Meth addiction in Cache Valley: Overcoming 'Satan's drug'

By Candice Mattson

May 5, 2009 | LOGAN -- When Mindie talks about how her life used to be, it sounds almost idyllic. She would stay up all night talking with friends, she had few responsibilities and she had plenty of energy to get things done. Surprisingly, the life she is describing was one of a meth addict and it wasn't idyllic. In fact, it was horrible.

Mindie, now 30, first tried meth when she was 14 years old. She was vacationing in New Mexico for Christmas when her cousin introduced her to the drug. After a few hours of convincing from her cousin, she tried it out of curiosity. What she experienced was something truly different than anything she'd experienced before.

"It felt like I could climb Mt. Everest, if I had the opportunity," she said. Mindie thought she could try it once and then move on.

"I thought I'd be OK because in Utah there are no drugs, right? So I thought I'd get on the plane and I'd come home and there wouldn't be any drugs. But boy, was I wrong." Once she returned home to Cache Valley, it seemed like Mindie could find meth everywhere she looked.

"It found me. It was like a veil got lifted up in front of my eyes and all of the sudden I knew where to find it. I knew what people to talk to. I didn't think I was intentionally trying to befriend these people to get drugs, but it just happened that way. It's easier to find than going to find Tylenol in the store."

Because of health issues, Mindie said she struggled to find the energy to get things done. Meth helped her to accomplish many things. "I don't think I slept for three days after that first time," she said.

"When I came back (from New Mexico), I actually tried to stay away from it for a little while because I wanted to graduate from high school." Then Mindie's parents got divorced and soon she started using regularly. She used until she was 18, when she met her husband.

"I met my husband when I was 18 and he gave me an ultimatum and said, 'You can either marry me and we'll start a family or you can keep using,' so I chose to stop." Mindie got married and her marriage lasted two years. Over those years, she had several back surgeries that made it hard to keep up with housework and her two children.

"I couldn't do the laundry, I couldn't cook, I couldn't do anything that he expected me to do. So one day I said, 'You know, I've had enough. At least when I'm high I can get stuff like this done and I can be a good wife and be a good mom.'"

So Mindie started using again, and this time it got worse. She used for eight years, and during this time her children went to live with their father. A little over a year ago, Mindie was arrested along with an ex-boyfriend for distributing methamphetamine.

"There in the last month or so, I was literally praying to God to either kill me, or to have me arrested. And the night that the cops came to my door, I even told the detective, 'Thank you, thank you so much,' because if I would have kept going for even another month I would not be here today," recalls Mindie.

Tori's story

Tori, 28, who was also addicted to meth, almost had a near-death experience like Mindie's. But just like each addict is different than the next, her story of drug abuse is her own.

Tori came into contact with meth in her first semester of college, when she was 18. She was introduced to meth through a friend, although she had tried coke previously. She didn't know it was meth when she took it, but she did know that she was instantly hooked.

"It wasn't magical," said Tori, remembering her first use. But Tori, who was struggling with anorexia, soon began to take meth to give her energy. She would even take it before she went running with friends and it helped her get through work. She used for about five to six months. However, when Tori, an Oregon native, went home to visit her parents, her mother was alarmed by her appearance. She took her to the hospital to get blood work done and they found out that Tori was at risk for a heart attack. Soon, the state of Oregon intervened and she was required to stay in the hospital for four weeks.

Even then, she used in the hospital and continued after her release for another six months, even though she stayed in her hometown and was seeing a therapist. It took a toll on her body. Tori developed rashes, edema around her ankles and her mouth would swell up if she got a bad mix of meth.

One day, she decided to take her birthday money from her grandparents and drive to her out-of-state college town. She wanted to see her friends and go back to the way things used to be, but when she got there things weren't the same. She felt really depressed and realized she needed to change her life.

Breaking the cycle

Fortunately, for Tori, Mindie and others in Cache Valley, there is help. Rowland Parent, a licensed substance abuse counselor and deputy director of the substance abuse division at Bear River Health Department, works with users like Mindie and Tori on a daily basis and hopes to end their abuse. Every year, the health department helps around 1600-1700 clients with substance abuse problems. Nine months ago, 19 percent of the treatment population was enrolled for meth abuse. But there's good news. Now, that number has dropped to 6.8 percent.

"In effect, that's a 35 percent decrease with methamphetamine," said Parent. "And then I thought, why is that? What caused that to drop? Well, right now, as I look at the entire situation, the drug task force has been very aggressive in trying to eliminate small meth labs. We know that we've knocked out a lot of super labs in this country." Parent added that ephedrine-based products, a key component used in making the drug that can be bought over the counter, now require a signature for purchase.

"It's too much work for them to be able to gather all of that without bring attention to themselves, so I think that's been a big deterrent." Parent also credits meth education, saying that people are being more educated on how ugly and how easliy addictive it is.

"The National Institute on Drug Abuse is telling us that methamphetamine is so highly addictive, that if an individual were to use twice a week for three weeks, you're into addiction. I don't know of any other drug that does that."

This is because meth releases 11 times the natural level of dopamine that is naturally released by the brain for a period of eight hours up to 24 hours, he said. "When you take a look at a drug with that kind of power, that's pretty devastating."

Young women are particularly susceptible

"It's a very attractive drug for young, white females between the ages of 18 and 25. In the state of Utah, 65 percent of all the arrests for methamphetamine are females," said Parent. "The impact that methamphetamine has on females is phenomenal because the female is usually the caregiver in the home. So it has a tremendous impact on the family unit because they neglect the children."

Although meth does appeal to this demographic, Parent has worked with people from all walks of life.

"They're good, good people who for whatever reason, whether it be because of stress in their lives thought that they could use methamphetamine recreationally. They were not educated about the power of methamphetamine and found themselves quickly into a legal system sitting behind bars, not knowing if their families would be there for them. It destroys the family unit."

He adds, "When you speak to clients who have addictions, they will tell you the horror stories behind it. First of all, they'll call methamphetamine 'Satan's drug.' Their battle is that they can't quit. It's first and foremost in their lives. They live a lie. They live a life that is delusional. Because of the power of the drug they lose sanity

"They will take anybody and everybody around them," said Parent. "And they suck them into a tornado."

The health department focuses on trust and support systems to help their clients heal, all on an individual basis.

"We treat methamphetamine clients here and we try to design a program that will work for them. We try to bring them in as often we can."

Getting help

There are several outlined programs for people receiving treatment at the health department. One is an intensive out-patient treatment program where client comes to treatment center four hours a day, four days a week for four weeks. Along with that, they receive individual counseling from a licensed clinician.

Mindie is part another program, called drug court. This is a highly structured program and the success rate is around 89 percent.

"These are individuals who are repeat offenders and they've had previous felony charges that are alcohol or drug related, and they need to complete a minimum of 15 months of treatment under the direction of a drug court judge and a drug court committee. They appear in front the judge on a weekly basis in the initial stages of their treatment," explains Parent.

Bear River Health Department also has its own urine analysis (UA) lab, and it has the capability to do more evidence-based type of tests to measure whether or not the users are clean. The system is based on a color code and clients are each assigned one of six different colors. The client must call every day, six days a week to see if his color came up for testing. If it does, the client must go in to give a sample or else he faces sanctions.

Mindie must comply with the UA testing as part of her program. She says the fear of the urine testing really helps to prevent her from starting again. However, sometimes going in to get tested can take a lot of time.

"It's hard, sometimes they call six colors. People start lining up at 11:30 and there's 89 people in drug court, so if they call all six colors, there's 89 people that have to come in and UA that day, so it's hard. Luckily, they don't do that too often, but when they do it's kind of hard when you're at work. But, it's worth it. If they didn't do the UAs, you know, I can't even imagine," she said.

Eighty-eight percent of the people that seek treatment at the health department are court referred. They've been charged and convicted, usually either of a drug or alcohol related charge ranging from a minor in possession to felony drug charges.

Even though the number of clients being treated for meth at the health department is dropping, Parent noted that prescription drug abuse is skyrocketing. Since 2003, the number of people coming to the health department for treatment has been climbing at a rate of 2 percent every year. In the last nine months, it has jumped up 3 percent.

"That's very significant," said Parent. "We started out off in 2003 with two percent of our treatment population having abused opiates. In 2009, as of March 31st, we're up to 12 percent. That is unacceptable."

But with the dismal news of more drug problems on the rise, there is hope. Since making the trip back to her college town to see her friends, Tori has given up meth and says she has the desire to never do it again.

"As soon as I decided to stop, it was easy to stop," Tori said. She managed to quit without needing treatment. But even though she has overcome meth, she says anorexia is something she'll always deal with. To help, she tries to replace negative habits with positive ones. She is graduating from college soon and has been accepted into graduate school.

Mindie is back with her ex-husband, with plans to work things out. She's had the same job for over a year and gets to see her children every day, who are still living with her ex-husband.

"This time, I feel different. I'm looking out for myself and family," she said. "It was cool, because this Christmas, my daughter woke me up on Christmas morning and I thought she was excited to open her Christmas presents -- and she just gave me a hug and she said, 'The best Christmas present I could ever have is to have you here and be clean.' So it's just cool, it's just cool to be clean today."

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