Wednesday, December 21, 2005

One woman's ordeal

HEIDI ROWLEY

Tucson Citizen

Jena Russell's mobile lifestyle, rapid addiction to meth and long recovery are typical of those who find themselves enslaved to the powder many addicts call "the devil's drug."

Ten years ago, Russell, now 33 and sober for nearly four years, bought her first dose of meth. It was the day after a co-worker let her try some. She says it took only one dose of the drug to get her addicted.

Two years and two children later, the white powder was all that mattered to her, abandoning her children and husband for the drug.

Russell now says she never imagined the bleak road that would soon become her life.

"It's a creepy, dark feeling," she said, reflecting on her life as a meth addict.

Meth, pregnancy and decline

Russell already was a regular meth user nine years ago, the first time she was pregnant, but said she didn't use it during the pregnancy.

"The first time, it was a conscious effort not to use anything," said Russell, who was living with her husband at the time in her hometown of Colorado Springs, Colo.

But by the time she was pregnant again, about four months after her first child was born, she was using a quarter of a gram of meth every day, typical of a longtime user. A typical dose is a quarter of a gram.

"It was helping me," she said. "I was superwoman. I could take care of the kids, go to work . . . "

Soon, her superpowers diminished and she decided to move in with her meth dealer, Brian Pancoast, who declined to be interviewed for this article. Russell told her husband that she was going out to buy diapers and never came back, leaving him with two babies, both younger than 2 years.

Days later, she contacted her family, saying she wasn't coming back.

But she couldn't hold down a job, and when she did get one, it was to supply her drug addiction. At one point, she was working at a rental car business, but she gave the keys to one of the cars to another meth dealer in exchange for a quarter of an ounce of meth - about 28 doses, or a month's worth of meth for one person.

"I started to become real dysfunctional," she said.

Moving to Arizona

She left that meth dealer for another who "had a bigger bag," or access to more meth, she said. A few months later, Pancoast, who had moved to Sierra Vista, called her and said he was living with a meth cook. The idea of having a constant supply of meth was so tantalizing, she left for Arizona right away.

Russell arrived in July 1999 and lived with Pancoast and the meth cook for eight months until the cook was arrested. Russell was cited for possession of marijuana and released.

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