Pubdate: Sun, 04 Jun 2006 Source: Mail Tribune, The (Medford, OR) Copyright: 2006 The Mail Tribune Contact: http://www.mailtribune.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/642 Note: Only prints LTEs from within it's circulation area. Author: Sarah Lemon Note: the first article in the series http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06/n586/a09.html Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine) MAKE IT WORK Editor's note: This is the second in a series of stories on addicts recovering from meth use. The stories run on the first Sunday of each month on the Local section front. Once he decided to get clean, staying off methamphetamine was a test Manny Pacheco passed easily. Getting an education after a lifetime spent in and out of jail caused him the most trepidation. "It was scary for me in an anxious way, but it was also scary in a good way," Pacheco said of his first day at Rogue Community College. "It had been a lifelong dream for me to attend college." Since moving on to Southern Oregon University, Pacheco, 43, relives his battles with addiction and crime to inspire others. His essays on surmounting these obstacles have secured scholarships toward his pursuit of a degree in human services. "Because of my past, I have to establish some sense of credibility," he said. "I've found a way to make it work for me." Trying drugs for the first time at age 13, Pacheco said he just desperately wanted to belong somewhere. At age 14, he went to juvenile detention for a gang-related assault. Over the next 25 years, Pacheco lived for drug-induced highs and weathered the lows in prison and jail. He figures he's spent more than half his life locked up. "It wasn't even a life, it was an existence," he said. Throughout his teens in San Diego and a stint in the Marine Corps, Pacheco dabbled in marijuana, LSD, cocaine, amphetamines and anything else he could get his hands on. "I was kind of what is referred to as a garbage-can-type junkie." But meth always made him feel "bullet-proof and 10 feet tall." The last decade of his addiction -- "the beginning of the end" -- Pacheco used meth intravenously. The final three years he used the illegal stimulant exclusive of all other drugs, dependent on it to function. Amid such heavy use of a drug known to rapidly erode addicts' physical and mental health, Pacheco's frequent trips to jail probably saved his life, he said. Medford police could always count on booking the long-haired, tattooed, towering Yaqui Indian, who invariably was carrying drugs or had violated his probation. "I didn't fear the justice system here at all," he said. But the precarious nature of his lifestyle struck Pacheco the evening of his last arrest nearly five years ago in the Jackson Street parking lot of Taco Bell. Looking down the barrel of a police handgun, Pacheco could see the younger officer trembling. "I saw the look in their eyes, and I had this flash." Frequently armed himself, Pacheco realized that one move could have touched off a shooting -- of him or the police. He promptly sent his probation officer a plea from jail for a spot in residential treatment. He was adamant about going directly from county custody to avoid a minute spent back on the streets. Pacheco spent four months in OnTrack's Dads Program, where fathers can live with their children throughout the treatment process. Although Pacheco didn't have custody of his 9-year-old daughter, he said he benefitted from the home-like environment, where for the first time, he felt like he belonged. "It was the first thing I had ever completed in my life ... besides many jail sentences." After amassing a lifetime of street smarts, Pacheco said he realized he "really didn't know anything." As an addict living in Ashland, he'd gaze up the hill at SOU, little thinking he would ever set foot on the campus. So after working as a night-shift janitor at Tinseltown, he was surprised when his job coach wanted him to spend time in another institution -- but, this time, one of higher learning. "I was like, 'Wow, I know all about institutions.'" Pacheco soon found himself enrolled in RCC's Bright Futures Program with other nervous non-traditional students facing barriers to education. He decided to study sociology in hopes of working with agencies who had helped him. Since then, he's refined his goal to assisting others seeking an education. He figures if he can do it, anyone can. "Rehabilitation does work," he said. In addition to attending school full-time, working on campus and raising his daughter, now 13, Pacheco speaks to classrooms of his fellow students and even his former peers at the Jackson County Community Justice Work Center. "Their goals and their dreams are realistic," he said. "I'm one of the biggest resources for all the unwritten rules in college ... and I just want to give back." - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake