METH & DESTRUCTION

(Editor's Note: This is the first part in a CNHI News Service series
on meth use around the country.)

- -- Terre Haute, Ind., 2003

At 17 she snorted her first line.

By 23, she was shooting up.

A mere four years later, Donna Green sits on a hospital bed at a
Terre Haute nursing home, where a crayon drawing by her daughter and
a poster of The Doors are taped to the wall.

Dabbing her eyes with a wad of toilet paper, Green struggles to
explain what drug use has done to her life.

"Don't do it," she said, crying softly.

Words don't come easily anymore. She clenches her fists, raising and
shaking them in frustration over difficulty speaking, a result of a
stroke in October.

The right side of her face is numb. She also has trouble writing and
remembering certain time periods.

Methamphetamine abuse rotted her lower teeth; she now wears dentures.

Bruise-like splotches of purple mar the underside of her arms from
injecting meth. Her face is drawn and her skin is pale.

Although she's decades younger than the woman in the next bed, Green
feels nearly as old as her roommate.

For a few minutes, the 27-year-old Green contemplates just how old she feels.

"Seventy," she said.

The Turning Point

A decade ago, Green's life held promise. At West Vigo High School,
she earned decent grades and participated in activities ranging from
equestrian club her freshman year to Students Against Drunk Driving
her senior year.

"She seemed happy," said retired English teacher John Seifert, who
taught Green in his journalism class.

Seifert was shocked about the path Green's life has taken since her
graduation in 1993.

"She was a nice girl," he said. "I just hardly believe it."

After high school, Green attended two semesters of business college
before summer arrived.

"Then I discovered the university of methamphetamine," she said. "It
all went down after that."

Her life centered on "doing dope" and partying, she recalled. She
never returned to college.

She quit the drug briefly at 18 during her first pregnancy. But she
would use meth throughout her three later pregnancies.

Two months after the birth of her second child -- a girl -- Green
injected meth for the first time.

It happened to be Green's 23rd birthday and the first day at a new
job. She begged her mom -- who had been using and was later arrested
on a drug dealing charge -- to help her shoot up before she left for work.

"I just wanted to see what it's like, just one time," Green said.

She went to work that day, but never returned and hasn't worked in
the four years since.

Green's binges lasted weeks and eventually paranoia set in.

"I was seeing things," she said, remembering a trash bag covering the
window of a home once appeared to be a "great big gorilla."

Green spent most of her time in the bathroom, her traditional setting
for injecting the drug. At times, she locked herself in for days,
keeping a television and radio -- everything she needed -- including
a Janis Joplin tape she'd play again and again.

When the tape wasn't playing, voices seemed to come from everywhere
- -- the sink, even her underwear, she said.

When she did venture out, Green did what she needed to get more dope.

Once, she bought decongestant pills and lighter fluid -- two of the
key ingredients used to make methamphetamine -- in exchange for an "8
ball" (roughly 3.5 grams) of meth.

"I'd baby-sit kids for it," she said. "When you're addicted, you
don't care what you do."

Downhill Spiral

For Green, life soon took a turn for the worse.

Even before her fourth child, a son, arrived Oct. 23, 2001, Green had
been in and out of the hospital and nursing home because of a leaky
heart valve and staph infection related to her IV drug use. She'd
also been diagnosed with Hepatitis C, a disease of the liver that can
be spread through shared needles.

But things got worse after her son, Rodney, was born.

"They took him right away from me. I didn't kiss him good-bye," she
said of her now year-old son who continues to be in foster care. Her
oldest son, now 8, lives with his father's family in Missouri.
Green's two daughters, 6 and 2, live with relatives in the Wabash Valley.

Out of the hospital after giving birth, Green began a drug binge that
ended with her coughing up blood and being readmitted to the hospital
in November.

In a letter addressing Green's condition, a doctor wrote that Green
had "multiple medical problems," including inflammation of the
innermost layer of her heart's chambers and valves, a widespread
infection and fluid and pus in her lungs.

"Her prognosis is not good," the doctor wrote as Green breathed with
the help of a ventilator.

Randy Smith, pastor at First Assembly of God in West Terre Haute,
remembers praying for God to give Green another chance.

On life support and in a drug-induced coma, Green slowly improved.

"The next think I know, it was two months later and I was on the
second floor" of the hospital, she said, recalling that she awoke to
a feeding tube and catheter. "I couldn't walk. I couldn't talk."

Months of physical and speech therapy followed. By spring, Green
vowed not to use meth again.

But the temptation outweighed the risk.

For a few weeks last fall, Donna Green said, she stopped using when
her supplier moved out of town. But it was too late. Her arm went
numb as she sipped on a soda. She was having a stroke.

Green stayed three weeks in the hospital before being transferred to
the same northside nursing home where she'd been months earlier.

Medicaid has covered the enormous cost of her care.

An Anchor

Green thumbs through a book she's been studying. The paperback - a
Bible study on the first four books of the New Testament -- has
everything to do with a decision she made Oct. 18.

A piece of paper, tucked in the pages, reminds her she accepted
Christ into her life.

"There is a change. I see it," said pastor Smith, who met Green about
three years ago when she and her mother attended his church.

Around Green's neck, inches above a scorpion tattoo, hangs a
silver-and-purple beaded necklace, given to her by someone who works
at the nursing home. The inscription on a silver charm reads "forgiven."

Overcoming the temptation of drugs is the greatest struggle ahead for
Green, Smith said.

"The biggest thing is what she does with it from this point."

Green admits she still craves the drug that made her feel so good at
first but has crippled her health.

What will stop her from using again?

Green thinks for a moment. "God."

October, 2005

Three years after her stroke, Donna Green Thoms still craves
methamphetamine. She injected and snorted a crystallized form of the
drug earlier this year, she told the Terre Haute, Ind., Tribune Star
in October. She said she stopped using meth in August when her
9-year-old daughter -- who lives with relatives -- looked at Thoms
and said "I'm disappointed in you."

Though she's not using meth now, Thoms admits using prescription
drugs to "feel good." She also has struggled with psychiatric issues
and has been prescribed medication to stop voices she hears -- a side
effect, she believes, of drug use.

At 30, she is married and lives in government housing. Her health
prevents her from working, she said.

A New Brew

In the early 1990s, something new was brewing in America's heartland.
Across Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri, police were encountering a new
version of methamphetamine that could be produced in a matter of hours.

Decongestant pills containing pseudoephedrine were being chemically
converted into methamphetamine using common products such as camera
batteries, drain cleaner and salt, along with ether-based engine
starter fluid and farm fertilizer. Police dubbed it the "Nazi" method
after they found swastikas scribbled on papers at a meth lab in Missouri.

The method was simple. The ingredients cheap. And the product, unlike
its imported version, at least potentially pure.

In the 1960s and '70s, biker gangs made meth using
phenyl-2-propanone, a dark brown syrupy chemical that eventually was
regulated by the government, said Eric Lawrence, director of the
forensic analysis division of the Indiana State Police crime lab.

Methamphetamine made in "mom-and-pop labs" is chemically different
than its 1960s counterpart, making it extremely addictive, police say.

"This is not the speed your grandma was taking back in the '50s and
'60s," said State Police Trooper Chuck Tharp.

In the mid-1990s, police in Indiana encountered something strange in
Noble County, just north of Indianapolis.

A compact car appeared to have smoke pouring out if it. Inside the
car, officers found a 5-gallon red plastic gas can containing the
farm chemical anhydrous ammonia. Also discovered: Camera batteries.

It was a moment of truth for State Police.

"All of a sudden, the light came on. Luckily, we had just come from a
conference where they were talking about a new method," for making
methamphetamine, said 1st Sgt. Dave Phelps of State Police
headquarters in Indianapolis.

Greg Carter, chief deputy prosecutor in Vermillion County, likens it
to a Prohibition-era product.

"It's kind of like the bathtub gin of this generation," Carter said.

The process, with a few variations, has spread by Internet postings
and books, but primarily by word of mouth.

Studies indicate the average "cook" teaches 10 others, Lawrence said.

"The people we find most often are doing this to feed their own
addiction," said State Police Trooper Mike Eslinger. Typically, five
to six people are involved with each meth lab operation.

Someone steals anhydrous ammonia from a tank at an agricultural co-op
or from a farmer's field. Others buy or steal other ingredients,
ranging from cold pills to brake cleaning fluid. And in the end, the
"cook" usually pays them with product.

Although the per-gram cost of the drug is comparable to crack
cocaine, the euphoric high of crank lasts for hours, versus minutes.

"People give up cocaine for [meth] today," said Bill Plew, an
addictions counselor at Discover Recovery in Terre Haute. "It's a
scary drug. It takes over people's lives. It makes them slaves."

Karin Grunden writes for The Tribune Star in Terre Haute, Ind.