heroin-style detox.

It should make things easier -- but in some ways, it doesn't.

Treatment workers say serious meth abusers alter their brain 
chemistry so much that they can feel "foggy" for as long as two 
years, even after quitting.

"You're not going to recover from meth overnight or even in a year," 
says Ken Lucas, a spokesman for Valley Hope Arizona, which runs four 
inpatient facilities in the Phoenix area. "You're rewiring the brain, 
much more so than with heroin or alcohol or cocaine."

Treatment providers believe inpatient therapy is key.

"It really takes a dramatic change in lifestyle," Lucas says.

"If you're addicted, outpatient therapy is like throwing money from a 
moving car," agrees Jeffrey Taylor, a counselor and program advocate 
for the Phoenix Rescue Mission.

But few insurance providers will fund lengthy inpatient treatment.

Many require addicts try outpatient first, to prove they're serious 
by attending meetings. Even if they manage to do that, and get into 
treatment, few insurance plans cover more than a one-month stay.

It's just not enough.

"A 28-day program is not going to do any good with a crystal meth 
addict doing 10 big lines a night," Taylor says. "You've got to have 
six months or even a year."

Taylor's program, the Phoenix Rescue Mission, is one of the rare 
inpatient programs for indigents -- and it's willing to house them 
for years at a time.

But Taylor's only got 20 beds.

Programs like Valley Hope Arizona, meanwhile, cost $10,000 a month. 
So when insurance runs out, many addicts have no choice but to leave, 
vowing to make it with outpatient therapy sessions.

Maybe they're on the road to recovery. But it's hard not to go back 
when their friends start calling again.

"A lot of people go right back to their old playpens," Lucas says.

And those are the ones who make it to inpatient treatment in the first place.

A big problem, on a practical level, is that meth addicts often hit 
rock bottom much more quickly than drunks. Don Nichols is CEO of the 
Arizona Treatment Institute in Casa Grande, which does intensive 
outpatient treatment.

Alcoholics who come for treatment are typically employed, Nichols 
says, which means they can opt for a month's stay covered by insurance.

That's not true of meth users.

"Most of them are not going to be working by the time they come to 
treatment," he says.

For the truly indigent, the Arizona Department of Health Services 
provides treatment -- in Maricopa County, there are about 400 meth 
addicts under the care of ValueOptions.

In recent years, the department has seen the number of meth users in 
its system explode, says Christina Dye, the clinical services 
division chief. It's now working to tailor treatment for those people.

But there just isn't money to do everything they'd like.

For example: Dye's division is devoting more than $2 million in 2006 
to train its substance abuse providers under a system pioneered by 
the California-based Matrix Institute.

Thanks to its clinic in San Bernardino County, an area popular with 
bikers and thereby a longtime crystal meth hot spot, Matrix has 
carefully studied meth addiction. Its directors understand the 
challenges of keeping meth addicts coming to outpatient treatment.

Rehab depicted in the movies typically shows alcoholics working 
through family issues and confronting, say, their absent father. But 
Matrix associate director Michael McCann says his program determined 
that didn't work for outpatient therapy.

"If you take people this fragile and send them home after a session 
like that, more often than not, they're going to dive back into using 
again," McCann says.

Instead, the focus is on cognitive behavior skills. Learning to think 
differently. Learning to take control.

"The key," McCann says, "is often just making sure they come back the 
next time."

But despite the program's success, the health department won't be 
able to roll out training for it statewide in 2006, Dye says.

In fact, the division didn't receive any new funding to pay for it. 
It had to "find" the $2 million it plans to spend by cutting in other 
areas. And that's only enough for four pilot areas.

Maricopa and Pima counties were fortunate to be one of them. Addicts 
in Flagstaff aren't so lucky.

Alishia Hight used meth for the first time when she was 12, and by 
the time she should have graduated high school, she was a mess: 
Dating loser older guys because they had drugs. Staying up for days 
on end. Shooting the stuff straight into her veins.

"I didn't know how to drive, so I'd walk around people's 
neighborhoods and steal stuff from their cars," she admits.

A slender blonde with a quick smile, she's come far enough that 
brutal honesty is easy. "Every job I'd get, I'd lose because of drugs."

Then she got booked on a series of felonies -- all related to drug 
possession, but enough of them to be serious.

It wasn't her first brush with the law, but it was the first time the 
court gave her a choice: inpatient rehab or jail.

It was probably only because she was five months pregnant. (State 
health department guidelines give pregnant women priority for 
substance abuse treatment.)

But it worked.

She originally thought she'd be stuck in New Arizona Family for just 
30 days. After she got there, though, they told her she was staying 
put until the baby was born. And so she did, and then she stayed for 
another five months.

In rehab, she learned the things she'd missed in her years of 
snorting and shooting. She learned how to live.

In jail, she'd heard other girls talking about getting their babies 
back from Child Protective Services. She thought about the kids she'd 
seen, hanging around, while she and her friends were snorting meth.

She decided that wouldn't be her kid.

"I wanted my little boy to have slumber parties, and perfect 
Christmases," she says. "He wasn't going to miss out.

"And so I decided I was done."

She's stayed clean. Two years after her son was born, she married a 
guy who had also stopped using meth.

Now they have another little boy. They're both going to school and working.

"I wanted a family," Hight says. "And I don't want to do anything to 
mess that up."

But the courts don't take every case as seriously as they took Hight's.

The system can't afford it.

New Arizona Family has just 30 beds. In Hight's case, having a baby 
made her eligible for the government assistance that helped finance her stay.

If she hadn't been pregnant, her best hope undoubtedly would have 
been outpatient treatment.

Studies suggest she would have had a much harder time making it.

A 2005 study from UCLA's Integrated Substance Abuse Programs, 
published in the American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, surveyed 
350 meth users.

It found little statistical difference between patients who'd come to 
rehab because they were forced by court order and those who came willingly.

Overall, 70 percent of users relapsed within two years.

But 30 percent made it. And it's worth noting the factors that made a 
difference.

The study found a significant relationship between longer treatment 
times and success. "The strongest predictor," the authors reported, 
"is the number of months in treatment, with longer time in treatment 
associated with more positive outcomes."

Also significant: Addicts assigned to inpatient programs were 2.4 
times greater to finish treatment.

It's obvious why courts don't mandate inpatient programs for 
everyone. With such programs being as expensive as they are, most 
defendants would probably just end up back in jail because they 
couldn't afford to comply.

It's much harder to understand why probation officers don't insist on 
longer stints in outpatient therapy.

Tammy Quarelli, a substance abuse counselor with Dynamic Living, gets 
most of her clients through court order.

She claims good success with meth users, even on an outpatient basis, 
if she can get patients who are mandated to see her for six months.

But many probation officers set the bar much lower, she says.

"I get so mad when I see a referral for two months," Quarelli says. 
"The physical part, you can get done with that in a few days. But the 
psychological part -- that just goes on and on."

At 21, Georganne Bickle's daughter has been using meth for five 
years. In the photograph Bickle carries in her wallet, the girl is 
fresh-faced and beaming at her high school graduation, a perky kid in 
white robes and a funny hat.

"She's a beautiful girl," Bickle says, and then hastily corrects herself.

"She was a beautiful girl." Now her skin is pocked with the sores 
that plague serious meth addicts: "She's got meth bites."

Bickle's daughter, whom Bickle asked New Times not to name, once 
dreamed of being an actress. Instead, she's working as a stripper.

She's been to the emergency room, after taking meth mixed with rat 
poison. She's dropped out of college and stopped acting. She's been 
arrested, for assaulting Bickle while in a meth-induced rage. She's 
been in three different psych wards.

Bickle has spent five years seesawing between hope and despair.

"Every time she's gotten up to 90 days clean and sober, she's said to 
me, 'Thank you for pushing me into rehab. I want to go to college. I 
want to study film,'" Bickle says, and her dark eyes are weary.

"And as soon as she picks up meth again, all these dreams die. Again."

Because Bickle was tired of feeling helpless, she made a flier 
announcing a new organization called "Fight Against Meth."

She faxed her flier to all the media outlets she could think of, but 
only one bothered to call her: the Ahwatukee Foothills News. Bickle 
lives in north Phoenix.

But the newspaper's short story drew immediate attention. Bickle 
started getting e-mails. And phone calls.

Her first meeting drew almost a dozen strangers, united by stories 
just like hers: Their daughters were meth addicts. Or their sons. Or 
their nieces.

They didn't understand why their kids couldn't stop. And, even more 
than that, they didn't understand why it was so hard to find treatment.

They returned to the topic, unsolicited, at their second meeting.

"It's like this underground thing," explained Paula, whose son is a 
meth addict. "Who to go to or how to find a psychiatrist or how to 
pay for it. No one explains anything."

Once, Paula got her son into rehab only to have her insurance company 
cut him off after 10 days.

And though Alice is thrilled that her son is about to finish a year 
at an inpatient center in Wickenburg, she's not so thrilled at the 
cost: $6,000 a month, without a dime from their insurance company.

The treatment problem is one of the big things that Fight Against 
Meth hopes to take on. It's something they've all lived with -- and 
something they can't believe no one else is talking about.

One woman, Adell, mentions that she saw an anti-meth commercial 
sponsored by County Attorney Andrew Thomas.

The commercial, called "Extreme Meth-Over," started airing in 
November. Using a game-show setup, it shows the nasty dental work and 
scabby skin associated with meth use.

It is, according to Thomas' office, the first time the county 
attorney has created an anti-drug commercial. But it's a smart spot, 
and it drew the women's praise.

"I thought, 'Somebody is doing something,'" Adell says, pleased.

"Finally, somebody is doing something," Paula says.

"Yeah," Adell agrees. "Finally somebody other than Georganne."

This past summer, Jamie made one more stab at changing her life. 
Heavily in debt, spun out, and dealing once more with a car 
repossession, she packed up her stuff and moved to Alaska to live with her dad.

She had no way of getting meth there. She didn't know anyone in 
Alaska, much less a dealer, and her dad was watching her like a hawk.

She got clean, and she felt stronger every day.

But then she started to gain weight. She remembered how much she'd 
hated feeling chubby.

"I got so fat," she moans. "I couldn't stand it."

Unbeknownst to her parents, Jamie persuaded a friend to book her a 
ticket home. And once she got home, she called up her old friends and 
jumped right back in.

She was awake for four days. Smoking. Getting spun.

She didn't call her mother for two months. She was too embarrassed.

"I had nothing good to tell her," she says.

Now she's stabilized, a bit, but Jamie will be the first to tell you 
that she's balanced in a precarious place. Meth isn't like pot, where 
you can use a little and everything works out okay.

One false move, one bad day . . .

She wants to meet a guy and get married and have kids. Go back to 
school, get a better job. Work as a drug counselor. Have a normal life.

But she just can't seem to stop smoking meth. Every morning, almost 
every lunch hour.

It's a pattern that could easily destroy her newfound balance, and 
she knows it. She wants to get into treatment -- but where?

She shows the scrapbook that she put together in Alaska. What she 
wrote then, in that period of new possibility, was simple, but hopeful.

I am now friendless, jobless, carless. The only thing I have now is 
my life and my freedom from something that controlled everything I 
thought, I did, and said. . . . TWEAK.

I may be carless, jobless, moneyless, and just have nothing at all, 
but I control my life and myself.

That was true, for a moment.

But then Jamie took that plane home to Phoenix. And then she picked 
up the meth pipe.