Into the Minds of Meth Addicts

A bag of needles used to administer Methamphetamine by Rachel Evans.

Methamphetamine addiction has been growing in Louisiana for years. This is a drug that affects its users by releasing an excess of dopamine into their bodies resulting in a high. This highly addictive substance comes with a stigma of violence, psychosis and filth. While methamphetamine can contribute to mental illness and poverty, the people suffering from this addiction are still human.

“Like my heads above the water, and I am no longer drowning,” is how Hammond resident John Smith explained the feeling of getting high. “When I’m sober, it feels like there’s an anchor around my heels pulling me down just far enough to where I can’t get to the surface to breathe.”

Smith got involved with methamphetamines about four years ago when he moved to Hammond.

A friend of his gave him some claiming it was crushed Adderall and would help with his depression.

“I actually moved here from LaPlace four and a half years ago, and I did so because my ex-fiancé’s mother owned a set of apartments, and she was letting me stay there until I could get on my feet because I got kicked out of my parents’ house because I got into an altercation with my father and he tried to shoot me,” explained Smith.

After learning that it was actually methamphetamines, Smith felt betrayed, used — like a fool.

Nevertheless, he was addicted and now uses a variety of drugs to self-medicate.

“To be honest with you, I do meth to make me feel,” said Smith. “I’ve gone a really long time in my life not having any emotions, being numb to everything, desensitized. Heroin is to make me really not feel the bad at all. Weed and Xanax are just to calm me down. I have a major anxiety disorder.”

According to Smith, he needs the drugs as an escape from his reality.

“I don’t have to face the emotional distress,” commented Smith. “I don’t have to come to terms with what’s happened. I can ignore it. I can literally forget everything that’s happened in the past and act like none of it ever happened. It’s an escape.”

Rachel Evans melts methamphetamine crystals on a spoon.

Smith has dealt with multiple traumas during his adolescent years.

“I’m running from the pain,” stated Smith. “The emotional pain that led me to this situation I’m in now. I lost my kids at the age of 14 and at the age of 17. Six months after that, I lost my fiancé. My world broke, which is a big deal because I’m usually the rock for people. You can’t be an anchor if you’re in pieces.”

Compared to other places Smith has lived, he described Hammond as an “easier, definitely easier” place to get drugs. This does not include major cities such as New Orleans or Baton Rouge.

“Most people in Hammond do drugs — at least downtown anyway,” said Smith. “You walk down the street in the middle of the day and a car will stop you and offer you weed, pills, anything you want. It’s literally available on any sidewalk around here.”

He described addiction as a tricky thing.

“You don’t know you’re in it until it’s too late,” explained Smith. “It’s a trap. It’s like raisin cookies. You think they’re chocolate chip, but they’re not.”

However, Smith feels drugs have helped him by introducing him to people in similar situations and with similar problems.

“This is the only life I’ve known,” stated Smith. “I don’t know another life where I didn’t have that. For the longest time, I didn’t know what emotions were. I didn’t even know I could feel them. Didn’t know how to identify them and felt numb Life didn’t matter to me. I felt like a psychopath.”

A piece of a cigarette filter absorbs impurities in the meth.

Smith described a disconnect between the world of addicts and the rest of Hammond. He compared Hammond to non-player characters in video games.

“In our group of people, I play a very big role,” stated Smith. “I am one of the major people that people come to whenever something screws up or when they just need to talk. I am somebody that people rely on. But in the society of Hammond, no not at all — because I don’t contribute to it. The rest of the world is outside.”

To Smith, it is very important that he is able to help the people in his social circle.
“Some days, I feel like garbage because I don’t have the approval of everyone around me, even the people I don’t like,” said Smith. “I’m not good enough. Nothing I can do can stand up to others. But on others, I feel like I’m the only one that can accomplish anything that can be done. It really goes upon the depression and how bad it gets. But typically, I don’t let it bother me. I live my life for me.”

Methamphetamines and heroin are Smith’s drugs of choice because they comfort him.

“Meth gives me the motivation to keep going,” explained Smith. “Heroin reminds me that there is something out there that I can actually deserve. The high off of it is like being hugged by your mother when you’re a child. It’s comforting. It’s warm. It’s inviting. It’s safe.”

Adam Johnson is another Hammond resident addicted to methamphetamines.

“Marijuana relaxes my mind and methamphetamines uppers me to where I can take care of the tasks to live,” explained Johnson. “It gives me the energy I need to move around and figure out things to make a living.”

After seeing his siblings do drugs as a kid, like many before him, Johnson sought drugs as a way to seem cool.

“First thought I had was, ‘I will never do this drug,’” said Johnson. “But you know how that goes. I thought it was cool because everyone else was doing it and I just figured I should fit in. Now, I think it’s sickening actually. The only reason I do drugs now was the lifestyle I was forced to live.”

Johnson became involved with dealing drugs after his family threw him out with nowhere to go.

“I left from North Carolina with a car and a job,” commented Johnson. “Not really much of a life but better life than this. My sister, her old lady and my street family rode my back as I worked for Smoke Tree Landscaping. I’d go to work with no money no nothing, and I come home and bring them my check every week. Then they just kicked me out with nowhere to go, no nobody. So, I had to make a way for myself.”

With nowhere else to turn, Johnson “hustled” for any way to make a living.

“I walked and walked and walked till I couldn’t walk no more, and I got tired of it.” Said Johnson. “That’s when I started the dope game. I started interfering myself with people that I normally wouldn’t. It’s just drug out since then. I’ve come up and had the money to leave, but the people you meet, obviously you’re gonna fall in love with them. That’s anybody, friend, or whatever. My love’s unconditional so that’s what’s drug me through the mud basically.

When Johnson first started dealing drugs, he found it to be thrilling, but over the years that excitement has turned to exhaustion and paranoia.

“It used to be a little fun at times, but it’s got to the point now where it’s just stressful and exhausting,” stated Johnson. “It’s the people you have to deal with on a daily basis. You have to worry bout if someone’s gonna lie or get you arrested for their drug habit. Just the whole scenario. You have to worry ‘bout cops, etc.”

Various needles and instruments used to prepare a shot lay on a desk in the livingroom of Rachel Evans and Richard Martin.

Over the years, Johnson has become suspicious of police officers and their motives claiming drugs are easy to access in Hammond because the police benefit from it.

“It’s a money racket,” stated Johnson. “The police are getting paid off it, the senates are getting paid off of it because they’re locking people up for it not only to, as they say, keep the drugs off the streets but to keep the competitors away. That way they can make money on that and locking people up at the same time. It’s all in their favor. It’s not about helpin’ people or savin’ people or none of that. It’s all about money.”

According to Johnson, addicts are not different from normal people because everyone is addicted to something that helps them cope.

“Addiction is just life in general,” explained Johnson. “What is a drug? A drug’s a coca-cola that you love, sex, cigarettes, anything is an addiction. Whatever soothes you is addiction. It’s the same as life. We still love. We still have our emotions and feelin’s it’s just altered.”

Johnson is conflicted knowing that his life could be better but not wanting to leave the life he has built for himself.

“I definitely am not satisfied with my life,” said Johnson. “I wish I could change some things, but I’m still happy. No one can take my joy from me. If I wasn’t livin’ this life, someone else would be. So, I like to think I’m doin’ some type of good in some way.”

Richard Martin, a Hammond resident, had a similar introduction to drugs as Johnson. Martin watched his brothers abuse drugs growing up.
After separating from his ex-wife, Martin came to Hammond and was sucked in.

“Before I moved in here, the only thing I ever did was smoke weed,” stated Martin. “I hadn’t actually touched anything other than that. Six months in, he just kept asking ‘You want a line? You want a line?’ and eventually, I said yes.”

Martin met his ex-wife playing a popular videogame called Wizard 101, and they soon moved in together as she closed him off from the rest of the world pushing him to extremes when they parted.

“For eight years it was kind of like having a second mother,” explained Martin. “When I got here, I tried the more entertaining ones at first. I think the first one I tried was mushrooms. I tried bars one time. Then I tried acid a couple of times — that was really fun. I don’t really remember why I tried meth though. The only reason I didn’t, though, was because everyone told me it sped you up a whole lot. I like being productive, but then you get a little wiredly productive. I didn’t want to end up enjoying it too much.”

Rachel Evans prepares a shot of methamphetamine.

Martin recently lost his job at a Walmart distribution center for undisclosed reasons.

“As of right now, I just kind of chill, do what my girlfriend asks, and play that video game,” commented Martin. “Before, it was work mainly. I worked 12 hours a day, which was my favorite thing actually. I loved going to work. Now, it’s pretty depressing as of late.”

Martin compared the high of methamphetamines to receive a high voltage electric shock but without the pain, and he described the comedown as dark and depressed.

“When I’m not on them, I don’t really want to be around much anymore,” stated Johnson.

According to Martin, addiction is like sleep paralysis — aware but unable to get out.

“I know I’m stuck with it at the moment, and it’s not that I can’t see a way out, but I don’t want to,” explained Martin. “It kinda sucks because I do feel like I’m not going anywhere.”

Rachel Evans, Martin’s girlfriend, began using methamphetamines when she was 18 years old and quickly adapted needles.

“I just did the math the other day, and it’s been six years I’ve been using a needle; six years I’ve been addicted to drugs; six years I’ve been out of reality,” stated Evans. “I feel close to non-existent, sad, pathetic. Being a drug user, especially of needles, you don’t really have a crowd of people. You don’t talk to people or anything because you’re just worried about drugs.”

Meth was developed in the 1930s as a nasal decongestant and has since become one of the most widely used drugs in America according to addictioncenter.com. Of the multiple methods of using this drug, injecting meth produces a faster and more intense high but is the most dangerous.

After wrapping a phone charger around her upper arm as a homemade tourniquet, Rachel Evans is ready to administer a shot of meth.

According to Evans, this makes shooting up a lonely existence.

“Most people sit there for hours and hours and hours unable to get it in,” explained Evans. “They’ve got blood everywhere. They messed up the whole shot. So, it’s not really people who have friends. The friends you do have wind up f***ing you over — for drugs usually.”

Addictioncenter.com stated this about methamphetamine use in America: About 774,000 Americans are regular meth users. About 16,000 of them are between the ages of 12 and 17. About 10,000 Americans who regularly used meth suffered a fatal overdose in 2017. About 964,000 Americans are addicted to meth. In 2017, about 195,000 Americans used meth for the first time. The number of fatal meth overdoses almost tripled from 2011 to 2016.

Johnson says once addicted, there is no going back but he has learned a lot from the experience.

“I’ve got a lot more wisdom,” explained Johnson. “I’ve gotten way more street knowledge. It’s kinda turnt me a little cold, but I’m still me. I wouldn’t really say that it’s brought me down cause it’s trained me for the war of life. You have to know bad before you know good. You have to know hate before you can do love etc.”

As the overdose rates in Louisiana increase, the Tangipahoa Sheriff’s Office has started up a program called Operation Angel to help rehabilitate rather than criminalize addicts.

Rachel Evans ties the phone charger in a knot.

According to their website, “Those who suffer from a substance abuse disorder and want treatment immediately can walk into any sheriff’s office substation or police department in Tangipahoa Parish and turn in whatever drugs or paraphernalia they may have without facing charges. They will receive free transportation to a treatment facility where they can recover, regain sobriety, and have a second chance at life, for no charge. Women who choose to participate in the program will be taken to the Lynhaven Retreat in Hammond and men will be taken to the Giving Hope Retreat Center in Lacome. Both programs are run by the New Orleans Mission.”

*All names have been changed to protect the identities of sources.