Access #: 517227
Headline: Losing it all: Among the side effects of methamphetamine addiction: bankruptcy, job loss, crime and family neglect.
Date: 01/24/00
Day: Monday
Credit: The Press -Enterprise
Section: A Section
Zone: ALL ZONES
Page: A01
Byline: Raymond Smith
Caption: 1. Mark Zaleski; The Press -Enterprise ; HOMELESS: Two girls are removed from a home in Coronita, near Corona, where police found a methamphetamine lab in October. Chemicals, glassware and other supplies needed to maufacture methamphetamine were stored in the garage adjacent to the house. 2. Mark Zaleski; The Press -Enterprise ; REACHING OUT FOR HELP: Lori Warden, above, of Newton, Iowa, dabs at tears while discussing her addiction to methamphetamine . Warden gets support from Shane Stewart, who worked at the Powell Chemical Dependency Center in Des Moines, Iowa, where Warden was in treatment. Below, Evelyn Kovalenko, 41, plays with her children at a drug-rehab meeting at the Inland Behavior Health and Services in San Bernardino, Recently Rhyln, 3, left, Cassey, 8, middle, and Devan, 6, were returned to Kovalenko by county authorities.
Art: PHOTOS
Notes: See sidebars "One Inland couple tries to stay clean" and "Coping with meth-lab kids"
Subject: CRIME; NARCOTICS
Keys: SOURCE NATION; METH LABS; METHAMPHETAMINE ; SOCIAL IMPACT
Type: SERIES
Some are lured by the rush of a party drug. Others crave the
energy. And some, particularly women, grasp at a shortcut to weight
loss.
Once snared by methamphetamine , though, addiction steers diverse
lives onto similar courses.
Shame. Humiliation. Mistreated children. Jail. Families ripped
apart.
"I try to forgive myself for yesterday," said Lori Warden of
Newton, Iowa, who neglected her children while she and a boyfriend
injected and made methamphetamine . "I thought, 'We can control
this. We don't get all weird like those other people." "
That was before the stealing and paranoia began, before her
boyfriend raped her, before she lost her children.
Stories about violence, neglect and sexual abuse are common among
meth users, experts say.
Children typically are the victims.
Social workers in the Inland Empire say substance abuse figures
in more than 80 percent of their cases, and meth is prominent in
many of those.
Neglect is the most prevalent problem.
The signs are the same in most homes where meth is made: Rooms
are littered with mounds of trash, dirty clothes and animal feces.
The refrigerator and cupboards are empty. The toilet is clogged.
And everything -- including a child's teddy bear or blanket --
reeks with the lab's distinct odor, reminiscent of putrid diapers
or rotten fish.
In one horrific case, a Rubidoux woman pleaded guilty Jan. 10 to
supplying her 9-year-old son with methamphetamine since he was 7.
One male relative said he was threatened with violence when he
tried to stop Anna Mae Urrutia, 36, from providing drugs to her
son. She was sentenced to three years in prison.
At the family's home, police said, there was no food, no running
water and no heat. But there were drugs and drug paraphernalia
everywhere.
More than 70 percent of the children found in Inland Empire drug
labs in the past year were age 12 or younger. Nearly 500 local
children were found living in homes with meth labs in an 18-month
period. Thousands of other children in similar situations went
undiscovered, police said.
"It's just an inuhmane condition that we"re expecting children to
grow up in and be normal," said Vince Fabrizio, a Riverside County
prosecutor who handles cases involving labs operated with children
present. "You can't expect (these) children ... to survive and
function as human beings."
* * *
Aberrant behavior
Dr. Dennis Weis, medical director of the Powell Chemical
Dependency Center in Des Moines, said aberrant behavior such as
paranoia is rooted in meth's effect on chemicals and receptors in
brain.
The result is like having a faulty computer, he said. Information
routed to the brain is misinterpreted. Severe problems can cause
visual, auditory and sensory hallucinations.
Users might hear conversations or see things that don't exist, he
said. Or it might feel as though bugs are crawling under their
skin. The sensation prompts the scratching that is common among
addicts.
"You mess up the chemical computer in the brain," Weis said.
Paranoia and depression can trigger the violence. One patient
spent six months looking out a basement window to see if police
were ready to storm his home, Weis said.
The patient once saw his wife look both ways as she crossed the
street. "He thought that was a signal for the police, and he
attacked her with a baseball bat," Weis said.
Two years ago, Weis asked 60 or 70 patients if they had been
shot, stabbed or clubbed while using methamphetamine or if they had
committed any of those acts against someone else. About 40 percent
said yes, he said.
Stimulant abuse also is linked to changes in sexual behavior and
increased sexual aggressiveness, he said. The aphrodisiac effect
might occur because of neural or hormonal shifts caused by
methamphetamine , he said.
In Des Moines, police found an accountant for a large business
naked in a warehouse, surrounded by porn magazines and shooting
methamphetamine , he said. Some people high on methamphetamine
engage in prostitution or homosexual acts in which they normally
would not be involved, he said. The drug lowers inhibitions for
some. Others prostitute themselves as a way to get drugs, Weis said.
* * *
All in the family
Methamphetamine isn't always isolated to one family member.
It is not uncommon for users to span generations in the same family.
In July, one case in Riverside County touched four generations --
including one still unborn, police said.
Acting on a tip, investigators knocked at Donna Louise Herrera's
door at the Legacy Inn motel in Moreno Valley. Inside was a
methamphetamine lab.
At least one or two batches already had been cooked and another
was being prepared, said sheriff's Detective Tom Salisbury.
Herrera, 35, her husband, John Abrego, 40, and her father, Alfonso
Herrera, 67, all were involved in the operation, Salisbury said.
Deputies found open bags of potato chips, bowls of cereal and
children's clothes in the room with the lab. A second room rented
by Herrera was home for her five children, from 14 months to 16
years. The oldest was pregnant.
During interviews with police, Donna Herrera said her father
started giving her benzedrine, a stimulant, when she was a
junior-high softball player, Salisbury said.
Donna Herrera's pregnant 16-year-old daughter told police that
she had seen her mother's drug use all her life but had not used
speed herself until recently. For several days, she had smoked
methamphetamine two or three times an hour, the girl said. She had
not eaten much or slept at all and was concerned that she had had
no prenatal care, Salisbury said.
"I asked her who'd she got the meth from, and she said her
grandfather," Salisbury said.
The girl apparently was using the drug without her mother's
knowledge, Salisbury said.
Donna Herrera and John Abrego were sentenced to five years in
prison after pleading guilty to manufacturing methamphetamine and
child endangerment. An arrest warrant was issued for Donna
Herrera's father, who had not been at the hotel when police
arrived, Salisbury said. As of early January, he had not been arrested.
Addicts often convince themselves that their families are faring
well. Salisbury said he's heard the avowal over and over: "It's not
my kids" problem, man. I"ve got to get straightened out, but my
kids are doing fine."
"Most of them think that it could be better, but it's not that
bad, that they"ve seen worse somewhere else," Salisbury said.
* * *
Losing everything
Like others, Lori Warden of Iowa found she couldn't maintain a
family and a meth addiction at the same time.
She started using meth more than 2 1/2 years ago at age 24. She
began snorting it after her second child was born. The
methamphetamine helped her lose weight.
She switched to smoking it and then began 'slamming" -- injecting
it into her veins -- two years later. Des Moines police say 85
percent of the methamphetamine on the city's streets comes from
California and Mexico.
At first, the drug made her feel stupid and lost.
"Eventually, that felt normal," Warden said as she curled up in a
chair, sober for 20 days at the Powell center in Des Moines.
Everything just got away from her, she said. As the addiction
worsened, Warden split with her husband. In three months, she went
through $19,000 the couple had saved.
Child-support payments, everything, went for methamphetamine .
High, she couldn't deal with caring for two children. She pawned
them off on her mother or dumped them on their father during the
times she was supposed to care for them.
"I'd call them names," she said. One day, she hit her daughter
because the little girl was blowing a whistle as she walked through
the house. The girl was not injured.
"My kids were my life to me. It went from my kids being my life
to meth being my life in probably four months," she said.
Her husband filed to get sole custody of the children and took
over their care.
Warden said she stole to support her habit and once rode with two
friends to rob a convenience store. The friends walked inside with
a gun while Warden waited in the car.
"It was just intense," she said. "I wasn't scared till the next
day. I just wanted to get high."
One day, a friend who had just been released from jail showed
Warden's boyfriend how to make speed. Warden would go out for
supplies, convinced by paranoia that she was being followed.
When her boyfriend started cooking the methamphetamine , "I'd sit
at the window for hours making sure no one was out there."
'selling was a high," she said, recalling deals with people and
money. "I'd get just as high from that as I would the dope."
But paranoia also gripped her boyfriend. He thought she was
cooperating in a non-existent police investigation. For nine hours
one night, he locked her in a room strapped to a bed with a belt,
she said. Warden said she was raped and slapped around. She thought
she would be tortured.
But the ordeal ended when a relative arrived at the house.
As friend after friend went off to prison, Warden realized she
was out of control.
"I used to think, how did I let this happen? How can this drug
have this much control over my life? There's nothing else in my
life that meant as much as getting high," she said.
In September, though, she was trying to regain control and
fighting the urge to leave the program.
"I"ve never trusted anyone like I"ve trusted the people here,"
she said. "I feel strong here."
The hardest part, she said, has been the separation from her
children.
She had a husband, a family, a job in her grandfather's business ,
a $180,000 home and a nice car.
"Now I have nothing," she said. "I feel so low for the things
I"ve lost in my life."
Eric Vilchis 02/18/00