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"There are those times when I want it so bad, when it hurts so much that I have to get away. So I drive out into the middle of the desert by myself, the middle of no where and I just scream at the top of my lungs, 'F--- you God! F--- you for doing this to me, for making me weak.!' ... And somewhere during that time I forget about the methamphetamine. I forget about my need and I leave with this sense that me and Him have an agreement. When all else fails, He's going to be there even when I am not." -- Iris, a Sierra Vistan
Iris is an addict.
 Rayleahna, 8, covets each moment she spends with her mother, Iris. Due to Iris's drug addiction, Child Protective Services took custody of Rayleahna for one and a half years. Now the pair is together again. (Mark Levy-Herald/Review) |
Although she's spent years recovering from a life of physical abuse and drug addiction, some habits are harder to foil than others.
An alcoholic, cocaine and heroin user since her teens, Iris's strongest addiction is to a drug that has swept across the United States with lightning speed. It is a drug that creates long-term addicts and kills indiscriminately. Everyone is at risk; children to the elderly, all economic levels and every ethnicity.
And though she has been using methamphetamine since she was 19, the 44-year-old, mother of three is luckier than most.
She is still alive.
Methamphetamine is a psychostimulant. It forces the brain's pleasure center to work overtime, supplying the body with endless energy, endless ecstasy until it shuts down.
When ingested, the drug attacks the central nervous system and triggers the body to produce an extreme amount of dopamine, a naturally occurring stimulant in the brain that creates euphoria, according to the book "Designer-drug abuse" by Michele McCormick.
A single dosage of methamphetamine, when smoked or injected, can stimulate the body with effects similar to 10 orgasms every minute for hours. The effects are similar to cocaine. But while the cocaine high lasts 30 minutes, the methamphetamine rush lasts for up to 15 hours, giving the user a daylong high followed by many more hours of euphoria.
Though the high from the methamphetamine is longer and more intense than any other synthetic drug in existence, it is equally destructive, eradicating the brain's ability to feel pleasure after only a few uses. Therefore, rehabilitation from the drug is not simply a process of ridding the body of toxins, it takes a concerted effort on the part of the user to learn to accept the pervading and sustained depression that comes in the wake of using.
There are a variety of ways to ingest methamphetamine. A form of amphetamines, the drug is primarily produced and purchased in a crystalline form. Known by many names, including meth, speed, crystal meth, ice, go-fast and a variety of others, the crystals are water soluble and can be ingested in any number of ways.
Like its many names, different types of the drug with varying potencies can be taken in pill form, smoked, snorted or injected. With each method, the impacts of the drug are the same, but the intensity ranges from mild to prolific, trapping users on a one-way pathway to overdose and death.
"Users typically start on the drug in small amounts taken orally or smoked," said Sean Bronson, a drug enforcement officer with the Sierra Vista Police Department. "But the effects of those forms are mild and once a person is addicted, there is a desire for strong and stronger dosages ... that's where intravenous usage originates."
The intravenous form of methamphetamine use is the most common in Sierra Vista, Bronson said.
Iris is seeking help after 13 months of sobriety with four relapses to the drug. She yearns to find natural ways to avoid methamphetamine's debilitating depression. She is one of hundreds of suspected meth addicts in the Sierra Vista area. Unlike many, she has survived decades on a drug that typically whittles down the life of hard-core addicts in a matter of months, not years.
"The addiction is so strong, so powerful, if you put that needle in your arm, you are going to die," drug counselor Jenny Montague said. "It pulls you to your grave, it just won't let go."
Many users are turned on to the drug as a way to lose weight or stay awake and alert. With increased usage comes heightened feelings of paranoia, aggression and overall anxiety.
In order to sustain the high for as long as possible, methamphetamine addicts will continually consume the drug for days at a time, never sleeping or eating.
Users often engage in criminal activity so they can raise cash to fuel their habit.
Other drugs, such as alcohol or marijuana, are taken in conjunction with the drug in an attempt to lessen the impacts of the binge. In fact, these drugs can have the effect of increasing the user's feelings of invincibility and aggressiveness, heightening the danger a meth addict poses to law enforcement and anyone else around them.
At the end of a drug binge, known as "tweaking," the user can sleep for days as the body literally feeds on itself for nourishment not provided by food during the binge. Survival for the hard-core addict, even after stopping use of the drug, is often in vain because extreme weight fluctuations put the heart in duress and frequently lead to stroke and heart disease.
The addiction is one that devastates a user's life, causing permanent damage to the body and brain, and leaving little chance of recovery.
The fact that Iris continues to fight her addictions is proof that recovery, although difficult, is possible. She said the drug has caused incredible tumult in her life. She has neglected and abused her children, initiated multiple suicide attempts, contracted disease from dirty needles and has struggled with a sustained inability to get clean.
Iris said she has tried many times to free herself from methamphetamine. But despite each attempt, she has perpetuated the cycle of violence she said first led her to the drug. After a life plagued by domestic violence, she abused her 17-year old daughter and ultimately watched the girl struggle with her own meth habit.
As she struggles, Iris embodies the burdens now faced by Child Protective Services and county juvenile courts as a record number of kids enter the system every year thanks to addicted parents. Like many methamphetamine users, she epitomizes the difficulties of getting free of the drug's stranglehold, returning over and over to the drug though consciously repulsed by the idea of injecting again.
Overwhelmingly, local law enforcement, federal drug enforcers, abuse counselors, judicial representatives and volunteers have described Cochise County as "ground zero" for a growing methamphetamine epidemic. Iris is its poster-child.
Compounded by the fact that the drug is readily available because it is so cheaply manufactured, and routinely smuggled across the border or cooked up in clandestine drug labs, methamphetamine is the new cocaine.Like many parts of the country, Cochise County is fighting a losing battle with a drug it can not control, the effects of which counselors and rehabilitators don't yet fully understand and addicts cannot squelch.
"It's Sierra Vista's dirty little secret," said Debbie Garrett, director of SouthEastern Behavioral Health Services. "No one knows how to stop it, and unfortunately treatment options are very limited."
On several fronts, concerned locals are trying to get a grasp on the epidemic.
Law enforcement has seen a spike in the movement of the drug from "superlabs" just south of the U.S.-Mexico border along with steady increases in small, house labs in the rural parts of the county.
The courts are inundated with methamphetamine-related criminal cases and parent-child separation issues where the drug is involved.
Local drug counselors are fighting the grip of the drug on those seeking help to get clean in a county where usage steadily increases while the resources for those looking for help are diminishing.
"It's a devil in disguise, the meth monster," Iris said. "And there's not a lot of promise for people who really need help."
HERALD/REVIEW reporter Nate Searing can be reached at 458-9440 Ext. 180 or by e-mail at nate.searing@svherald.com.
Ezai I. Martinez wrote on Jun 24, 2009 7:58 PM: