Meth A Memoir

by Wayne Huffman

  Jackie was asking why I hadn’t been around and I made a few excuses about being busy or something. I wasn’t real comfortable with being in Marks house, with him not there, so I told Jackie I was going outside. Before I left the room, I told her to put Mark’s dope up before something happened to it. The dish was still sitting on the floor.

  I went outside and sat in the car, listening to the radio until Christy was ready to go. Jackie left a few minutes after I walked outside, telling me to stop by her house later, if I had the chance. When everyone walked out of the garage, Mark walked over to the car with Christy. He shook my hand and told me to feel free to stop by anytime I wanted, day or night. That was his way of saying I was being accepted into his little world.

  As soon as we got back to the house, Christy got a phone call from one of her friends. When she got off the phone, she told me that someone had stolen about 10 grams of Marks dope. I borrowed her Blazer and drove back to his house. When I got there I saw Shawn and told him I wanted to see Mark. I followed him into the house and to the bedroom I had been in earlier.

  Mark was on the phone when I walked into the room. When he hung up, he looked at me and asked, “What’s up?” I told him that I hadn’t stolen his dope, plain and simple. He looked at me for a second then started laughing his ass off. He said he knew I didn’t steal it. He had a camcorder running the whole time. He said he had left the dope there to see if I would steal from him. “Just a test”, he said. Instead of catching me stealing from him, he caught Jackie.

  I was kind of pissed off about the whole thing for a minute. I wasn’t so much pissed that he tested me, that’s to be expected. What pissed me off was that Jackie would have known that Mark would have suspected me of stealing his dope and she stole it anyway. I know, although she has always denied it, that she meant for Mark to suspect me so we would never become friends. Fucking bitch. That just goes to show, you can’t trust anyone.

  One day, while Christy was gone, and I was at her house alone, this little crack whore, Kelly, stopped by. She lived in a small house on The Hill. She told me that she had left some clothes there, so she wanted to get them. I let her in and she dug through the dirty clothes till she found what she was looking for. When she left, she had a pair of jeans and a couple shirts. She showed them to me so I could tell Christy what she got, if she asked.

  After Christy got home, I remember Kelly had been by and I told her she came to get her clothes. Christy started to get all worked up over it. She had obviously been awake way too long and she started saying Kelly had stolen half her wardrobe. I tried to assure her that Kelly only took a pair of pants and a couple shirts but Christy had it in her head that she was missing a whole lot more than just that. When Christy gets something in her head, you can’t get it out so it’s useless to even try.

  We ended up in the Blazer, headed to Kelly’s house to get Christy’s shit back. When we got there, no one was home. That wasn’t going to stop her. She busted a small window pane out of the door so she could unlock it and let herself in. For the next 2 hours, I sat in the truck waiting for Christy to finish rummaging through Kelly’s house. From time to time, Christy would come to the door, hold something up, and yell, “this is more of my shit”. I would just smile and wave.

  When she felt like she had finally found all of her shit, Christy started carrying large garbage bags full of stuff out to the truck and loaded them in the back. These bags not only contained clothing, there were dishes, radios, kids toys, and tools as well. Stuff Christy damn well knew didn’t belong to her. Hell, she practically cleaned poor Kelly out that day and I had a feeling it wasn’t going to end very well for her, but, what could I do?

  Finally, we could leave. On the way back to Christy’s house, I stopped to pick up some pills to do a cook. Once we were back at the house, I was able to get her to take a nap she desperately needed, whether she admitted it or not. While she slept, I prepped for the cook. Later that night, Shawn showed up with Leanna. Leanna went straight to the other bedroom and went to sleep.

  To keep from waking Leanna, I decided to get all of my lab stuff out of that room and brought it all to the kitchen. Shawn hung out in the kitchen with me as I cooked and around midnight, I was done. Before I cleaned up, I decided Shawn and I needed to sample the new batch, so we smoked a few foils.

  There was a knock at the door and, not thinking anything of it, I walked over to ask who it was. “Carter County Sheriff Department” came the answer. I almost swallowed my tongue. I turned around to tell Shawn to help me hide all the shit, but he was gone. The bastard had run to the back bedroom and jumped in bed with Leanna to pretend he was asleep. ASSHOLE!!

  I turned back to the door and asked what they wanted. “Christy”, was their reply. Okay, I had jars all over the place, the cook pot was sitting on the stove, and chemicals were everywhere. The whole damn place smelled like a fucking meth lab and I just knew I was going to jail. It was time for Christy to take one for the team. She was going outside, even if I had to shove her out the window.

  I told the cops to hang on, then I went to wake Christy. I told her that the cops were right outside. I explained that I had just finished a cook and that the lab was sitting in the kitchen, in plain view. I told her that they were coming in to get her, and she was going to jail, no matter what so it would be best to just walk on out there and not make them come in, or we would all be going to jail. To her credit, she jumped up and walked outside. She was under arrest for breaking into Kelly’s house.

  We got her out of jail later that morning, but now I was way too nervous to ever cook again in her house. I went back over to Jackie’s house to stay. Leanna, who was also staying at Jackie’s, had two vehicles, a Malibu and a Honda Accord. To me, that meant I would have transportation, as long as I kept her high. Not a problem.

  I got my stuff moved over to Jackie’s and, of course, we ended up hooking up again. Now, Jackie loved to lie, and that shit drove me nuts but I really did love that girl. I started cooking at the house but I also started going back over to Scott’s house some as well. Angelina was starting to stay at Jackie’s a lot around this time and we were becoming pretty good friends.

  Angelina was different from all the dope whore’s I had been around. The biggest difference being, she never tried to hook up with any of the cooks. Ever. I knew she was bi-sexual, but for a while, I was beginning to think she was all the way gay. Nobody could get any pussy off of her.

  Angelina rode over to Mickey’s house with me one night to sell him some dope. On the way back, I got a call from Carson, who was at Jackie’s. He said that the cops had just been there and picked Jackie up for violation of probation. Shit! I could not really use her house for a cook spot while she was in jail, so this sucked. We got back to Jackie’s and Angelina was packing her shit while I was getting my stuff together.

  Carson was hanging out at Jackie’s because he wanted to hook up with Angelina. I figured the only way that was going to happen was if they spent a lot of time together, so I brought him over to stay. I guess I was just trying to play matchmaker. After I got my stuff together, I thought I would just lay back and relax. There was no hurry for us to leave so I wanted to get my thoughts together. I figured it was back to Scott’s for me and I really didn’t want to start staying over there if I didn’t have to. Unfortunately, it was looking like I had to.

  I must have fallen asleep because, one minute I’m lying there dreading going to Scott’s, and the next Angelina is sucking my dick. I had a very short moment of guilt because Jackie and I were supposed to be together. Also, I knew that Carson, who was in the other room, really seemed to like this bitch and things looked like they might have been going good for him. But, I got over all of that and we ended up fucking in Jackie’s bed. Carson walked in on us at one point, but he walked right back out and closed the door. I don’t think he got mad but, who cares?

  Chapter 48

  After I had sex with Angelina the first time, she asked me to move in with her. Ye
p, I’m that good. I agreed to, simply because there was just something about this tall, sexy bitch I really liked. For some reason, and I’ve never figured out why, I have always felt relaxed when I’m with her. Her house was always a peaceful environment for me. If I wanted to be left alone, she would run everyone off. That was never a problem for her. I didn’t like cooking at her house, unless I had to. You just never knew when her mom was going to show up in the basement unannounced.

  I had done a cook at Scott’s house one night and taken the dope back to Angelina’s house so I could package it up for sale. There were several people at the house when we got there so we ended up having a little party. I was sitting on one of the couches with this big mirror on my lap and this huge pile of dope on the mirror. I was concentrating on weighing the dope up so I didn’t notice much of anything else going on. For some reason, I looked up to see Angelina’s mom standing there, watching everything that was going on.

  She had walked down the stairs, and into the living room, with no one noticing her. I just froze. After what seemed like minutes, but was only a couple seconds, Angelina saw her mom and freaked out. She got her mom to go back upstairs after some fast talking, and even faster sign language. Once she was gone, I asked if I needed to get my dope and leave. Angelina said for me to not worry about it.

  Apparently, the reason she came downstairs was because she knows what pot is, and smells like, and she doesn’t want it smoked in the house. When she came home, she smelled it and came down to get on Angelina’s ass about it. She had no clue what meth or cocaine was, so she didn’t have a clue what I was doing.

  That wasn’t the only time Angelina’s mom walked in at a really bad time. She came in while some of us were doing hot rails off of the glass coffee table. Leanna had just done a huge hit, and was holding it in when Angelina’s mom walked into the room. There was a look of terror on Leanna’s face because she couldn’t hold her breath forever, and she didn’t want to blow all that smoke out right in front of the woman. Leanna, using some quick thinking, grabbed a cigarette and acted like she was taking a hit off of it, then blew the smoke out.

  There were times when she walked in and caught people doing things that simply could not be covered up. Tina and Billy were hanging out at the house alone one day when they decided to fuck. Angelina’s mom walks in to find Billy with Tina’s legs over his shoulders, pounding the living hell out of her. They were both so into what they were doing that they didn’t notice her until she was standing right next to the bed. They finally saw her and froze. They stayed in that position for 15 minutes while they got preached to about the sins of premarital sex. To say the least, they were all pretty embarrassed over the incident.

  Angelina started going to Scott’s with me every time I cooked. That was great because I liked having her around. One night, she scored an ounce of ‘shrooms while I was doing a cook. She came into the room I was working in and asked if I wanted any of them. I was at a point in the cook where I had to boil the pot. I took some of the ‘shrooms and threw them in as the water boiled. I wasn’t sure if it would make a difference but it was worth a try. I liked experimenting to try to make a better product.

  The following day, I started getting phone calls from people asking me if I had anymore of the new batch of dope. That batch, I was being told, was causing some really cool hallucinations and people wanted more of it; lots more. All I had left was my personal supply and that, I wasn’t getting rid of. I tried to get more ‘shrooms, so I could make more of that dope, but I couldn’t find a supplier. I had been up so long, and seeing shit that wasn’t there anyway, that I don’t really know if the dope affected me any differently or not.

  One afternoon, while Angelina and I were hanging out at Scott’s house, she got a call from a friend of hers. Ron, her friend, talked to her for a few minutes then she started waving me into the kitchen, where she was standing while she was on the phone. She handed me the phone and Ron told me, “I’m standing here with my arms around 2 beautiful ladies. They weigh about 400 lbs each.”

  I asked Ron if he was crazy or something and he started to laugh. He explained that he was actually standing beside 2 large tanks of anhydrous ammonia. I started to question him about the tanks but he cut me off. Not wanting to talk on the phone. He told me to stay at Scott’s; he would be by after work. I had a feeling things were about to change for me that night, but I had no idea just how much things were going to change.

  Chapter 49

  Although I was a Red P cook, I knew a little about anhydrous ammonia dope. Just about every cook I knew was an anhydrous cook and even Lisa knew how to make anhydrous dope. Hell, she even taught me the basics of making my own anhydrous ammonia gas. Personally, I never wanted to make anhydrous dope. To me, it was a cheap, dirty form of meth that was full of impurities. I thought that because, all the “Annie” dope I had ever used was dirty and full of impurities.

  One of the biggest things that turned me against Annie dope, was all of the stories about meth labs blowing up. Since I knew that the Red P method I used wouldn’t blow up, I figured it had to be those anhydrous labs that were doing all that exploding I kept hearing about on the news.

  To this day, one thing that drives me nuts is all the bullshit rumors about meth. These rumors are more widespread than the actual use and manufacture of the drug. Incredible as it might seem, much of the general public’s lack of accurate knowledge about meth can be directly attributed to the misuse of the news media by so-called meth experts.

  These “experts”, usually local police officers with “special training”, don’t always, purposely, try to mislead people. Occasionally, their problem is that they will accept incorrect information as fact, simply because they, themselves, don’t know any better. This means that they are not nearly as informed as you would believe, or they would believe themselves, to be. Since they are the expert, no one questions their expertise.

  To give you an example, let’s go back to my 2005 arrest for Lisa’s lab in my car. When the cop was describing the items found in my car, he stated that there were several “D” sized, alkaline batteries visible through the window. He said that, during his meth awareness training, he had learned that alkaline batteries are used to manufacture meth. The officer really should have paid closer attention in class because it is lithium, not alkaline, batteries that are used for making meth.

  It is definitely not unheard of for cops or drug agents to make up their own facts just to fill in some of their own blanks. A lot of the times, the facts are not even important, which makes the whole process even more ridiculous. Here is an example of what I’m talking about. After Christy was arrested on federal drug charges, (we haven’t gotten to that yet), she would learn that DTF and DEA agents claimed her nick-name, Crash, came from a supposed habit of “crashing out” at whoever’s house she happen to be at. Normally, the tale went, at a meth cooks house. The truth is, everyone called her Crash because the bitch can’t drive. She crashes all the time.

  Cops and agents who deal with meth people on a regular basis, often do receive accurate information. This is usually obtained while conducting post-arrest interviews. This information, if understood then used correctly, can be very helpful to law enforcement. However, just as often, suspects will give information that is designed to either downplay his or her own part in the criminal activity, or to make the cop think they have some special knowledge of something, or someone. This is done to make the person seem more, or less, valuable to the investigation and, with luck, get a better deal in court.

  One of law enforcements greatest tools in fighting the meth epidemic is their use of the news media. The news media is normally given current and accurate information, however, they are also quite often given information that is anything but accurate. They in turn report this crap, unknowingly, to the public. Not to say that the news media is the picture of innocents when it comes to lying to you, because they are not. There are many times when a reporter takes a simple story and goes wild w
ith it.

  Let’s take the dismantling of a meth lab for example. I have noticed that my local newspaper from Elizabethton, Tenn., when reporting on the dismantling of a lab, has begun to basically give weather reports in their stories. “Captain W., of the Elizabethton Police Department, dismantled the lab while wearing protective safety equipment. It was humid and 87 degrees at the time.”

  I’m sorry but, who gives a fuck what the temperature was? Is reporting the temperature supposed to make the job seem more dangerous? Apparently someone thinks so. Hell, I worked at Exide for eight years, wearing safety equipment 8 hours a day in temperatures well over 100 degrees. Nobody ever wrote about that shit in the fucking newspapers. Damn, I just wish people would stick to what is relevant and stop making other shit out to be more than it is.

  There is a newer method of cooking meth that is getting very popular. It is called the “shake -n- bake” method, or the “one pot” method, Basically, all of the ingredients are mixed together in a soda bottle and the cook happens in that bottle; very easy process. The dismantling of a one pot meth lab basically involves taking the lid off of the bottle. WOW! What a story that would make, right? It would have to be at least 93 degrees outside to make that shit interesting.

  While I’m on this rant, I want to address the most common, and widely believed, bit of disinformation there is when it comes to meth labs. Let’s talk about meth labs blowing up. While I will be the first to admit that there certainly is a basis for this rumor, I also know that the whole story isn’t being told.