Pubdate: Sun, 29 Jan 2006 Source: Hendersonville Times-News (NC) Copyright: 2006 Hendersonville Newspaper Corporation Contact: http://www.hendersonvillenews.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/793 Author: Scott Parrott, staff wrier Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine) MAN BATTLES BACK FROM THE BRINK Christmas Day, 1990. Steve Dalton spent the morning celebrating the holiday with his wife and mother-in-law. He swore he would stay clean. But around noon, the cravings became too much. Dalton stormed out the door, telling his wife, Genee, he had too much on his mind, he needed to work. He raced to his orchard in Edneyville and found the meth he stashed beneath one of the apple trees. He snorted one line. Then another. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he knelt in the dirt. In that moment, he knew. "The drug had me," Dalton says. And it changed him. Dalton once tended apples. By 1990, he stashed drugs in the orchard. He once looked like an athlete. He stood 6 foot 6, weighed 280 pounds. By 1990, he "looked like death." Skin and bones. Sixty pounds lighter. He once cared for people. He earned a badge for helping others in fourth grade. By 1990, he carried a .357 everywhere he went. He once was a good husband, who married his high school sweetheart. By 1990, he pitched plates across the room when he did not like the dinner she prepared. Kneeling in the orchard, Dalton realized he had a problem. But it would be another couple years before he checked into rehab. And when he did, the people behind the counter could not believe the reason. "They said, 'There's no way, meth's not been around since the '60s in this area,'" says Dalton, now 42. But they soon found out. Man-made Epidemic Dalton, who kicked meth 11 years ago, turned out to be on the front end of what would become an epidemic in the mountains and across North Carolina. Methamphetamine, a highly addictive illegal stimulant, knows no boundaries, striking every class, every race, every age, from the big cities to the small towns. "This is a drug that does not discriminate," says Henderson County Sheriff George Erwin. "It does not know color, it does not know religion and it does not know socioeconomic status." It knew Dalton, and Dalton knew meth. Only too well. He recites the background of an All-American kid. "Grew up in a perfect family, grew up on a farm," he says. "Went to church, taught right and wrong. You'd never predict I would become an alcoholic and an addict." "Parents used to get told, 'This is a great kid. He'll grow up to be somebody one of these days.'" "Played sports. Popular guy. I was on the state championship baseball team, 1982, Edneyville. Fourth in the state in basketball. Escort at homecoming. Student council. College prep classes, the whole nine yards." And then he reaches the point, when in ninth grade, he took the first step on what would prove a slippery slope. "I drank my first beer, a little pony Miller. I'll never forget it. I used to think, well, that didn't change me. I'm OK. So I started drinking a little bit through high school, after ball games and stuff like that." When Dalton left Hendersonville for Appalachian State University, he tossed back more and more beers. Still, he never touched drugs. Dalton studied in Boone for two years. His parents called him home to Edneyville when a sign-stealing prank landed him and some college buddies in the Watauga County Jail. And then in 1985, his father, Porter Dalton Jr., was diagnosed with terminal cancer. "My daddy was my hero," he says. "He was who I played ball for, who I made good grades for." "The only way I could deal with it was with what I had learned to do - -- to drink more and more. To make a long story short, that one pony Miller eventually led to a fifth of liquor every day." Dalton plummeted. A friend convinced him to snort cocaine. Within months, he found meth. - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin