JAILED TEEN: METH TURNED MY WORLD UPSIDE DOWN

Methamphetamine provided James with a high without the "downer" side effects of marijuana and alcohol.

"Say we went to a party on the weekend or something like that, you know, we'd get drunk and everything, then I'd crash. I'd just smoke some meth and I'd be up and speeding and ready to go. We'd be up all night playing video games or talking on the phone or something like that."

Meth also offered benefits sim ilar to his prescribed Ritalin -- increased motivation, focus and efficiency.

"The Ritalin and all that made me a little smarter, but then once I started smoking meth, I could beat anybody at anything. I just became so much smarter, faster and everything."

James was on his high school's track and basketball teams, and meth helped with both, he said.

"I could smoke it and in track, I could run the fastest. In basketball, I could keep playing and playing. Lifting weights, my body muscles would heal quicker, and I could gain more mass."

Meth kept James more alert and motivated during his after-school job. In fact, James says he used meth when he needed a little push, usually about three times a week. Unlike most meth users, he never felt that he had to have it all the time -- at least, at first.

"At the time it was just helping me, so I mean it wasn't a high addiction where I needed it. I don't even know why I did, but it wasn't a really addictive thing," he said.

There were signs his meth use wasn't without problems. James says he became short-tempered, getting into fights -- including one that got him expelled from the basketball team. He also was growing away from his girlfriend.

However, meth gave him something in common with his siblings, both of whom used it. James ended up setting up a meth lab, in part to impress his brother.

"I didn't fit in with a lot of my family members. I felt like they didn't love me or care for me or anything," he said. "Once I showed (my brother) that I had a better crank than he did, then we actually had a connection."

With meth's addictive qualities, intense high and relatively low price compared to white-collar cousins cocaine and heroin, introducing it to other teens was easy. However, James had hoped to limit his product to students who already used drugs at his school. Instead, he created a monster.

"I think that maybe it would've gotten (to my school) sometime, but I think that for my age group and my friends it was me that put it there. Now I think that it's grown a lot (bigger) than I wanted it to be. I wanted to keep it really just between really the five, six friends that I had and the people that we got it off of, but now it's just like everybody's doing it. It's just growing and growing and growing now, to all the different groups."

Meth also made him even more violent and unpredictable.

"I'd see somebody looking at me or something like that, and for no reason, I'd just hit them. I wouldn't stop, no matter who grabbed me. And I think that that really messed up my mind. It made me a totally different person," he said.

He also started taking more risks. No longer a mere meth entrepreneur, his business expanded to include robberies, burglaries and car thefts. Instead of dealing with other teens, he was finding himself allied with big-time criminals.

"Meth was the only way I could've done it. It seemed like it was a movie. I knew a lot of people who I wouldn't have met (otherwise), a lot of high drug dealers and so-called mafia people. It wasn't like we were just walking into this house and taking the stuff and walking out. We would plan it out: big houses, rich people who had home alarm detectors. It was just like a big challenge that the meth helped me to achieve," James said.

"I mean, I just felt like I was so smart and there was no way for me to get caught, even if I wanted to get caught."

By then, James had pushed his family and girlfriend further away. He says his mom knew he was involved in drugs. She destroyed products and paraphernalia when she found them, but otherwise was powerless to stop him.

"I mean, I'd be gone for a week, when I was robbing houses. I'd steal cars and go down to Houston, Texas, and sell them, and I'd be gone for like two weeks at a time. I'd come home and (my mom would) just ask me where I was at, you know. I'd tell her it was none of her business or something stupid. She'd just let it go, act like nothing happened. I just really think that she didn't know what to do," he said.

Finally, at his girlfriend's urging, James reassessed his life path.

"I ended up using so much meth that I started to really realize how bad it was affecting me and realizing that I'm gonna end up dead. My girlfriend really started getting mad at me and really seemed hurt over me not being there and all this stuff. I just started realizing that that's not who I was supposed to be. I ended up just turning myself in."

Shocked and strung-out, James brought his dark meth journey to a close. Police had been watching him but had been unable to catch him in the act.

Though meth use was not among the criminal charges filed against James, he feels that it is the main reason for his crimes. He also says law enforcement will be almost powerless to halt the spread of meth.

While limiting the sale of cold medicine containing pseudoephedrine might discourage some minor-league manufacturers of meth, James says the big boys will see it only as a challenge.

"It's taking the right step to stopping it, but the smarter career criminals, they'll find ways around it. And that's exactly what we want, more of a challenge. . . . Now we got to find new ways to get it. We got to find people behind the counter," he said.

Cracking down on users also will have limited success, James predicts. "As long as they keep busting people and stopping them, maybe they can change them, and those people can help other people, but I don't think there's a lot anybody can do with the people who really want to do it. They got to change themselves, really."

Education is the key, James says. "I think that's really the only way to try to prevent it is to let more people know about it, let people actually see the side effects, actually see the outcome of using it for a long period of time."

James offers himself as an example of what long-term meth use can do. He says meth caused his back to hurt a lot and his muscles to atrophy. He also thinks it has made him more volatile. "I get more violent over nothing at all," he said.

One of his biggest problems today, he says, is his reliance on Ritalin, which was prescribed again to help him organize his thoughts and plan for the future.

James expects to earn a GED soon and plans to attend a technical school for auto mechanics when he is released. He credits Ritalin with those achievements.

"I think Ritalin helped me, you know, set all them goals and stuff and see me towards them. I think that it really motivated me to go somewhere, to make something more of me than a normal person in a factory job or something like that," he said.

ASSISTANT EDITORS: Emily Christie, 17; Izaak Hayes, 14.

REPORTERS: Keenen Brannon, 11; Malachi Carter, 13; Cakey Worthington, 13.

Part 2 in a series on meth abuse

Initially, methamphetamine helped James concentrate on his studies, perform better in sports and improve his work ethic. But, ultimately, his inflated self-confidence led him to set up a drug ring and commit felonies with members of organized crime.

And it all happened before his 16th birthday.

James, 17, is at the Plainfield Juvenile Correctional Facility for charges related to a string of home burglaries and auto thefts in northeastern Indiana.

He had been an above-average athlete and student, he said, despite having problems at home. His parents are divorced, and he didn't see much of his father, whom he calls an alcoholic. His mother worked a lot, and he said he wasn't really close to her or his older brother and sister.

Since James was young, he had taken Ritalin for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. He started experimenting with other drugs as an adolescent, and eventually, a friend introduced him to meth.

"I started out with marijuana, started just liking it, didn't like coming down so much. So I did coke once, didn't really like snorting anything. So once I found out about meth, I just started smoking meth a lot," he said.

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