NEWS & INFO

Amy Hart story.

Original Link: http://stacks.msnbc.com:80/news/939158.asp?0cl=cr

Women and meth: Fight for control

Former addict shows that users not always faces you expect Amy Hart says she thought she "had discovered like the magic formula."

July 15, 2003 —  Holding down a job and holding together a household — for millions of women in this country, life has never been busier or more stressful. There just never seems to be enough help at home or enough hours in the day. But you may be surprised to hear what some women, from top executives to stay-at-home soccer moms, are doing to get them through their day. They think it’s the key to taking control of their lives until it begins to take control of them and doesn’t let go. NBC’s Sara James has the story of one woman who barely escaped with her life.

AMY HART: “There was a leaf that blew by. And I took a second look at it cause all of a sudden, it turned into this little, tiny, headless chicken and it was standing on its hind legs and talking to me. That’s sort of how things were for me at that time. I knew they weren’t real, but I saw them. Reality — the line had become blurred.”

It’s hard to imagine 35-year-old Amy Hart had difficulty separating what was real from what wasn’t. Amy was an ambitious, fast-track professional who headed to San Francisco after college, and quickly worked her way up to account executive at a dotcom.

Hart: “I was trying to get ahead at work and I really had my nose to the grindstone.”
James: “Get in early, stay late.”
Hart: “Yes and I did very well in California applying that attitude.”

And Amy would continue to do well, taking on extra assignments and impressing her bosses. For an extra energy boost, a female friend suggested Amy try something she was using.

Hart: “People who were using it were saying how great it was. And these were people who had jobs, who were doing well and who I thought by all appearances were successful. I thought I had discovered like the magic formula.”

A magic formula that Amy started using in 1996. Amy says it helped her concentrate and meet work deadlines.

Hart: “I didn’t need much sleep. I also wasn’t eating as much. I had more energy. I could juggle simultaneous tasks at once, keep track of everything. I was very detail oriented.”
James: “So for a Type A personality, this seemed like a magic drug.”
Hart: “Definitely.”

But it was anything but a magic drug. Amy, who had no history of drug abuse, was falling under the influence of the illicit, addictive drug, methamphetamine, commonly referred to as speed. Meth, a drug once associated with the biker culture, now has a surprising and growing following — thousands of multi-tasking women, from hard-charging professionals to suburban moms. The appeal for these women is in the short term, that methamphetamine users lose weight, have incredible stamina, and can get more things done. And since the drug is manufactured in clandestine meth labs across the country, it’s widely available and relatively cheap — about $10 buys enough to get high. Experts say what these women don’t realize is how powerful and deadly the drug can be.

Dr. Nancy Waite-O’Brien: “I don’t know that everybody understands what a danger this drug is.”

Dr. Waite-O’Brien, director of education at The Betty Ford Center, has spent years counseling drug addicts.

Waite-O’Brien: “What happens over time is that the drug starts to demand the attention of the woman. It’s as though what started with ‘I can do all these things’ narrows in to ‘I can only do this thing,’ which is access more drugs.”

Amy started becoming concerned about her dependence on meth after about a year. Worried that she was too focused on the drug, she decided to call it quits.

Hart: “I decided I’m done with it. I’m not going to be someone who does drugs every day for the rest of their life. I’m just done. So three months went by and I started gaining a lot of weight. And I thought well I could just do a little bit more until I take off the weight and I’m not going do it a lot, just on the weekend.”
James: “What happened?”
Hart: “And then it quickly went back to everyday.”
Waite-O’Brien: “Methamphetamine are very high risk drugs for relapse because they work instantaneously and give an immediate high that means the cravings are going to be particularly intense and that means they’re harder to get off.”

PARANOIA SETS IN

Now two years into her meth habit, Amy just couldn’t quit, even though the highs and energy bursts she first felt were gone. Now, she was experiencing something bizarre and frightening.

Hart: “It’s hard to describe the intensity of the paranoia. I didn’t feel safe in my apartment. I would have all the windows closed. If there was the slightest crack, I thought someone would be staring in. In the middle of the night with all the lights out, I would be crawling around on my hands and knees with binoculars in my hand. Because I thought someone was on the fire escape trying to get into my window.”

Amy would spend nights awake and on guard, looking out her door’s peep hole- sure that someone was looking in. Even outside, on the street, she believed all eyes were on her.

Hart: “I felt like a pinball in a pinball machine. And sometimes, I think people are following me or everyone was looking at me. Walking down the street became an obstacle.”
Waite-O’Brien: “Most addicts will describe that at some point in their addiction, they started to be very suspicious. You know, sort of thinking of the neighbors as part of the DEA and not sure the car driving past, who was in it.”

Not only was Amy paranoid, but now instead of devoting her energy to staying ahead at work, she was obsessing about other things.

Hart: “I kept going to the mirror, redoing, I’d spend an hour on my make up and a couple of hours on my wardrobe. I’d sometimes leave the apartment and then I’d turn around, didn’t like what I was wearing and come back and do it for another hour.”

Amy was also spending hours obsessing about her skin, something not uncommon for meth addicts.

Hart: “If I wasn’t being paranoid thinking people were getting into my apartment at night, I was in the bathroom all night long picking at my skin.”

RUNNING FROM THE DRUG

Remarkably, Amy was still functioning at work, even able to get a transfer to her company’s New York City office. Amy decided she had a better chance of quitting meth if she left San Francisco, the city where she was introduced to the drug and that was home to friends who were also users. So in 2000, Amy moved east hoping the change would end her addiction.

Hart: “I was really trying to get away from it, but I still needed it. I couldn’t really function without it.”
Shannon Gooding: “When I first met her, I really liked her and thought all these great things about her.”

In New York, Amy met neighbor Shannon Gooding. As their friendship grew, Amy confided in Shannon that she moved to get away from a drug habit, a habit that she said was now over — though Shannon suspected otherwise.

Gooding: “As you get to know her more, there’s a lot of weird things about her personality.”
James: “What do you mean by weird things?”
Gooding: “The chatty unfocused conversations that would sometimes ramble. Things like she’d say she’d be there at 9:00 and she show up at 11:00.”
Hart: “I made all these excuses for myself. And then I stopped making plans to go anywhere because I knew I couldn’t be there on time.”

Amy’s life revolved around meth. She’d become so fixated on the drug that she even tried a morning pick-me-up of O.J. laced with meth.

Hart: “I was all dressed, ready to go out the door and I drank the orange juice and immediately the room just started to black out and the sound was all muffled and went away and my heart started beating really fast.”

James: “Was that enough to make you quit?”
Hart: “No.”

NO MORE MAGIC

Having spent four years addicted to methamphetamine, Amy Hart found herself in a downward spiral. Moving to a new city, trying to start over, proved not to be the solution she had hoped for. Like many meth users, Amy was sinking into a deep depression.

Hart: “It became constant, which I didn’t realize that the depression was a result of the drug.”
James: “What do you mean when you say depressed?”
Hart: “Suicidal. I didn’t think I could stop. And if I couldn’t stop, I didn’t want to keep living the way I was living.”

Even going to work, the one place she had managed to function, was now a challenge. And when the company Amy worked for went out of business, she found that her search for a new job took a back seat to her search for meth. Amy was now having the drug sent to her by friends in San Francisco.

Hart: “I was dressed, walking out my apartment to go to this interview and I saw the FedEx package had come. And I said to myself if you pick up this envelope and go upstairs and get high, you’re going to be late for this interview and you’re going to be really high for the interview and you really have a problem. And I went up and I did it.”
James: “Did you get the job?”
Hart: “I blew it, I blew it, It was embarrassing.”

Out of work, frequently high, her behavior increasingly bizarre, it was clear Amy had a problem. But she denied the addiction to her friend Shannon.

Gooding: “When you would see her, she couldn’t look me in the eye anymore. It was becoming more apparent she couldn’t do some of the basic things like just walking down the street to get coffee with your friend. You start seeing a trend.”

A FRIEND STEPS IN

It was a trend Shannon was determined to stop. At a 2001 New Year’s Eve party, she could no longer bear to watch what was happening to Amy.

Gooding: “She was just so bummed out and negative and I said, you know, you need to know that we all know that you use drugs. And when I said that she completely broke down and started crying.”
James: “Do you think she thought she’d hidden that from you?”
Gooding: “She was getting more and more psychotic. She wanted the drugs so bad that she convinced herself that no one knew.”

Shannon offered to help, to find drug counseling programs for Amy, to provide whatever emotional support she could.

Hart: “The first time I admitted that I needed help in order to put it down to stop using. I couldn’t do it on my own.”

In 2002, after more than five years on meth, Amy went into a counseling program and successfully quit cold turkey. She continues to go to therapy and goes to a 12 step program daily. Amy has just celebrated one year of being drug free, marked in part by going public with her story in Glamour Magazine. Amy says she wanted to reach out to other women who may be hiding a similar addiction.

Hart: “There comes a point where everyone needs help. And I was very ashamed to let anyone know that I had this problem and was very ashamed to ask for help.”
James: “You don’t want other people to be ashamed?”
Hart: “No.”

Amy has learned to replace her drug habit with healthier activities, spending lots of time at the gym. She has been freelancing intermittently as a marketing consultant, hoping to get a permanent position soon. Amy still thinks about meth, but now quickly reminds herself of the paranoia, obsessions and depression — of a life she’s determined to leave behind.

Hart: “I never thought when I was using that I could do it, that I could get off drugs, that I would be able to be happy again. It was a lie, whatever I thought I got from the drugs. There’s nothing left for me back there.”

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