| ONE PERSON'S METH STORY |
| I was always a self reliant child. My father was, and still is, in prison for second degree murder. He went in when I was six. Later in my 20s I learned he committed his crime while high on amphetamines. My mother was an alcoholic whose tiem was most spent on my brother who had cerebral palsy and needed almost constant attention and physical therapy. I was basically left to raise myself, with little or no support or supervision from my mother. I found things on my own, and dealt with things on my own. I was born and raised in the Central Valley of California, one of the birth places of the illegal Methamphetamine epidemic. It's vast rural areas and agricultural industries made it a good choice for clandestine labs, offering easy access to the chemical needed for the production of the drug, and little or no knowledge from the small police forces. It was in this area when I was 11 and in the 6th grade that I entered the D.A.R.E. program. I remember studying Heroin, Cocaine, Marijuana, and PCP, but do not recall ever reading anything about methamphetamine. Sure they described it but it was in regards to the Amphetamines of the 60's. Referred to in the DARE literature as Cross Tops, Speed, and Mommy's Little Helper. A pill that in no way resembles the methamphetamines we know in modern times. I wish I could say that I wished they'd offered more teaching an actual methamphetamines, but alas this was in the mid 80's, crack was king, and I doubt it would have done any good. A year after signing my promise and taking a vow to be drug free, I was smoking weed daily before classes in Jr. High, and nipping shots and glasses of my mother's wine and schnapps from under the kitchen sink at night. At the age of 13 I was in a fight with one of my mom's boyfriends and threw a hammer at his head. What provoked this was I was just coming in from sneaking out at night and he locked my bedroom window. The hammer did not strike him but bounced off the wall and hit one of my mom's friends. I was placed in juvenile hall for two months for assault with a deadly weapon. In the juvenile justice hearings I pled insanity and was sent to a mental health facility for a month long evaluation, after which time I was promptly sent back to juvenile hall, deemed fully sane. From there I was sent to a Catholic reform school in San Rafael, California for two years. While in the school I would still sneak out with other students at night and locate weed or adults willing to buy or give us booze. I graduated the program there and was deemed reformed. This I was sent back to juvenile hall for another cour hearing. The judge said I had completed all commitments to the court and was free to go home. My mother promptly stood up and said she refused to take me back, that she only feared I would end up committing a more major crime, or at least continue staying out late or not come home for days partying and carrying on. So at 15 I was placed in voluntary foster care, which meant I was not a ward of the state but had no legal guardian either. My mother for all intents and purposes had abandoned me. That day in court was the last time I would see my mom alive. She went to hug me that day, I shrugged her off, how I ache for that hug now. I was put into foster care that night close to my own home. My mother had just abandoned me, and I was thrust into a home with complete strangers who were all happy. I had a major chip on my shoulder and it showed. "Welcome to our family," the foster mother said. I never had a family and sure as hell did not want one then. I would be hanging out with a friend who lived with his uncle. We would smoke weed and play Nintendo. I started to look up to his uncle. He was a cool guy, a computer professional. My friend soon went back to his own home but I would still hang out at his uncle's house. He soon became like a mentor and eventually a father figure to me. He smoked weed too, being a professional who had a six-figure income, it seemed normal, if not cool, that I too could have that kind of money and still smoke weed. A few months later he was moving to San Francisco to start his own company. He asked If I would come along, that I could help him out with his company and start making his own money and still smoke week. I agreed to it, and three weeks after my 16th birthday I was living in San Francisco and helping him make money. We bought two Lexus', big TV's, you name it we had it. I had a group of friends and was happy for the first time in, I think, all my life up to that time. One day a friend came up to me and said the man who I had come to call Dad was coming onto him and touched him inappropriately. I socked the kid in the mouth for saying such a bad thing. In my heart I knew it was true but did not want to admit it in my mind. Around this time, as well, my mother died of breast and lung cancertwo weeks before my 18th birthday. He had done things to me as well when I was drunk or wasted on weed. If he had a hells chance with my friends, I was not touched. My drinking and use of weed soon got out of control, my happiness was just based on money, nothing more. Money is one of the greatest lies, it is good to have, ture, but it does not buy anything but possessions. At 20 my "dad" was arrested for molesting a kid a couple of years before he met me. He lost his business, and I had to get a job. I never worked a real job before and all I was qualified for was restaurant or store work. Hving been an avid marine aquarist with a 1000 gallon shark tank and smaller tanks filled with puffer fish and lionfish, I took a job as the manager of a marine aquarium department of a nationwide chain of pet stores. Sure I was a learned marine aquarist and could keep delicate sharks and corals alive in the environment of a tank, but that in no way prepares one for management. I was doing my work plus often times the work of others. Bitching one day to the guy I bought weed from, he suggested a way for me to work harder and faster. He broke out some crystals, crushed them, and lined them up with a credit card. We snorted the lines -- it was methamphetamine. That first line my penis automatically got hard for a few seconds and I felt so awesome and powerful, it was like nothing I have ever felt before, and I am at a loss to describe it in words. I did my work, your work, and their work that day. That night I could not fall asleep, and finally started to come off of it. I called the weed guy back and asked for more. I soon learned to use just enough to keep an edge at work. I still ate and I slept. Once in a while on days off I would binge on it and stay up for a day or tow. A few months after this my "dad" and I agreed to move from the Bay Area back into the Central Valley, into my home town. I soon reconnected with my childhood friends. My "dad" had an at-home job that still paid six-figures. If he was not going to his molestation court hearings he was on business trips in Denver or Minneapolis. I now drove a 1996 BMW 328is, and had a VW Microbus. My childhood friends and I spent all our time partying, smoking weed, and cruising in the Vdub or Beamer. Soon I learned almost everyone smoked or snorted meth and I was soon back into using it. "Dad" had another job and he had my friends to deal with, so I had all the money I could use, life was a constant party. I would be gone for a week at a time often, just crashing at friend's and stranger's homes alike. One blistering hot Central Valley day I met a major dealer. He only dealt in quantity and supplied most of the small time dealers in the area with their stuff. he asked me I I would be willing to move some stuff for him from Mariposa into Delhi and Balico, California. He said I could do it for money or trade for dope. I chose the dope. So there I was a nicely dressed yuppie-looking dude in a newer BMW, and meth being seen as a drug for only the lower class, it's often called Trailer Park Crack. I was a perfect runner and I knew it. No one would ever suspect me. I had all the dope I wanted at my disposal. I was soon smoking or snorting about a gram a day. An amount that would keep a newby high for weeks or a month, maybe more. I would make the same loop, go to Mriposa, drop off a pound or two to my guy in Merced or Atwater, then to Balico then Delhi. I would get an ounce for each run. Once in a while I would sell part of my stash, which I would cut drastically. I soon became more invloved in the gang. I would often force money from people who owed us. We did this by either gang beating them or forcing the cute girls and guys to trade sex with others, thus becoming a type of pimp and enforcer. I was never jumped in, nor did I have to kill anyone, yet this was not a street gang. A girl, I should not call her that as she was a bag ho, a girl who would do anything for a bump, she tipped a rival dealer off, of our route. At the bottom of the foothills in very rural Merced county two cars, an old beat up pick up truck and a Geo Metro, were blocking the road. I was driving a rather quick and nimble sports coupe and my intuition that it was a set-up was correct. I slowed and men got out of the other vehicles and they were armed with guns. I pulled mine out and started shooting through the windshield, they started shooting, and I sped off at 150 MPH. I screamed to a stop and pushed the girl outta the car twenty miles from anywhere. My heart was racing and my mouth was dry. Yes, I shot first, but if I would have stopped, I would have been dead anyway, burried in the foothills, my car chopped up in many of a sloew of chop shops and my life forgotten. I soon dreaded the work I found glamorous. All the girls and dope I could want was soon a nightmare. It was no longer fun. I was always looking behind my back. We kept our activities secret to a large extent but people still knew who I was. Yes, people feared me. Little gangster want-to-be's looked up to me, but I was just a drug addict, a common junky. I wanted out, yet I did not know how to. Tweakers are very paranoid, violent people, I knew this fact. If I just left, people would think I turned snitch and be after me. I was still moving large quantities and always had quantity on me. I was a target and I hated it. My mind was soon getting so fried that I would see things that were not there - people, animals. I heard voices. Rarely did the voices talk to me, but I would cry and plead with them to stop and shut up so I could sleep. NO ONE WAS THERE!!!! Once coming home I saw a cop in the bushes in my yard surveiling a street gang leader friend of mine down the road. I went up to him and asked him if he was real or in my mind. I laught about this now, but I was loosing it and loosing it fast. Soon a few of our small dealers were sent to jail, our cook's meth lab was buster, so we started doing some cooking of the drug to keep our business going. I was not a cook per se just helped gather, assembled some ingredients, and dumped the resulting waste. Soon my guy, the major dealer, was arrested for a carjacking and our tight knit gang, who freely moved in-between two major warring street gangs, fell apart. We tried to pull it back together but one night a couple months later I was pulled over, arrested and charged with conspiracy to manufacture and possession of a controlled substance, along with DUI of a controlled substance, and littering. That night in booking the last remaining few of us were all there. We acted as if we did not know each other. Facing ten years in prison on drug charges, I made a plea bargain called Prop 38 which is mandatory drug court and treatment for first time offenders. I did not have to turn snitch, and had to plead guilty to the two felonies and misdemeanors. If i passed drug court and treatment, the felonies would be stricken from my record. After my arrest I stayed clean for a couple of weeks. Then went right back to using. No longer a banger, I had to go the route of a lowly addict, which in essence is all I ever was. I would spend hours hunting the ellusive drug. One day I scored an 8-ball, which is a very large amount of the durg, and used about a gram of it. I was walking home when a CHP officer slammed to a stop about 100 feet in front of me, he flipped a U, turned on his siren and I swallowed the rest of the dope. He sped away after someone else. Tweakers hate cops more than anything, my reaction to swallow was normal. A reaction I immediately knew, after he sped away from me, was possibly a deadly reaction. Like a ton of bricks falling on my heart I knew I was in trouble big time. A shoot-out may not have killed me, but my ignorance and paranoia sure as hell may. I went home and got online and chated on yahoo to a lady I call Ma. I told her what happened and she said call 911. Soon my "dad" came home and I told him and he rushed me to the hospital. My heart was pounding so hard my dad could hear it across the waiting room. My bowels soon liquefied and my bottom half seized, I shat and urinated all over myself. I was so cold, a cold like I'd never felt before. I was cold from the inside. My body was shutting down on me. That cold was the cold of death. So there I lay on a hospital bed, IV's in my arems, a catheter in my penis. I could not get warm, I kept asking for blankets. The doctor and nurses just looked at their feet, they whispered to my "dad" and he fell into a chair. Then it hit me, people say you crap your pants when you die, and in horror moviews they talk about the cold. I was dying. It hit me. I sniveled a little out loud, asked if I was dying and the doctor said no. I said to myself I was too young to die. I had a lot of life left. I got mad at myself, I called myself a few choice words. I remember these last words I told myself before I closed my eyes to sleep, "I am dying, there is nothing I can do. It is not so bad, I'm ok with it." I closed my eyes and slept. During that sleep my heart was brought under control, then my liver and kidneys started functioning properly. If I had not done that gram earlier, I would be dead. In continued on with my drug court and treatment, only using once or twice here and there. I was determined meth would not kill me. I soon decided to move to Minnesota to get a new start. People still knew me as a major druggie, and I would not last and I knew it. Moving across the country would help me. With the help of a few friends, I made the move. My "dad" was sent to prison where he deserved to be, and I was now, for the first time in my live, totally allowed to be who I wanted to be with no expectations. For the first year of being clean, I suffered from great depression. All the meth I had used destroyed my joints and bone structure causing drug induced osteoporosis and arthritis, two very painful disorders. One curable, arthritis is degenerating. I also suffered nerve damage and at least two of my digits do not work, they are dead. I had to learn to retrain my thoughts and actions towards normal people. Now nearly three years later, after quitting in California, as of 2005 I have an ok job, a few friends, I'm engaged, and am happy with my situation. I do not have a BMW or a vintage automobile, but I have my lefe. I still suffer from arthritis, making everyday painful. The drug induced osteoporosis is pretty much gone, but the pain in no way can take away the joy that I am alive. I see myself having kids, a normal life. |
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