Confessions of a San Angelo Meth Addict

“In 2005 is when I first started,” Slim* said from his seat across the table at a San Angelo fast food chain. “I was dealing at the time and some guy came from Dallas and he brought something that I’d never even seen. I had some friends of mine that had messed with it before and they were telling me how to do it, and I didn’t want to because I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. But I ended up doing it anyways, and it was over from there,” he says, shaking his head and reaching for a French fry. “I don’t even know how to explain at that time what I felt, but I can explain what I feel when I do it now.“

Slim was 28 years old in 2005. Today, he’s 36 and he’s still addicted to the drug he took that day the guy came in from Dallas. “It didn’t take long, honestly, off and on, I don’t know if I can say that I’m addicted like I’ve seen other people addicted, but I’ve lost a lot. It takes a hold of you and when you…start losing things and start losing your family and start losing the ones that you love, you’re addicted. So I think I want to say I’ve been addicted for a good minute.”

By Slim’s definition, he’s been addicted to methamphetamine for approximately two years. He’s not an every day drug user, but he has had his hard times, he said, points in his life where he placed priority on the drug above all else and felt a greedy need to get it. Those were the worst times of his addiction, the two years that took away everything he had. The other six he has spent as a user, one repeatedly trying to kick the habit before falling back on the pipe.

When he started out, he was the source. His dealings of meth progressed to the point that he was taking in advance orders and cash and scrawling them down on bits of paper while he waited for a delivery to come in from the Metroplex. “People [were] waiting down the street in a house, outside running around in a circle, and I said, ‘I don’t want to sell this. This is way to obvious. I’d rather sell weed.’”

After a while, three of the guys Slim sold to became dealers, and he began visiting them for his habit. “Before you know, it had me hooked,” he said. “It happened so fast. People were bringing TVs and stuff over to my house, and now I’m over here bringing their TVs back to their house, you know, like it’s weird, man. “

How heavily and how often Slim used meth over the next four years is unclear, but he did do well for himself, reaching the high point of his life-to-date sometime around 2009. By then, he’d quit dealing and taken on a job as a rough neck, was making a steady paycheck and had a house and girlfriend. He drove a new truck back then and was well on his way to starting a family, but the money that he was making became harder to control as his familiar friend meth came around more often.

“I was doing it behind my chick’s back and later on it became more obvious and more obvious,” he said. “She thought I was cheating on her.”

One day, Slim’s girlfriend followed him out to a jobsite to make sure he wasn’t meeting up with another woman. He’d become more and more withdrawn as the drug took hold, and less concerned with things other than himself. On the way out there, she was involved in a car accident. Not long after, she broke up with him and one of the ties in his life unfurled. He now felt a void where there was once an anchor, and to fill that hole he turned to meth.

“It just had a grip on me, and it had a grip on everything—my thoughts, how I felt about doing it, even to the point where it became personal where I felt I needed to take it just to be able to do whatever for somebody else,” he said. “Before I know it, man, I’m getting paid and all that money is going into meth. I don’t pay no bills. Two thousand dollars every two weeks in meth and I was buying little bitty stuff—one gram, one gram, one gram.”

Weights and Measures

A gram of meth, Slim says, costs approximately $60, but prices may vary depending on how many times it changes hands before you purchase it. “That’s why I always ask for the price; I always know if it’s theirs, if they’re getting it from another person, or that other person is getting it from another person, just by a simple price,” he says.

Slim has never been arrested on drug charges, but he says users and dealers do know the law, and they plan around it. The number one charge for meth possession is for one to four grams, a third-degree felony. It’s not uncommon for a dealer to weigh out and sell .9 grams rather than a full one to avoid the charge if busted. The next penalty ranges for possession of four to 20 grams, so one may be busted with just under four to avoid a higher penalty.

Anyone carrying over a gram is probably selling it, Slim says, and a gram generally lasts him one night with five friends, depending on the potency and how much they want to smoke.

The Zombie Effect

“This meth is different from meth back in the day,” he said. “Meth back in the day, I’ve gone—stayed up—12, 13 days. That’s like when sleep deprivation sets in and you really are seeing things.”

Nowadays, the meth doesn’t keep him awake as long, he says, maxing out at around two days tops. He said used to, he could take a single hit and be high for hours or even days, now he has to smoke quite a bit to have that sort of lasting effect.

“You sit in a room and you’re smoking and—I don’t know [what you do for 12 or 13 days],” he says, noting that meth is more of an ‘indoor drug’. “The time goes by so fast you don’t realize it; you’re just doing the drug. Then eventually, when you step outside and it’s at night, you’re like—“ he pauses to make a sort of mime that most closely mimics a zombie film. 

“I’ll tell you what I did. I was hugging a tree because I thought somebody was crawling through the grass and I wanted to catch him and I’d jump out of the tree.”

Meth is not considered as hallucinogenic as mushrooms or LSD, but the sleep deprivation does start intensifying anything that’s on people’s minds and they will start to see things, he says. “If they’re the paranoid type, they’re going to get more paranoid. If you think there’s a conspiracy going on, that somebody’s out to get you, it’s going to get worse. All of these things, they get stronger.”

And while Slim describes the drug as one that gives him a heightened awareness of all things around him, he also says it’s a drug of neglect. Before too long, you start not to care and not to tend to the things you should. You don’t pay your bills or clean up the house or throw out the trash, he said. You start to skip meals and showers, don’t brush your teeth and don’t adhere to a normal schedule.

“They end up losing their kids,” he says as example. “School, they don’t wake up on time for school, it becomes a habit, then CPS gets involved. A lot of these people that I know, they have CPS cases. They’re trying to see their kids and that drives them even worse into doing this drug.”

As soon as the conversation about kids comes up, he says, he tries to steer away from it. The problem is, he says, is that you want to tell them it will all be ok, but it won’t. Not if they keep doing that drug. They can’t keep doing the drug and see their kids at the same time, he said.

As familial problems progress, mothers and fathers retreat further into their habit, Slim says, much like he did after he lost his girlfriend.

“A lot of these people I know have CPS cases and after they go to a meeting or something, they’re crying, they’re pissed off and they have to smoke to feel better,” he said. “And as soon as they smoke, they never talk about that anymore. That conversation never comes up. They’re not even thinking about their kids anymore. But just like I told you, man, you’re just thinking about your own feelings. That’s it.”

Gangs, Rape, Poison

There are bad people in this stuff. People that don’t care. People that will take your money, your bill money, your kid’s money, their birthday money, he says. They’ll take it all.

Meth is real problem in San Angelo, he says, and it all revolves around money. Paranoia sets in and people arm themselves; houses are filled with guns—galleries of them—and the organized gangs controlling some of the drug operations kill for money owed without remorse. Slim says he’s never seen someone get shot, but he was in a house once where a gang member took another into a different room and shot him. “It was about money,” he said. “The real, real dumb ones, they’ll do it in front of you. They do stupid things in front of you. I already know that there’s no respect for themselves or whoever they represent.”

Another problem that comes with the drug is the way men will handle females. I’ve seen girls have sex for drugs,” he said. “I’ve seen girls have sex for money to get drugs. There’s some guys out there man…they’ll get a girl drugged up and they’ll do things to her. I’ve had friends later on get dropped off and they’re just to themselves. They’re just off in a corner hugging themselves and I’m just like ‘Man, what the hell happened to you? Where were you?’ and they won’t tell me.”

Slim says he’s never taken advantage of a woman on the drug, but it wasn’t due to lack of opportunity. He recalls staying in one of San Angelo’s seedy motels with a girl who strung out beyond comprehension, but said he let her sleep it off, wake up, take a shower. The threat is very real that bad things can happen on the drug, but getting a bad batch is also a danger.

“I’ve seen people ‘overamp,’” he said, which is basically overheating. “I thought I was going to have a heart attack [once]. I felt a pain in my heart, in my chest, and I sat out there and I was by myself and I had the phone next to me and 911, I was fixing to call it. I was just holding it. I was getting scared, I thought I was going to have a heart attack, and I calmed myself down.

“The bad batches are the ones where you get sick from it,” he continues. “It’s almost like it’s poison. I puked bile, I puked something out of my system. I was puking something black. I knew that first hit that something was wrong with it. I know that I’ve probably got some problems internally. I’m scared to go get it checked out.”

Redemption

For about six months, Slim has been trying to get clean. He hasn’t smoked meth for almost a month now, has blocked phone numbers from friends that use and has converted an old shed into a room at the back of his mother’s house. He is 36 years old and he’s afraid to go to certain parts of town because he can’t trust that he’ll be strong enough to stay away from methamphetamine.

Slim has the support of his mother, but he’s having to work to gain her trust. His brother will no longer speak to him. “He doesn’t like to see me like this,” he said.

Family problems are common among meth addicts he said; many of his friends grew up in households where drugs and alcohol were abused and where physical violence was commonplace. He was no different, and the isolation that is forged by using the drug perpetuates a community of users who feel alone and shut out, then take solace in using drugs with others, even if the high is only temporary.

During the interview, he conceded he didn’t realize how long he’s been using meth.

“I spent so long—eight years—I spent my time with this drug. I was thinking maybe three or four years, man, but I lost a lot man, I lost a lot. I had a nice house, a nice truck, a good job, a family in the making and all that went away, just so fast,” he said. “I don’t want to say because of that drug, I made decisions too—but it had a grip on me, man that I couldn’t even explain it. People don’t understand. They don’t want to listen to it. I try to tell them I don’t want to be that person no more, but I need you to help me, but they don’t want to help you because you hurt them.”

Help is not easy to find for the addiction, he says, because people don’t understand the problems of users. In some cases, he says, people actually do need medication for mental problems, others would benefit from counseling or from just talking to someone that they can trust and who can relate.

“I used to think that there was a reason why I was doing this,” he said. “There was a reason I was around these people, and I still believe that. Maybe I’m around these people to help them, because nobody knows about them. Nobody knows and I don’t think anybody ever will unless I make it known. Because there’s some good people out there. There’s some good people that made bad decisions just like I did. Just like me.”

When he’s able, he says he’d like to help others that he knows overcome their issues and talk about their problems. The drug affects a spectrum of people from grocery store managers, to restaurant workers and mechanics and even people living in mansions in Santa Rita, he said.

“It’s everywhere. I’ll go to the other (north) side of town and it’s like every three houses has that drug,” he said. “It’s every other house or every house or down this street. I mean, it’s crazy.”

Slim has never been to any meetings or sought help from any organizations, but says he’s got an idea now of how to break free of the drug. Music and exercise are important components of the strategy, but foremost is letting go of the selfishness and filling that gap with love for others. “I had to get rid of that selfishness inside me,” he said. “Later on, when I was using it, I started helping people. If somebody needed money for something and it wasn’t for drugs, I would help them. Just little by little I got rid of something inside me I never thought I could get out and it was that selfishness. I replaced that with caring for other people," he said.

“One day I hope we all go out to the lake and have a barbecue out there; be normal. That’s all we want to be, man. I know I want to be normal,” he said. “I want to be looked at just like—I don’t even want to be looked at. Not noticed, like any other person. But we are noticed. We walk anywhere and…they know what we do. I don’t like that.”

Slim’s goal is to ultimately be completely free of the drug and to not have to worry about driving down certain streets, having money or receiving phone calls. He says having friends that use drugs makes it extremely difficult to quit because they’ll use it in front of him, so he’s trying to avoid contact with people that may lead him astray. In the future he hopes to build a family and get a good job, start life again. As for now, he’s afraid taking on work and having a regular paycheck may lead him to spend it all at his dealer’s house.

Asked how he feels about the drug, he said “I despise it, I do. I despise that drug. It’s taken away—not just for me, I’ve seen a lot of people lose [things]. I see the pain in my family’s eyes, I see the pain in my mom’s eyes. I don’t have no room for mistakes anymore.”

As for the interview, he said he consented to raise awareness. “I just hope something good comes of it.”

 *Name changed to protect identity.

More on Meth Addiction and Crime Stats

Last October, we ran an article on the statistics for meth usage in the county, showing trends over a 10-year period. Also included are comments from the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Council for the Concho Valley, and further information on the effects of the drug. Arrests for possession of meth have been on the rise for the past two years, but were at their highest in 2004-2005. 

A second article from October circulates on the 300 percent increase in STDs in our area over a 10-month period, from January 2013 to October 2013. A large portion of that increase is attributable to sexual exchanges between addicts of methamphetamine.