Wasted youth: 17 year old speaks about meth addiction (South Carolina)

http://www.wistv.com/Global/story.asp?S=4464574

Angie Goff interviews 17 year old on meth addiction

(Greenwood) February 6, 2006 - The highly addictive street drug meth destroys and doesn't discriminate. Meth addicts are men and women, old and young. WIS' Angie Goff had the chance to speak with a teenager who made the decision to use meth.

Casey Stanley shows us a picture from before she became addicted to meth, "It'd be nice to go back to then."

A year ago 17-year-old Stanley was not dealing with the destructive addiction. She tells us what it's like to be on meth, "I constantly would be shaky, like taking a speed pill, but 10 times worse."

"It didn't really feel good; I don't believe. I can't really explain it. It's just an addiction."

Meth made it easier to forget a past filled with pain for Casey, "In a way, I used drugs to escape trying to remember, because I don't want to remember."

What was Casey trying to escape? "Molestation, rape, just watching physical violence in my family, my dad abusing my step-mom in the home. My mom's boyfriend abusing her and me."

Casey started doing drugs early. She tried marijuana at age six. By 12, she'd done coke.

Casey became addicted to meth in the fall of 2004 after she moved to Greenwood to live with her father. A year later, her home was raided.

Officials say Casey's dad Daniel Stanley was the kingpin of major methamphetamine ring, and what he sold to strangers, family got for free, "The drugs constantly around me, it was kind of hard to avoid the temptation."

Three months after the drug bust and her arrest, Casey admits to Angie during the interview that just talking about meth triggers cravings, "That's one thing that worries me: that later in life someone's going to bring up, 'Well this person's smoking meth' and I'm going to be like, 'Should I try it one more time?'"

Angie asks Casey if she's relapsed at all, "Yeah, couple of times, a couple of times. I didn't really enjoy it. It really just made me feel more guilt on myself and lose respect for myself, thinking I couldn't really do it, but I'm not going to give up and I have to keep trying."

As she struggles to stay clean, Casey wants to be a living lesson to anyone thinking of trying meth, "Drugs. You try one, you try more, and then it's hard to get help to get off of them. Then you're going to spend the rest of your life with the guilt of knowing you could have made something better of yourself in that point and time."

Getting caught has given Casey a second chance. She's in a rehab support group, has applied for job corps, and will go back to school to get her high school diploma. It's all part of her plan to leave drugs behind to follow big dreams, "Air Force has always been my dream. I just want to fly, the adrenalin, the actually escaping the Earth in a high that's not drug use. It's a great thing."

Casey's not in the clear yet. If convicted of distributing meth the 17 year old faces as many as 15 years in prison.

She's already spent a week behind bars.

Reported by Angie Goff