Meth A Memoir

by Wayne Huffman

  We stopped at a store to get gas and something to drink. While I was putting the gas in the truck, Billy Jean pulled up next to me. He started saying he was sorry for stealing my tank and all that bullshit. I told him that I really didn’t have anything to say to him at the moment. Before he left again, he asked if I was going back to Jackie’s. I said I was.

  Carson and John didn’t want me to go back to Jackie’s. But, I didn’t want Jackie to “lose” my tank again before morning so I overruled them and headed to her house. Just as I was about to pull into Jackie’s driveway, I had a strange feeling that something wasn’t right. I drove past her house, turning up a side street, where I turned around then stopped at the stop sign. I sat there, looking towards her house, trying to figure out what had me spooked.

  I told John and Carson how I was feeling. They wanted me to get out of there and I was inclined to agree with them for once. As I was about to pull out from the stop sign, Vicky came running out of the house that sat on that particular corner. She lived there with her grandmother. She waved for me to stop so, I did. Vicky came up to my window and said she needed to speak to Carson about his girlfriend, Kim. Kim was also Vicky’s aunt. He got out of the truck and they stood in the street, a few feet away talking. Suddenly, three vehicles came around the corner at a high rate of speed. They were coming straight at us.

  When Vicky saw them, she took off running towards her house. A couple dudes jumped out of the cars and grabbed her, then wrestling her to the ground in her yard. My mental state was not all that great at the moment, as I tried to figure out what was going on and which way I should go. Before I figured out anything, someone was standing next to my truck, with a gun to my head.

  At that moment, all I could think about was that scene from the movie “Good Fellas”, where Henry Hill says something like, “If it was a hit, I wouldn’t have heard a thing.” Nothing was making much sense to me. There were people running around with guns, Vicky was screaming and crying, and John was in the back seat cussing.

  “Turn the vehicle off,” ordered the guy attached to the gun pointed at my head.

  I did as I was told then I was ordered to get out of the truck. I did that too. When I got out, I still didn’t know what was going on. Everything was happening way too fast for my mind to keep up. I asked the dude, who had ordered me out of the truck, who the fuck he was? “Johnson City Investigators”, he said. We were so screwed!

  Chapter 60

  I guess I should have listened to Angelina that night. Or, maybe I should have listened to John and Carson. Or, my own gut, when I felt something wasn’t right. But, I didn’t.

  The cops claimed they were there to arrest Vicky that night. She did have warrants out for her arrest. The cops had been trying to find her for several months. All of this I knew to be true. What I never understood was, why didn’t the bitch go to jail that night, if they really were there for her?

  The DTF and the DEA were called in, when the cops found the lab in the back of the Bronco and the glassware Carson had given me earlier. As they searched my truck my cell phone kept going off, so one of the DTF agents took the phone. He looked through the text messages that were coming in, from Jackie, who was standing in her doorway watching what was going on. Jackie was well known to them. After they found the text about her having my tank, and the new ones saying she was hiding the tank in her closet, they paid her a little visit. They found the tank but, oddly enough, she wasn’t arrested that night either.

  Since Carson wasn’t in the truck when the cops pulled up, he wasn’t arrested. John and I, however, were arrested for multiple meth related charges. This was January 30, 2008, the day before my 39th birthday. All of those charges would eventually be dismissed because Vicky wasn’t in my vehicle. The arrest affidavit stated, the cops pulled me over in order to serve Vicky’s arrest warrant on her, so, since she wasn’t in the truck, the cops had no right to harass me, detain me, or search my vehicle.

  While in jail on these charges, I was finally charged with violation of probation. I got, basically, time served on the smaller charges I accumulated since my return from Alabama, but I had to serve the 3 years of my probation time from the older charges.

  In May, 2008, I was indicted, along with 48 other people, by the federal government. There were a multitude of charges, with different people getting different charges but everyone was charged with conspiracy to manufacture and/or distribute meth. I was personally charged with conspiracy to manufacture 500 grams, or more, of meth, and conspiracy to distribute 500 grams, or more, of meth.

  The feds began arresting everyone on July 01, 2008, but it would be over 6 months before they had everyone in custody. Queeny, Adam, and Angel were all arrested at Angelina’s house. We found out later, Angelina was working with the feds. She admitted this to me in a letter I received from her, while I was in jail. Lisa was arrested in January 2009, while on The Hill. There were approximately 13 people arrested that night.

  One of the people arrested on The Hill, the night Lisa was arrested, was Shawn. What nobody knew was, Shawn had been picked up several months earlier by the feds. They kept him locked up for a few days then turned him loose. He was working for them then, but nobody on the street was aware of it. By the time everything was said and done, everyone got federal prison time, except for Shawn and Angelina.

  Something that really pissed me off about the whole thing was how everyone turned on everyone else. There were very few people who stuck together. If you asked someone, who told on who? That person would give you a list of snitches. The problem was, the person would have nothing to base their claim on.

  I don’t know who told what on who, but, I do know this; Everyone, except the people who were arrested in the bust with Angel and Queeny (who were all charged with 128 grams of meth), was charged with “conspiracy to manufacture 500 grams, or more, of meth”. Some were charged with other things as well, but everyone was at least charged with the manufacture conspiracy.

  A 500g conspiracy carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years. That means, you have to get a 10 year sentence, no matter what! There is no, “the judge liked me”, “I had a good attorney”, or “I got lucky”. NO! Not in the federal system. It simply does not work like that. Anyone who got less than 10 years on our case had to have cooperated with the feds.

  It doesn’t really matter now, who did what. I don’t care. I got 15 years out of it, and I was charged as one of four leaders of the “loosely organized criminal enterprise”. Will, Mark, and another dude were the other 3 “leaders”. Lisa got 8-1/2 years, John got 6-1/2. Jackie got 63 months, Christy got 72 months, same as Scott. Mitch got 7 years, Kid got 10 years. Mark, who was the only other person to get as much time as me, got 15 years, and Will got 10 years. The fourth “leader” got 7 years.

  Angel got out in 2010. Carson got out in November 2011. Sam got out in April of 2012. Queeny got 10 years also, same as Davy. Billy Jean got 168 months; he is currently serving his time in Beaumont, Texas. I’m not sure how much time the rest of my co-conspirators got. Not everyone got busted. The twins didn’t, thankfully. And several other people I knew never got indicted.

  I found out later, from Kid, that it definitely was Billy Jean who stole, not only my tank of gas, but my 1911 as well. I knew it, but it was nice to find out for sure. Kid also told me that it was Billy Jean who set me up the night I got busted. I always felt like it was a setup. He had Jackie get me to come over for the tank, so the cops could use the story about being there to arrest Vicky to bust me. She was in on it as well.

  The whole reason Billy Jean set me up, according to Kid, was because he wanted to hook up with Jackie and was trying to get me out of the way. Hell, I would have given the bitch to him, if he would have asked. I also heard he was mad because I had pulled my gun on her. Oh well.

  Angel and I communicated regularly while she was locked up, then stopped when she got out. I hope she is off having babies and staying clean. Lisa writes me every now and then. She said Tina
was in a bad motorcycle accident and can’t walk now, due to her knee being destroyed. That isn’t the only bad news Lisa has gotten since being locked up. Her father died, her sister Katy died, and FJ, and FJ’s youngest daughter were both killed in a car accident.

  Joy is doing great, working and attending high school. Levi was taken by his father and still lives with him today. I’m told the family rarely gets to see him anymore.

  The life of a meth cook definitely is not what I would have expected it to be. I know sometimes it seems that I was always broke, or near being broke, but I really made a lot of money. I just happened to spend a lot more. Money didn’t really mean much to me like you would think it would. I cooked meth because I loved cooking meth.

  I lost a lot too. Everything I had actually, and that happened more than once. I lost my marriage, friendships, and the respect of some people who were important to me. My son hates me, but that has a lot to do with his mother poisoning his mind. One thing I don’t do is sit around whining about all the bad things that happened to me while I was on dope. I’m not a “survivor”, or any of that other, “I survived the nightmare of addiction”, N.A. crap people use to feel sorry for themselves. It was anything but a nightmare.

  I still have all of my teeth, so that’s a good thing. The reason I have them is because I had enough sense to brush my teeth after smoking meth. Seriously people, smoking meth is not automatically going to give you “meth mouth”. Brush the residue off after smoking and you won’t have a problem. If you eat chocolate a lot and never brush your teeth, guess what? Your teeth will start to rot eventually. It’s the same thing.

  Meth didn’t kill me, and I’m also not going to start claiming, “Going to jail saved my life”, either, because people don’t die from meth. Really, look it up on the internet. Even in the drug education classes I have taken, meth isn’t ever mentioned in the list of drugs that will kill you. Sure, you can get ridiculous and start saying, “use enough of it and you will die”, but you can use enough aspirin to kill you too.

  I don’t look 20 years older than I actually am. Everyone has seen the propaganda pictures where the person did meth from a couple years, now they look really old. The government is even doing commercials on TV against cigarettes with the same stuff. Well, that shit rarely happens either. If you pay attention, you will see that you are being shown pictures of maybe 10 people, that’s about it. There are more photo’s out there of people who got permanently screwed up off of bad make-up than there are of people messed up, permanently, from meth.

  Do I regret that I ever got involved with meth? I got 15 fucking years in prison, what the hell do you think? Okay, maybe that’s not exactly the truth. If you ask most incarcerated meth cooks, and they are honest with you, I think they will answer that question similar like this.

  I regret that I hurt some of the people I did, mostly my son, Damian. I regret losing my home, cars, my long time job at Exide. I definitely regret this incarceration. On the other hand, if it would not have been for my involvement with meth, I might never have went back to Alabama and reconnected with my family there.

  My nephew, Timothy, who lived with me in Alabama was a long-time drug user when I moved down there. After my arrest on these federal drug charges, he stopped doing drugs, got his GED, and joined the Army. I don’t care what anyone else thinks, to me that alone was worth coming to jail, and everything else that happened. Timmy also married and they had a little girl so he got to be a father. Unfortunately, Timothy died in January, 2012 from a drug overdose. Sadly, he couldn’t stay clean.

  I don’t associate with my sister, at all. She, in case you didn’t notice, was never named in this book. I wouldn’t give her the privilege of using her name. After Timothy, her own son, died, she was mad that she wasn’t getting his Army life insurance. She called the military and tried to convince them he had committed suicide, just so Timothy’s wife couldn’t get the money. It didn’t work but that was still some sorry ass shit.

  Any former meth user, who is being honest with you, will tell you that they had a lot of fun on meth. How can you regret having fun? I didn’t like the way my marriage to Elvira turned out, that doesn’t mean I regret ever being married to her. We had a lot of good times. I just regret how it ended. I feel the same way about meth. I had some fucked up things happen to me while dealing and using that drug, but I had a lot of fun as well. I guess, the only thing I can honestly say I regret about my life in the meth world is the consequences. The pleasure was worth the pain, but not the price.

  About the Author

  Wayne Huffman has lived every level of meth addiction, from casual user to one of four ‘alleged’ leaders of a methamphetamine manufacturing and distribution organization that included over 250 known members and spanned several states.

  Wayne began his career as a meth cook in east Tennessee where he has made his home for the last 23 years.