Pubdate: Tue, 7 Oct 2008 Source: Chico Enterprise-Record (CA) Copyright: 2008 Chico Enterprise-Record Contact: http://www.chicoer.com/feedback Website: http://www.chicoer.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/861 Note: Does not print letters from outside circulation area Author: Roger H. Aylworth, Staff Writer Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine) "METH MONSTER" DIGS IN, CAN BE VIRTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO ESCAPE Few non-drug users have the visceral understanding of the impact and dangers of the "monster" called meth, as do Carl Sturdy and Mike Ramsey. Sturdy is the commander of the Butte Inter-Agency Narcotics Task Force, and has been in drug enforcement for two decades. Ramsey is Butte County's district attorney and has been a local prosecutor for 30 years. "Meth is a very, very strong central nervous system stimulant," according to Sturdy. Users can smoke it, take it orally, or inject it. Smoking and injections are the main methods because of the rapid, intense high they create. "They feel good. They feel strong. They feel they can conquer the world. It is a real insidious thing," said Sturdy. Ramsey refers to the drug as the "meth monster." He said when "it gets its claws in someone, and those are fairly deep claws," escaping the addiction is profoundly difficult. "They continue to run after that same high. They burn out their pleasure centers. They are incapable of any pleasure, any joy, without the drug," said Ramsey. Recent animal studies suggest recreational use of meth -- also known as crank or speed -- actually alters parts of the brain on the cellular level. Meth does more than addict its users. It consumes them. Sturdy said meth users rapidly cease to function in society. He explained he has known heroin addicts who could maintain jobs and apparently normal lives, but, "I have never seen a functional meth addict. It is really kind of rare." Users usually come to law enforcement's attention not through their drug use per se, but by what they do to get the meth. Sturdy said meth users as a class are "heavily involved in thefts and burglaries and vehicle thefts." Usually they get involved with authorities because they've "been caught stealing stuff to feed their addiction." For a woman, access to meth is often a matter of trading her flesh for the chemicals she wants, but even among users there is sensitivity about such transactions. "They will adamantly deny giving themselves up for drugs. They don't want to be labeled a crank whore," said Sturdy. For law enforcement, one of the biggest challenges is that unlike cocaine, heroin and marijuana -- which require land to growth the plants from which the drug is derived -- meth is a synthetic product that can be "cooked" in somebody's kitchen. "Making crank is simple. If you can follow a recipe to make a cake, you can make crank," said Sturdy. He said a collection of incompetent cookers are continually trying to set up "Beavis and Butthead labs." While the process of producing crank may be as straightforward as a cake recipe, the ingredients involved are less benign than flour, sugar and eggs. A recipe available on the Internet includes red phosphorus, ether, hydrochloric acid, sodium hydroxide and methanol, among other items. While the drug is incredibly powerful, addiction to meth is not necessarily a life sentence. "Ten years ago I would have said there is no hope," said Ramsey, but now, with better treatment programs, "there is hope." The most essential step in breaking free of meth is desire. "They have to have some kind of an epiphany, or some kind of a terminal event" that makes remaining in the culture too terrible to contemplate, said Sturdy. "They have to hit rock bottom, whatever rock bottom for that person is." For a woman, according to the BINTF chief, a first pregnancy can be the necessary epiphany. A combination of two steps can indicate how serious the addict is about quitting. The person has to move away, said Sturdy. "They have to cut all their ties (to the meth culture)." Ramsey said another step is a willingness to tell the authorities about their drug connections, but most people don't want to do that. Sturdy said the meth addict who is not quite committed to change is unwilling to move far away because they think, "Who am I going to hook up with if I have a bad day?" Ramsey said part of the challenge to escaping the meth culture is to some degree a fear of loneliness. "That's your family, that's your world, and you don't want to violate the world," he said. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake