Group helps meth addicts stay clean

VINCENNES, Ind. (AP) - Jody Smith was jailed in 2005 on meth charges. But he's found life after meth through a support group of the same name that helps addicts stay clean.

Smith said that being part of Life After Meth has given him a sense of stability because he now regularly associates with others who were in the same situation he was. He now serves on an 11-member board that helps give direction to the group.

"For me, it's been a support group, and I've made a lot of friends who have been through the same things, trying to stay clean," he said.

Ordained minister Peter Haskins started Life After Meth for inmates in the Knox County Jail, modeling it on the 12-step philosophy of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Haskins said he wanted to help people who were "sick and tired of being sick and tired" kick their meth addiction for good. Many users have lost nearly everything to their addiction, he said.

"By the time many are arrested, they have burned many bridges, lost their family, their jobs," Haskins said. "They need a new group of clean people they can hang around with."

He said meth seems to be the top reason for drug-related arrests in southwestern Indiana.

The group's members gather every Monday at St. John's United Church of Christ in Vincennes for their meetings, but they also go bowling. They held their first banquet last month, attended by more than 200 people.

Tanner Buttram said he started using meth when he was 14. By the time he was 23 he was arrested on meth charges and sent to the Knox County Jail.

After a few months in jail, he said he was eager "to try something different" and get off meth, so he joined LAM. Buttram said being part of the group has helped him stay away from the drug and has brightened his outlook on life.

"I realized that there had to be something more besides getting high and being incarcerated," said Buttram, who now has a full-time job and lives on his own.

Haskins calls himself the "coach" of the group, which has two parts -- the church support group and a seven-day-a-week drug rehabilitation program to help those still in jail.

Haskins said the members spend a lot of time in group settings discussing their family situations and other weighty issues.

"We are not looking at this from a moral perspective, it's a disease," he said.
Buttram and Smith said the program has worked for them and they want others to know that LAM is there and there is a way out of addiction.

"There's a whole better life, I know that," Smith said. "They've just got to want to change."

Information from: Vincennes Sun-Commercial, http://www.vincennes.com