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Confessions of an Arizona meth addict

[Editor's note: TZR correspondent Cyndy Hardy wanted to share her personal experiences in reporting this story to help put it into context. Some of the content includes foul language.]

VERDE VALLEY — Not content to write another standard piece on methamphetamine abuse, I walked into a Verde Valley bar and announced I wanted to dispel any meth myths propagated by users, law enforcement and the media.

I perched myself at an outdoor table and waited. I knew most of the faces that eyed me suspiciously but, I don’t know their private lives. They know I’m a journalist – and a fairly aggressive one, at that. I wasn’t sure what would happen.

Over the course of two weeks, I did this exercise several times. Each time, people sat to talk with varying degrees of honesty and credibility. All demanded anonymity – a death trap for journalistic credibility. But, this story can’t happen if sources think the law will trace it back to them.

One man – a quiet man who generally keeps to himself – sat next to me. “I’ll talk if you swear not to use my name,” he said.

Nick is a 43-year-old recovering meth addict who has used the drug for nearly 25 years. Nick’s teeth often clenched and his jaw ground from side to side as he spoke. His soft voice and chiseled features nearly escaped my observation because I was searching for dramatic signs of meth use, like open wounds on his face or arms.

Nick rolled a cigarette from a can of Bugler tobacco and allowed me to take several photographs – inexplicably unconcerned that his image would accompany the article in which he didn’t want his name exposed.

“You want the truth,” he said. “I’ll give it to you.” What follows is the truth as Nick sees it. His story, corroborated by others who spoke to me, seemed credible enough and representative of a side of meth the public rarely hears.

LIFE ON THE DARK SIDE

As a teen, cocaine was Nick’s drug of choice. He would sell anything to get it – CDs, cars, tools and stereos. “I once sold a $5,000 stereo for $1,000,” he said.

Like many in the drug culture, Nick used what he wanted and shared some with his friends and associates. Still, he had so much left over that he began selling the surplus. Dealing cocaine became Nick’s occupation.

But after literally blowing through $67,000 in six months, he switched from cocaine to methamphetamine. It was 1985 and Nick was 20 years old.

“Speed [a street name for meth] was cheaper than cocaine,” Nick said. He priced it at about $30 per gram 20 years ago compared to $80 to $100 per gram today.

Meth was a “cleaner” high, too. He could get by on four hours of sleep, wake up with no hangover and “be fine.” Meth gave him a productive high at first. “You can’t sit for a movie – you want to do things,” Nick says.

Meth can be ingested many ways including pills and injections. Nick preferred to smoke it.

A mechanic by trade, Nick first used about a quarter of a gram per day. “All I wanted was to tweak in the garage and play with nuts and bolts.” As he got older, he would use about nearly two grams per day, usually shared with one or two people.

The drug changed Nick. It changes the way the brain works, he said. “All I could think about was sex,” he says. By age 23, Nick’s mother forced him into rehab for the first time.

“I guess I wasn’t looking too good,” he says. Nick had entered the U.S. Army weighing 167 pounds. Within three years of using meth, he had dropped to 117 pounds.

Nick walked out of rehab after a few days and was soon using again. The California court system forced him into rehab again at age 27. He walked out again after a week.

Nick’s third and final stint in rehab to date was at age 30. Nick and his girlfriend, Beth, used meth together while living in California. Her father had committed suicide, and she drank large amounts of tequila to numb the pain. Nick said the alcohol contributed to frequent fights that ruined their relationship.

Nick was charged with internal possession of methamphetamine during one of the couple’s fights. The court sent him to rehab again. This time Nick stayed for the three-week duration.

“My lovely girlfriend met me at the door with a gram of meth,” Nick says. “There’s no saying no when somebody’s got it in their hand.”

Nick had had enough and tried to leave his past to start a new life. He took a $500 loan on a $10,000 tool box and bought a one-way train ticket to Flagstaff. He moved into a trailer park in the Verde Valley and went back to “wrenching.”

Someone, friend or family, eventually gave Beth Nick’s telephone number. Nick refused her calls for a long time, but eventually gave in and told her where he was. Beth said she had gotten into legal trouble in California and was running to Texas. All she wanted was to stop by and see him on her way through.

Once again, Beth showed up with a bag of meth. Once again, they fought. This time Nick spent two years in an Arizona prison for aggravated assault.

Today, tired of feeling nervous, jittery and “not being able to talk,” Nick says he wants to be clean. “I’m tired of the bullshit,” he says.

And he was clean for about six months. A stranger approached Nick two days before the interview and offered to share a “teener,” which is one-sixteenth of a gram – a fraction of the amount that originally hooked Nick. He indulged.

“The addiction is still there. I don’t ask for it; I don’t look for it; but I can’t say I wouldn’t do it if it was in my face. I can’t say ‘no,” he says, a tinge of remorse peeking through many layers of denial and defiance.

METH MYTH NO. 1: TREATMENT

Nick will not seek professional help to overcome his addiction. “Twelve thousand dollars
for fucking help?” he asks, saying that is what treatment costs.

Nick says he feels caught in a paradox where the only way he could afford treatment is to get arrested again. “They make it easy if you get busted.”

Local authorities generally disagreed, but when questioned without reference to Nick’s claims, their responses painted a confusing picture.

MATForce leads the war against meth in the Verde Valley through advocacy and education. It is an organization comprised of representatives from regional civic and public agencies in Yavapai County, and in 2006, a MATForce subcommittee found that “a substantial and rapidly expanding network of programs and facilities” exists in the Verde Valley to adequately meet current demands for treatment.

That means there are enough private places to help users kick the habit. But there are more and more meth users in rural central Arizona, the committee found.

“Treatment availability, waiting lists and funding always have been issues in rural Yavapai County,” says Brian Gray, deputy chief of Yavapai County’s adult probation department. “There are less than 30 residential treatment bed spaces shared by Yavapai and Mohave Counties for publicly funded clients.”

The MATForce report also found that community-based outpatient services provide the best chance of success, especially when children are part of the user’s big picture

But, getting help often means a person must be wealthy enough to afford treatment or destitute enough to qualify for state financial aid. Sedona City Councilman Rob Adams, who is a MATForce committee member, agrees many addicts are probably caught in the gap.

METH MYTH NO. 2: ADDICTION

Nick criticized the way media and law enforcement focus on the most dramatic images of meth abuse without telling the public how prolific the use really is. Most users can function fine if they use the drug in moderation, he said.

“It’s like anything: You take a couple of bad seeds out of hundreds of thousands using meth and the media is all over it,” he says.

A person cannot overdose on meth, he said. Too much of the drug causes the body to reject it and “nullifies” the effects, he says.

“I’ve known lots of people who have died from cocaine, but never meth,” Nick says. “The medical profession would probably never tell you that.”

In the worst cases, Nick said too much meth causes a person to lose eyesight for a short time while they are high. “Their eyes roll rapidly in their head – it’s not a pretty sight – but I’ve never seen it kill anybody,” he says.

Still, meth is a bigger social problem than most people realize, Nick says. Most of the public is not aware that they may know many people who are users. But, in Nick’s opinion, they are not all bad people.

“I never ripped anyone off. Maybe I was just a good drug addict,” he says sarcastically.

Those who use meth frequently – about one in 10, according to Nick – spiral out of control quickly. “It catches up to you. You can use for six months and be OK. Then your tolerance goes up and you need three times as much to get high,” he said.

And even though he preferred high-end buyers, Nick’s drug clientele crossed every imaginable social demographic. “Everybody uses,” he generalized. “I sold to people who made $100,000 per year and to people who made $1,000 per month.”

METH MYTH NO. 3: “STREET VALUE”

Nick says law enforcement over-inflates the value of meth taken off the streets to make a better impression on the public. “They’ll say a pound is worth $500,000.”

TZR found published accounts of meth seizures with varying reported street values. In February 2007, the Arizona Department of Public Safety reported 16 pounds of meth was seized with a street value of $120,000 – or $7,500 per pound. A report in the July 2002 issue of U.S. Customs Today priced meth at about $11,200 per pound in Phoenix and about $16,000 in Nogales. In 2006, federal officials seized 187 pounds of meth near Atlanta, Ga., worth at least $133,690 per pound, according to an Associated Press report.

There are about 453.6 grams in a pound. Using Nick’s highest estimate, a pound of meth would hypothetically retail for about $45,000. But the calculation omits basic drug dealer economics, Nick says.
“A pound is really worth about $16,000 to a dealer,” he says.

Meth is rarely sold by the gram; most people buy an ounce or half ounce, Nick says. The price a dealer gets depends on the transaction. Even the drug-dealer world has frequent-flyer miles.

A first-time meth buyer pays street value, he said, but regular clients can get a better deal. A significant amount of ‘product’ is given away – some to attract new clients, most to keep low-end users from snitching the dealer out to police.

Less affluent users may buy every week or every day – increasing the risk to both the buyer and the dealer, Nick says. It might seem a dealer could get a better price for the higher risk, but frequent buyers are usually the ones who get arrested, he says. “They know how to work it. You end up giving a lot of meth away just to stay out of trouble,” Nick says.

The law gets informants from the pool of low-end users, Nick says. Agencies put public funds in their hands to buy drugs. “About 90 percent of the drug busts come from these snitches,” he says. Informants often blackmail dealers for free drugs and the ones who cross the informants get busted.

Rich users buy larger quantities for personal consumption to reduce their risk of being caught. Those buyers can get a wholesale price because they are buying in bulk, which cuts the dealer’s profit margin.

Nick said he stuck to these “high class” clients and was never arrested for selling drugs. “First of all, the cops don’t look at them (rich clients). Second, they buy in bulk; and a guy who shows up every night is seven times the risk,” he says.

METH MYTH NO. 4: “WINNING THE WAR”

Whether local data contradicts Nick’s beliefs is hard to establish. Authorities did not provide, and TZR could not find, a common thread in the data to accurately portray meth trends in Arizona’s Verde Valley.

Essentially, there are three main fronts by which communities fight meth: education, enforcement and treatment. Agencies collect data with various criteria that can’t easily be compared side-by-side.

Clinic officials count the number of patient contacts and categorize substance abuse, but they do not specifically track methamphetamine.

At a Verde Valley Guidance Clinic, for example, patients treated for all drug addictions increased from 120 in 2000 to 320 in 2005. About 107 patients were treated for amphetamine abuse, which includes meth. Although data for 2006 and 2007 was not immediately available, a snap shot of clinic activity in February 2008 showed 288 of 1,106 patient contacts were meth-related.

TASC is an agency that monitors and drug-tests offenders in Yavapai County for several agencies, including Yavapai Drug Treatment Diversion Program, Yavapai County Adult Drug Court and Yavapai County Adult Probation.

In 2006, a leading screening center for Verde Valley clinics collected 7,071 samples from new clients, of which 381 tested positive for drugs or alcohol. In that group, 165 tested positive for amphetamines.

In 2007, the same sampling showed a higher ratio of meth use. About 301 samples tested positive for drugs, of which 160 samples contained amphetamines, according to the Treatment Assessment Screening Center.

Three years ago, meth was a serious problem in the Verde Valley, but it is improving, says Cottonwood City manager Doug Bartosh, a MATForce committee member and former Scottsdale police chief.

“We are seeing a decrease in the number of [meth-related] contacts. Some of that is due to diligent enforcement. Some is because of tighter borders,” Bartosh says.

Verde Valley communities passed psuedoephedrine ordinances after the state lawmakers failed to enact similar legislation. Bartosh says controlling psuedoephedrine at the drugstores works because most of it was being stolen from the shelves – not purchased.

“Since our communities enacted ordinances, we hardly ever see a lab anymore,” he says.

Sedona police Chief Joe Vernier says meth-related incidents in Sedona declined after the city enacted its psuedoephedrine ordinance in 2005. Since then, the state and the federal government have enacted stricter laws to curb meth production.

But Nick, who says he once cooked meth for a Mexican cartel, disputes their rosy outlook. He says putting psuedoephedrine behind the counter did little to curb meth production in Arizona.

“You can’t cook meth and expect to get it over the border,” Nick says. But its main ingredient is coming across the border abundantly in 50-gallon drums because drug-sniffing dogs can’t detect it, he says.

Bartosh disagrees. He says police dogs can be trained to detect nearly anything.

Even though authorities say they are winning the war on meth, several pointed out a disturbing fact: Meth, and other homemade drugs, aren’t going away soon. According to client surveys and other data from Verde Valley clinics, drug users are shifting to other drugs more readily available.

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>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com .

Sedona’s cheap housing disappears under mansions

SEDONA — Mike Horner is a cashier at a mom-and-pop convenience store in Sedona. Over the past 17 years, he has downsized from a three-bedroom home in West Sedona to a trailer in Oak Creek Mobile Lodge on Highway 179.

His 16-year-old son, Brooks, lives with him. Soon, his 18-year-old daughter, Esme, will leave Flagstaff and move in.

When Horner first moved to Sedona, he could rent a three-bedroom house for about $675. When he re-entered the rental market after his divorce, rents were about $1,000 for a two-bedroom house. So he moved into Oak Creek Mobile Lodge because it was a good deal.

Now Horner believes his days as a Sedona resident are numbered. Oak Creek Mobile Lodge is on the chopping block. The property owner, Don Campbell, plans to remove the park’s 59 trailers and build about 50 condominiums.

Horner is dubious about the city’s intentions to do something – anything – about affordable housing in Sedona. To him, it’s empty talk about doing what’s best from people who cater more to the rich than to the “regular people” that make the town tick.

“They have a lot to say but it doesn’t seem to do any good. It’s like they have their own agenda and a deaf ear,” says Horner, who spoke to TZR under the condition that his real name not be used. “I haven’t seen them put up any low-income housing. I don’t think they’ve done anything.”

It’s been almost three months since the Sedona City Council approved new rules to encourage the construction and retention of affordable housing. City officials have been talking about the housing problem since at least 1992.

Little has changed, and Horner was not impressed by the news.

“Oh? I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” Horner says as he bags a customer’s cigarettes and six-pack. “Have a good night, George.”

Instead, Horner will move to nearby Cornville, Ariz., where he owns a piece of land with a run-down mobile home on it.

“If [the landlord] says we have to go, I’ll make my Cornville property livable,” says Horner, who plans to continue working at the convenience store in Sedona.

SEDONA: WIDEST AFFORDABILITY GAP IN ARIZONA

Affordable housing is defined by the relationship between housing prices and household income – what one can reasonably buy or rent without financial hardships. Experts say monthly housing should represent no more than one-third of one’s monthly income over the long run, such as a 30-year mortgage or more.

With that in mind, Sedona has the highest affordability gap in the state, according to a report distributed at the Governor’s Housing Forum in September 2007. The city falls behind 96 percent of all U.S. towns with 40,000 people or less in the category of affordable housing, according to a 2007 citizen survey Sedona officials commissioned from National Research Center in Boulder, Colo.

Median home prices in Sedona increased 77 percent between 2000 and 2006 while rents increased 40 percent, according to the city’s Housing Commission. But Sedona median household incomes only increased 13 percent, from $43,466 to $49,225.

The current median asking price of a single-family home in Sedona is about $586,000, according to Buyers Brokers Realty of Sedona. Townhomes and condominiums fetch about $390,000 apiece.

At those prices, the average Sedonan would have to earn $23 per hour to rent or $84.50 per hour to buy a median-priced home, the governor’s report stated. That is $30 more per hour than the Arizona community with the next highest housing costs: Flagstaff, where workers need to make $54.14 per hour to buy a median-priced home.

As a result, about 64 percent of the Sedona’s workforce lives outside of Sedona. By comparison, 80 percent of the workforce in neighboring Flagstaff actually lives in Flagstaff, according to Flagstaff’s 2007 Housing and Community Sustainability Nexus Study.

In Flagstaff, wages are keeping up with housing prices – sort of. In Sedona, however, Horner’s “regular people” must work like Manhattan-ites. They take on multiple jobs just to afford a decent trailer here.

Between 2000 and and 2006, Sedona’s unemployment rate was 2 percent, less than half the rate for Arizona or the U.S. Those who live and work in Sedona usually have two or more jobs, says Sedona Economic Planner Jodie Filardo.

After all, they want to enjoy the city’s red rock formations and soothing vibe just like everyone else. But a recent video testimonial prepared by the city’s own housing commission shows that most of Sedona’s workers end up with a window seat.

Rhonda Ross, a former Sedona resident, talks about why she caved in and moved to the unincorporated Village of Oak Creek nearby.

Ross tells the camera: “Living in Sedona is definitely a very important part of being here. I really would not want to be working all my jobs just to be living here, just to be having the majority of my income going to rent, bills and food.”

The city’s affordability crisis goes far beyond the lowest wage earners most people associate with affordable housing, says Sedona Housing Commission member Nate Oskar. It makes it hard to attract teachers, police officers, nurses, managers and other professionals because the salaries don’t match the incomes required to buy or rent in Sedona, he says.

SIMPLE SOLUTION NEEDS WORK

Guiding future development is the solution. Sedona’s new housing policy, enacted in December, gives the city some leverage to negotiate affordable housing with developers seeking approval for their projects.

The new rules ask to developers to set aside six to 12 percent of the units they build as affordable housing in order to get zoning approvals from the city. Only those with a household income that falls between 80 and 150 percent of the area’s median income are eligible to buy them.

The new rule is hardly unique to Sedona. It can be found in pricey urban markets outside Arizona, such as Carlsbad and Oceanside, Calif., just north of San Diego.

If the developer does not want to set aside units for affordable housing, the developer can choose to pay into a special fund. This fund directly supports the creation and maintenance of affordable housing elsewhere in Sedona through activities such as land acquisition, down-payment assistance and low-interest loans.

Most developers opt for this route. It allows them to get their project approved and meet affordable housing rules without selling their own units at a discount or having the “affordable housing” stigma attached to their project in particular.

The city offers a carrot in return. Sedona officials can waive or defer development fees for some or all of the units, review building plans more quickly or, on a case-by-case basis, bend the city’s land development codes to accommodate the affordable units. This includes making exceptions for lot coverage, building heights, lot area, lot dimensions and yard setbacks.

But there’s a catch to the new rules: Compliance is voluntary. State law does not allow the city to make its affordable housing rules a requirement, says Sedona Housing Planner Jessica Williamson.

Even so, Sedona’s new policy is the biggest tool in its shed so far for narrowing the state’s worst affordability gap. To create it, Sedona’s Housing Commission met with businesses, resorts, the Sedona Oak Creek Unified School District, the Verde Valley Medical Center, and five major Sedona employers over a three-year period to determine how the lack of affordable housing affects their interests.

The commission circulated two informational brochures. It hosted focus groups and presentations on density and how community participation can help blend affordable housing into the community without a ruckus.

Though local Realtors cried foul about the policy, some Sedona officials cried fair.

“Developers are getting a benefit for a benefit given,” City Councilman Rob Adams said recently.

Yet some of the authors of the rules, such as Sedona Housing Commission chairwoman Linda Martinez, admit that the rules are flawed. But City Councilman Harvey Stern said it’s a good start and that, ironically, the city can’t afford to study the affordable housing problem much longer.

Housing Commissioner Diane Smith agreed, saying, “Small solutions got away while we’ve been looking for a big solution” for 15 years.

The commission took an aggressive step on March 10. It won approval from the City Council to lobby state legislators to pass a new law that would allow local governments to make developers include some affordable housing through special “inclusionary” zoning.

The City Council voted 6-1 in favor of the lobbying, with vice mayor Jerry Frey opposed. The commission will seek help from other towns to find a legislator willing to sponsor the bill.

AFFORDABLE HOUSING IS DISAPPEARING

Whatever the solution is, officials better hurry. In the 12 years it took to create a housing commission and take a snapshot of the situation, much of Sedona’s older [read: affordable] housing has disappeared, giving way to exclusive subdivisions and swanky mansions.

Today, Sedona’s stock of affordable housing is eroding before residents’ very eyes. It has dwindled so much that neither the city nor the commission could offer an estimate on the losses.

That means most of the disappearances are anecdotal – a trailer park here, a few lots there.

In 2000, all but four of 12 trailers were removed from the former Laughing Coyote bar in West Sedona. The rest were removed when the bar sold in 2004. Those affordable units have not been replaced.
Two years ago, about 80 residents of Hawkeye RV Park in Uptown were evicted to make way for about 150 condominiums and 12 affordable off-site units, all of which have yet to be built.

Now, because of funding issues, the developer is asking the city for an 18-month extension – meaning those residents might have had affordable housing for more than three more years. Windsong Trailer Park in West Sedona has sold and is planned for development.

Don Campbell, who is re-developing the Oak Creek Mobile Lodge where Horner lives, agreed to reduce the density of his project. He will come back to the city with five fewer units, which includes two affordable units. If the city approves the project, another 53 units of affordable housing will disappear without comment from the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission.

So forget houses. Sedona’s workers should just toughen up and find an apartment, right?

Well, Sedona lags far behind in that category, too. Apartments account for just 4 percent of Sedona’s housing stock, compared to 23 percent of Arizona’s housing stock overall, according to a 2006 city study by Kuehl Enterprises.

The same study showed that Sedona also lags behind other resort communities. Multifamily housing makes up 20 percent and 13 percent of the land uses in Aspen and Durango, Colo., respectively. Sedona clocks in at 4 percent.

DIM FUTURE IF SOLUTION NOT FOUND

So far, Sedona’s new affordable housing policy has netted at least 13 new affordable units and $186,984 in the special fund. That’s almost enough money to buy one bedroom in a median-priced, three-bedroom Sedona home.

But Sedona housing officials aren’t waiting around to see more successes. They are fast at work exploring other strategies such as inclusionary zoning, which would make some affordable units mandatory for any residential project.

Among those items is a request for help from Republican Andrew Tobin and other state lawmakers who represent the area. Although Tobin acknowledges the problem, he says the state’s projected billion-dollar shortfall and the Capitol’s bias toward helping big cities will hurt Sedona’s chances.

In a March 2 email to TZR, Tobin wrote, “It is not likely that our rural communities will get much help from an urban-dominated legislature.”

Tobin also wrote that beating the affordable housing crisis has to happen at the local level through partnerships between city governments and developers to build high-density, multifamily projects.

But Sedona has just 59 acres left for such projects. About 80 percent of the city’s developable land is spoken for.

Tobin also said he was unsure if any bills addressing affordable housing had made it past legislative committees, the Legislature’s lowest rungs for new bills to become laws.

Even if they did, he wrote, the bills would probably get stuck in the appropriations committee – which controls the state’s purse strings – because “funding is not available this year or next, as [far as] I can tell.”

SEDONA’S AFFORDABLE CLOCK IS TICKING

This leaves Sedonans like Ronald Pauley to find their own solution while local and state officials debate the ins and outs of the city’s affordable housing crisis.

Pauley owns a successful business that repairs restaurant equipment. He has rented a two-bedroom apartment in Uptown Sedona since 2002.

The view from Pauley’s affordable apartment used to be the jagged red hills below Wilson Mountain. Now, his view is the back of a new three-story timeshare condominium built about 30 feet from his window.

“I know they are timeshares because I see the people who come and go,” he says.

None of the mountains are visible. “How did they get three stories?” he asks, perplexed.

These days, media coverage of land speculation is driving up land values and rental prices in Sedona. Pauley says he is close to moving out of Sedona because the affordability gap is turning into a chasm.

Fearing reprisal from his landlord, Pauley spoke to TZR under the condition that his real name not be used for this story.

“My landlord started raising the rent after reading about higher average rent prices in the newspaper,” Pauley says. Last year, he adds, his rent rose three times in one week. It began at $600 and rose to $625, then $650, then $700.

Pauley says the eight-unit apartment building was built in 1972 by its current owner. The construction is not up to code. There are gaps between the original wood siding and the newer brick façade. The PVC pipes rattle inside the walls, he says, and methane gas vents into the attic, not outside the dwelling.

“I’ve got a working smoke detector and an exit strategy,” Pauley says with a grin.

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>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com.

Cyndy Hardy

Cyndy Hardy is an eight-year resident of Sedona whose work was recognized with an award from the Arizona Newspapers Association. She has written more than 2,500 published articles that have appeared in Sedona Red Rock News , Camp Verde Journal , Cottonwood Journal Extra , Sedona.biz and The Noise .

Her story on Sedona’s affordable housing problem was her first contribution to The Zonie Report .