By Teri Vance - Appeal Staff Writer - April 22, 2007

In August 2005, Mary Reasoner called the Nevada Appeal. The mother of two said she'd been "scared straight" after a near-death experience brought on by years of methamphetamine abuse.

She was home recovering from gall bladder surgery, but wanted to find a way to reach the community to tell people of the horrors of meth, swearing she'd never use again. 

She agreed, instead, to allow a reporter and a photographer to follow her through her recovery process.

They kept in touch with her over the next 20 months.

Mary's story

Without looking at it, Mary turns the photograph face down.

She doesn't want to see the brown-haired girl of her past - with the rosy, rounded cheeks and soft eyes.

When her mom says, "This wasn't how it was supposed to turn out," Mary lowers her head onto the bar and cries.

"I'm totally scared straight," she says, raising her head while sitting cross-legged on a barstool in her family's east Carson City home. "This drug is evil. It's the devil."

And she looks scared. Her eyes are hollow, almost vacant, peering from beneath a mop of sandy blond hair. 

At 29, Mary Reasoner has battled drug addiction for most of her life and methamphetamine for more than a decade. Several arrests, two felonies and 11 court-ordered trips to rehabilitation haven't cured her.

Two pregnancies didn't either - smoking it nauseated her, so she wrapped it in tissue paper and ate it.

"I didn't like the taste," she explains.

This time, she's sure she's hit rock bottom. 

It started about a month ago when she went to the hospital with severe abdominal pains. It was a ruptured cyst on her gall bladder, likely a result of prolonged meth use.

After the surgery to remove her gall bladder, she checked herself out of the hospital, against doctors' orders, to find some speed.

Her grandmother found her spun out at a friend's house and brought her back to Carson-Tahoe Hospital, where she spent five days detoxifying her system and battling pneumonia.

Lying in the intensive-care unit, she says, her dead grandfather appeared to her. 

She remembers him saying he was disappointed in her and that it wasn't her time to go.

Maybe he was disappointed that years of drug abuse had brought her to this place. Maybe it was because she'd neglected her two children. Or maybe he knew that while he was dying, Mary had stolen about $10,000 from his wife.

Whatever the reason, his message was clear: She needed to live. She needed to clean up her life.

It wasn't the first time Mary had heard that message.

When she got arrested for credit card fraud trying to support her habit in 2000, she knew, again, she should give it up.

After that arrest, she went to rehab and managed to stay clean for 17 months - her personal record. But her weight climbed to more than 200 pounds, and being clean was boring.

She got arrested for burglary less than five years later, trying to feed the same demon.

"I like the chaos. I like the drama," she says.

When she shoots the drug into her vein, the party starts. Her friends will say, "Here's Mare!" seeming to imply her identity is intrinsically intertwined with the high.

So she stuck a needle in her arm and started a six-month runner, getting high every day, several times a day. She didn't see her kids, she didn't care to see them. She didn't check in with her mom, who has custody of the kids. She just chased the high, even when it meant stealing from her grandmother.

That's what brought her here - just home from the hospital, and weighing 121 pounds.

"This is disgusting to me," she says. Her skinny legs and arms protrude from her denim shorts and tank top. "I'm just skin and bones. If I don't have to look in a mirror, I won't."

And that's not like her. Everyone who knows Mary knows she always stops in front of a mirror.

"It was always like this," her cousin Michael Pierson says, feigning primping his hair. 

Not anymore. She doesn't like the way she looks.

"Because of the way I look, the way I feel and what it took to get to this point, to feel this way."

At 16, she started drinking and using marijuana. Just shy of turning 18, she went to her dealer to get pot. He was out. He offered her speed instead.

She didn't think about it, she just snorted it - and it was an instantaneous love affair. 

"I didn't sleep for three days and I lost 10 pounds."

For the girl who'd always felt fat, it was like a miracle. It became her obsession.

For the first time she felt sexy. She got attention from men.

And she craved attention.

Because of her mother's heroin addiction, she was raised in foster care in California, away from the rest of her family in Carson City.

When she'd come home to visit, she was the outsider. She didn't share the same addictions.

She saw her family torn apart from generations of alcohol and drug abuse.

"I swore up and down I'd never do it. I hate myself for not breaking the cycle."

Three weeks before graduation, she dropped out of high school to move back home to Carson City.

This time, she was no longer an outsider. She was an addict.

"I looked at her and I saw me and it made me sick," her mom says.
And Mary had never been so fun.

"She took it to the hilt," Pierson says, smiling. "She showed us all how to do it."

But now, it's no longer fun. It hurts to sit for too long, she's too weak to stand much. There's a pain in her back that doesn't stop. It could be from a rear-end car accident a few days ago, or it could be something else. It just hurts.

She knows quitting is not going to be easy. She's tried before.

"All I know are dopers in this town. I know a couple of people who are clean. That's it."

Right now, her 11-year-old son won't talk to her. The youngest son, age 8, is less angry, but still reserved.

"I don't know how to be a mama right now," she says. "I need to learn how to like doing things with my kids."

She has the support of her family, and she remembers how good it felt to be involved with her two boys during that year she was clean.

"It was the first time I was a mama to them," she says.

All of those failures, all of the disappointments, and all of the hurts she's caused the people who love her, that's what it took to get here. To finally be ready.

"It will happen," she resolves. "This is the last time. It's different."

Mary Reasoner

Imprisoned by Meth: Mary's Story - 'Sober Hope' - Part II 

TERI VANCE - Appeal Staff Writer  April 23, 2007

Mary's resolve tempers with reality as the days go by and the ache in her back becomes increasingly debilitating. 

"It's the worst pain I've ever been in, in my whole life," she says.

It started just after a fender-bender on the way to a follow-up appointment after her gall bladder surgery a month ago. But instead of healing, the pain keeps getting more intense. 

In a matter of weeks, it hurts too badly to walk upright.

She's living in a fifth-wheel trailer parked next to the home her mother and grandmother share with her two sons.

The trailer is small and crowded. Little of winter's scarce sunshine makes its way inside. 

Still, she rarely leaves the cramped darkness. She stays in bed most of the time. Today, she barely crawled to the bathroom.

In pain, she gives in. She calls a friend. In a matter of moments, the same drug she called "the devil" becomes her salvation in a pipe shaped from a scrap of tinfoil. 

For a moment.

Then she's thrust back into hell's excruciating embrace as the high wears off and the pain in her back returns with a vengeance.

Nine days later, she's still reeling.

"I would rather be in pain for the rest of my life than feel as bad as I did coming off of it."

Coming down off methamphetamine, while not physically painful like other drugs such as heroin or life-threatening like alcohol, can be dangerous, according to Pamela Hill, an alcohol and drug counselor who runs an outpatient counseling service on Fairview Drive. 

"Meth users don't know how to deal with their emotions," Hill said. "In the first three to five days, the chance of suicide increases because of depression. They'll sleep eight to 10 hours, wake up, gorge, then sleep again.

"After the fifth day, the depression is so deep, they go out looking for the drug."

Methamphetamine stimulates the release of dopamine, the natural "feel good" chemical created in the brain. Those who have low levels of the neurotransmitter become quickly addicted to the drug.

"The euphoria is very powerful," Hill said. "But it's toxic."

It has a roller-coaster effect of extreme highs when using the drug, accompanied by extreme lows when the drug wears off.

Long-term meth abuse can cause dopamine nerve axons to eventually die. When the nerve endings die, they are gone for good. All emotions - from pain to pleasure are dulled.

Hill said the first high is always the highest.

"They see the benefits right away," she explained. "They lose weight. They have energy and can accomplish a lot, clean the house - whatever."

But over time, she said, they begin using the drug just to have enough energy to get out of bed. Cleaning house is no longer a priority.

"It can get pretty disgusting, what we would call uninhabitable," Hill said.

And the original weight loss deteriorates into what Hill describes as "claymation," when the skin turns a grayish color and the pores get big. The eyes lose their luster and sores break out. 

For the user, though, the drug masks its own devastation. 

"They feel extremely attractive," Hill said. "Mothers are convinced they're good mothers. The whole world is that drug environment."

Love and lust are confused.

"Meth increases the desire for sex, and the sex is so powerful because of the drug that they become convinced it's mad, passionate love," Hill said. "But chances of a relationship lasting once they're clean is slim."

And sex becomes a bartering tool.

"There's a lot of prostitution, but they don't see it that way," Hill said. "Their cognitive brain doesn't recognize it."

Methamphetamine stops the absorption of calcium and protein leading to muscle and skin damage, tooth decay and hair loss.

Abusers often stay awake when they're "on a runner." Hill said she had one patient who didn't sleep for 33 days.

The drug, combined with the effects of no sleep, leads to paranoia, anxiety, hallucinations and schizophrenic-type behavior.

Getting clean involves more than quitting the drug.

"You're usually dealing with about a 10-year-old child," Hill said. "Either they've never learned appropriate socialization or life-coping skills, or they lost them while using."

The best thing friends and family can do to help, she said, is to get away from the addict and get help for themselves through programs, like Al-Anon.

And the best thing for the addict is to enroll in a formal program.

"The chances of getting clean on your own are pretty low," she said.

If they don't, she said, the likely outcome is either prison or death.

"There's not too many midway alternatives if they don't get help."

It's not just pain Mary has to cope with. Giving up meth means giving up all of her friends.

"I feel empty. I cry a lot," she says. "It's like learning to live again. It's just boring to me."

It's the first time she's been single. She's been through "a string of men," and says she's a sucker for the "outlaw, convict type."

And when she's sober, she's no longer numb to the guilt.

"It's hard to be a mama," she says. "I'm not ready to be a mama, but I love them unconditionally."

Her own shortcomings as a mother bring back memories of her own childhood spent in foster care, receiving only sporadic supervised visits from her mom.

She remembers only bits and pieces of her girlhood. She knows a couple of the six families she lived with tried to adopt her. She sabotaged every attempt.

"I didn't want anyone to take me from my mom," she explains. "I never gave up on her. I knew she'd come back for me some day. ... She never did."

Mary swore she would be a better mother. So far, she hasn't been. But she vows she will make it up to her boys.

"I owe them still," she says.

This morning, 8-year-old Ryan walked to the convenience store where he bought temporary hair dye. His normally brown hair is blue as he works on his bike in the garage.

Jason, 11, comes into the camp trailer with Mary. He crawls up on the bed and snuggles under her arm.

She runs her fingers through his already disheveled sandy-blond hair.

He tells her he's glad she's not using.

"When you're on drugs, you just stay away from us," he says, not looking at her. 

Mary recalls the first time she realized her little boys were growing up. She was in jail and placed a collect phone call home.

Jason answered.

"He accepted the call, and he listened to the directions. It was like he was a little adult."

He smiles at this adoration.

"But it made Grandma real mad," Mary admits.

They laugh, and it's a respite from the pain. Mary starts to recognize the positive changes.

She's gained four pounds on her 5-foot, 7-inch frame. In the month and a half since she's been out of the hospital, her sons are slowly starting to trust her again. 

"It's cool at the end of the day when my kid comes up to me and says, 'I love you.' It shocks me."

She looks forward to feeling better and finding a place of her own.

"I've never had my own place without a man," she says.

She looks forward to decorating it however she wants.

"I want a place we can live together as a family," she says. "I think it will give me hope. I like the way I feel when I'm sober."

But that feeling can be fleeting.

"Once you're an addict, you're always going to get that craving. Some days you really want it, some days it doesn't even bother you."

Mostly, she's scared. Scared she'll use again, scared she won't.

"I hate dope. I really hate it," she says. "But as much as I say I don't want to do it, it's hard. I like it."

All she has left is hope, but she's wary of the emotion. She knows how quickly it can dissolve into disappointment.

She believes she has a chance. 

The next day, she collapses.

Her mom and grandmother roll her onto a sheet, carry her to the car and drive her to Washoe Medical Center in Reno.