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Thursday, June 26, 2008

A Way for Meth Addicts To Get Back on Their Feet

By Laura Nesbitt
Mountain View Telegraph
      In tailored suit pants and a crisp white shirt, Jarmaine McChriston looks like a successful business executive, and he was until methamphetamine became his boss.
    “When you're addicted and you're selling drugs, you're a slave to the lifestyle. Everything depends on who's using, how they're using and where they're using. You have to fit that need in order to get your own fix,” said McChriston, who has been sober for 16 months and is the public relations manager for Second Chance Center New Mexico.
    Second Chance is a secure, long-term substance abuse rehabilitation program for men who are either incarcerated or facing incarceration. Residents are referred by judicial order.
    Before his days and nights were consumed with making and selling meth, McChriston was an electromechanical technician who owned a $175,000 house in the South Valley of Albuquerque.
    That was six years ago, and he said he's still working on overcoming his mistakes.
    A persistent problem
    In a normal month, Torrance County Sheriff's deputies average up to eight meth-related arrests. That figure includes meth labs, said Undersheriff Heath White.
    The county's meth problem fluctuates depending partially on the arrests made and time of year.
    In the past six months, deputies have dismantled about nine meth labs.
    “There's not one hot zone for meth. It has spidered all throughout the county, and throughout Santa Fe and Bernalillo counties,” White said.
    However, the era of finding large meth labs is over. Users make meth in smaller labs so that they have less chance of getting caught, White said.
    “Meth affects everybody. From the lowest income family to the very highest. We've seen it all. I've arrested all kinds of people including a colonel in the Air Force who had a full-blown lab in his house. It affects everybody. Usually where it starts out is younger kids experimenting with marijuana and they slowly move up thinking they can quit anytime, and before they know it they're hooked,” White said.
    Methamphetamine is the drug of choice in the Seventh Judicial District, according to Leslie Luna, program manager for the adult drug court program.
    “Almost every client I have is a meth user,” Luna said.
    There are no success and failure statistics available for the Torrance County program because it only started in January, but there is a five-year plan to get a drug court in every county in the state, she said.
    A drug team of court officials along with four former meth users was assembled inside the courtroom of Seventh Judicial District Court Chief Judge Kevin Sweazea for about 20 minutes on June 19.
    The program is for drug abusers to get treatment instead of incarceration.
    “It's a sentencing alternative,” Luna said.
    The offenders must report to a probation officer, are subjected to “frequent” random urinalysis, and bimonthly court hearings with a drug court team that includes Luna, Sweazea, a representative from the District Attorney's Office, a public defender, a treatment care provider, a surveillance officer, a probation officer, a member of the sheriff's department and a community member.
    The year-long program with “after care” only accepts clients after they've been sentenced.
    “If they have any setbacks in the program it adds more time,” Luna said.
    A destructive high
    Christiana (not her real name), who has lived in Moriarty on and off for the past 20 years, has been sober for two years.
    She got hooked when her cousin asked her if she wanted to try meth.
    “And that was it for the next 14 years. It's a major rush. Like you're the Incredible Hulk,” Christiana said.
    She typically spent between $40 to $60 each week to feed her habit. She said she was not the typical meth user because she never sold her body and never injected the drug.
    The only thing typical was her mood swings.
    “I think I probably kicked my daughter once, and punched my son. I still get angry, but none of that anymore. Now I punch the walls,” Christiana said.
    Only when her parents took her children away for two weeks did she realize she had to stop using meth.
    Still, she says she doesn't regret any of it.
    “I wouldn't give back any of those years. But, what a sick thing to say. How could you not regret all the bad things you did to people? All the bad things you did to yourself? But the high was just so incredible. I wouldn't give it back. It's not like anything else,” Christiana said.
    McChriston's path to meth started by selling cocaine. He didn't use the drug and didn't really need the money, but said he was “greedy.”
    “One of the people who normally bought cocaine from me had this new stuff and said, 'Try it.' I did my first line and about six hours later I got high again. About one month later I learned to cook,” McChriston said.
    He lost his job, lost his house and lost his self-respect. His college education and his prior military service all were forgotten because of the requirements that meth made on his life.
    “First of all, a methamphetamine addict doesn't get up in the morning. They're typically up from the day before,” McChriston said.
    He has been awake for as long as 20 days and has consumed 22 grams of meth in one day.
    “The average user probably uses between 1 and 2 grams (a day),” he said.
    During a typical day, McChriston cooked a batch of meth before sunrise and sold it by lunch.
    “Then it's the heat of the day so you don't really want to go out in the daytime. There are too many police officers and everything. During the daytime, the only time that anyone who is addicted would leave the house is to make a drop somewhere or pick up money or pick up supplies for producing the drug,” McChriston said.
    Making a drop means delivering the drugs to a customer.
    About 2 a.m., sales taper off, and it's time to go inside and “get your own fix,” he said.
    Finding a way back
    JoAnn DelCurto, executive director and owner of Torrance County Counseling, has “definitely” seen an increase in meth abusers in the 10 years she has been in business.
    DelCurto only recently began collecting statistics because of a grant she received from ValueOptions New Mexico, the state Medicaid provider.
    “Probably 20 percent of our clients have meth problems. And probably 60 percent of our clients have substance abuse problems which may include meth. (In other words) it may not be their primary addiction,” DelCurto said.
    Most of the clients she sees who use meth have incomes under $10,000, are between 18 and 32, both male and female, probably 70 percent Anglo and 30 percent Hispanic, and a lot of them have dropped out of school.
    Kicking the habit is not easy.
    Brain scans of people who have used the drug for 10 years show tissue destruction in the limbic system and the hippocampus regions of the brain responsible for memory and emotion. Damage to these areas may lead to depression, anxiety and symptoms similar to Alzheimer's.
    The first six months after a meth user stops using the drug, their brains begin to heal, she said.
    “When they have been in a meth addiction for as short a time as five years, their brain is totally blank on a brain scan. That means they have trouble making decisions. They have trouble understanding. Deductive reasoning is totally blank. After the first six months, you see a decline in those types of symptoms; up until about two years, until their brain is pretty much the way it should be, there's much more activity in the brain to show that it is starting to come back,” DelCurto said.
    The successful drug treatment program for a meth addict should be 90 days with a yearlong follow up, she said. But that will be difficult in Torrance County.
    “Our clients don't have cars. They don't have jobs. They don't have money,” DelCurto said.
    Some type of recovery program for a meth addict is a “no brainer,” McChriston said.
    “Why send somebody to the penitentiary when it could very well cost the government $120 per day for the individual?” McChriston asked.
    “I didn't pay taxes. I was constantly in and out of jail so I was costing the government a lot of money. So if you look at it from a fiscal standpoint, the savings (with a recovery program) are huge,” McChriston said. “Now I can responsibly raise my children.”
   

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