Crystal Death, by Nate Hendley
Parnell’s body was as wired as his mind. By this point, his weight was down to 160 pounds, from a high of 200. Muscular and handsome in a rough-cut fashion, Parnell was showing signs of extreme stress and hard living. His temper was explosive, he babbled to himself at high-speed and he heard voices in his head. Co-workers at the tire plant in Mayfield, Kentucky where Parnell was nominally employed were becoming nervous.
Parnell’s main drug of choice was methamphetamine, an illegal and super-potent brand of the stimulant amphetamine. Meth isn’t something that’s smuggled in from Colombia or Asia’s golden triangle. An entirely synthetic drug, meth is brewed up in makeshift labs in motels, trailers and other locales across North America. A white, odorless powder, methamphetamine dissolves easily in water. The drug can also come in white or yellow chunks that resemble rock salt.
Also called crank, speed, crystal, poor man’s cocaine and Tina, meth spent decades in obscurity, known only to bikers and blue-collar workers. In the past few years, however, it’s achieved mass popularity.
Parnell for his part took methamphetamine for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that he was addicted to it. The stuff filled him with vigor and offered an indescribable jolt of pleasure, better than any other drug he’d tried.
Some addicts snort meth while others prefer to shoot up or smoke the drug in an instrument called a gak pipe. Parnell had his own peculiar method of ingestion; he liked to lay the stuff out on toilet paper and gobble the whole pulpy mess down. Within seconds, Parnell would be flying high. His buzz would last for hours, even days at a time.
On meth, Parnell felt invincible and cocky, like a star athlete about to enter a big game. He could stay awake for days on end without feeling tired. Methamphetamine made life tremendously exciting.
Problem is, what goes up has to eventually come back down to earth. Coming off a meth high is a rather unpleasant experience, which is why most addicts try to avoid it. After a while, however, you reach a limit as to how long you can stay awake. Even heavy meth users have to sleep at some point.
Parnell had his own routine for rest and recuperation. Whenever the drug burned him out to the point where he could barely get out of bed, Parnell would phone in sick to work. He’d sleep and take it easy for a few days, then start gulping down meth all over again.
Parnell could get away with this behavior because he belonged to a union with a generous medical leave policy. It also helped that he was an experienced addict. A meth user for years, Parnell knew how to work the system to his advantage.
Parnell first encountered crank at age 21, when he was working construction in Dallas, Texas. Even at this stage, Parnell was something of an old hand when it came to getting high. He’d already sampled marijuana, alcohol, prescription pills and cocaine, among other intoxicants. A rotten childhood had nothing to do with it; Parnell’s upbringing, in Tennessee, had been relatively normal. He just liked drugs and took lots of them.
In Dallas, Parnell hung around some rather disreputable characters, who happened to be into meth. When he was offered some, Parnell said sure. His first meth experience was an eye-opener, literally. Nothing he’d taken before prepared him for the drug. It offered an even bigger kick than cocaine and at a fraction of the price. It was powerful stuff and Parnell loved it.
Following his first taste, Parnell soon acquired a full-blown methamphetamine addiction. His habit actually helped rather than hindered him on the job; jacked-up on meth, Parnell could put in 18-hour days at the construction site. When he wasn’t working, Parnell got stoned and hung out with fellow dopers and drinkers.
Parnell soon became acquainted with the phenomenon known as “tweaking”. Tweaking is what happens when you’ve been awake for two weeks in a row on speed. The combination of lack of sleep and the effect of the drugs push you into a semi-psychotic state, where fantasy and reality blur and hallucinations fill your mind and ears.
Tweakers tend to be paranoid and massively moody. They can go from being euphorically happy to insanely mad in the blink of an eye. Even other addicts are wary of tweakers, who have a tendency towards unprovoked violence. Needless to say, cops hate tweakers too. Trying to subdue someone who’s beyond the point of feeling much of anything besides extreme confusion and aggression is not much fun.
Throughout the rest of his twenties and into his early thirties, Parnell continued to work, tweak and eat meth. He traveled about the United States, somewhat aimlessly. In the early 1990s, he served some time in an Oklahoma prison for selling marijuana. At some point after that, Parnell moved back to his childhood hometown of Martin, Tennessee. He got a job at a tire factory across the state line and took drugs.
Parnell’s massive speed habit eventually caught up with him. In year 2000, at age 33, married to a woman named Amy and father of a growing brood of children, Parnell tried to commit suicide. It was his first serious attempt. He had been feeling depressed, anxious and awful. Severe suicidal thoughts kept entering his mind. Tying a rope around his neck and trying to hang himself seemed like a logical thing to do.
His suicide bid failed, and Parnell went back to working in the tire plant, raising his kids and gobbling down ungodly amounts of meth. At his peak, Parnell was pulling in $35,000 a year from his job. He augmented this income by dealing pot and meth. It was enough to keep his family clothed and fed and keep him in drugs.
As Parnell’s meth addiction grew in scope and intensity, his already fragile mental equilibrium started to strain and fray. Staying awake for days on end didn’t help. Carrying a rifle around the home, on the other hand, did help, at least a bit. Whenever his paranoia overwhelmed him, Parnell would take a few pot shots in his backyard. This wasn’t New York City; no one in small-town Tennessee would be alarmed by the sound of occasional rifle-fire.
Wife Amy was starting to take note of her husband’s deteriorating condition. Amy occasionally used meth herself, but nowhere near to the same degree as her husband. Parnell had reached a state where he was a danger to himself and the family. On a memorable day in early 2003, Amy informed her spouse that she’d had enough, and wanted to leave him and take the kids. A more sober man might not have been surprised. As it was, Parnell was devastated. With his increasingly tenuous grip on reality slipping away, Parnell took his rifle and invited Amy to lie in bed with him. Amy did as she was told.
With his partner at his side, Parnell took his gun and placed the muzzle underneath his chin. He pulled the trigger but failed to kill himself. He did, however, succeed in blowing off most of his facial features. With his ears ringing from the concussive sound of the shot, Parnell realized he was still alive, albeit, minus a few pieces. The meth coursing through his body was so powerful that his self-inflicted wound hadn’t knocked him unconscious.
“I thought I was dying,” states a surgically reconstructed Parnell today. “I felt my life was slipping out of me … the pain was so intense it was hard to think of a whole lot of stuff.”
Splattered with her husband’s blood, Amy managed to call 911 once she got her hysterics under control. No one – especially Dave Parnell himself – expected him to live. He had managed to eviscerate his nose, lips and teeth. His face was literally split down the middle. He could still see, hear and feel pain, however. The sharpest, most intense pain he’d ever experienced in his life.
Parnell lay helpless in his bedroom, waiting to die, as Amy stood watch for the ambulance attendants.
While most users don’t turn rifles on themselves, Parnell was hardly alone in his lust for meth.
According to the United Nations World Drug Report 2005, some 26 million people around the globe tried amphetamines in 2003. 2.6 million of these users lived in Europe, 4.3 million in North and South America, 1.8 million in Africa, and 17.3 million in Asia and Oceania.
The most recent National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) – a regular barometer of American substance abuse patterns – revealed that 12.3 million Americans have sampled meth at least once at their lives.
These figures pale when compared to the number of people who smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol or use marijuana. Nonetheless, meth has health experts, policy-makers and police highly alarmed. This is because crank – as Parnell can attest – has the ability to mess you up harder and faster than almost any other substance on the planet.
In July 2005, the National Association of Counties (NACO) released a grim report entitled, “The Meth Epidemic in America”. The report was based on the results of a survey done for NACO with county law officers across the U.S.
When asked what illegal drug was causing the most problems in their locales, the vast majority of police officers cited methamphetamine. Crank got more votes than heroin, cocaine and marijuana combined.
“Meth,” concludes the NACO report, “is the leading drug-related local law enforcement problem in the country.”
It’s a sentiment shared by the National Conference of State Legislatures. In early 2004, the National Conference issued a briefing paper that labeled meth “the fastest growing drug threat in America”.
In general, police and politicians support tougher laws against crank. A case can be made, however, that the punishment speed addicts inflict on themselves is far worse than any kind of jail sentence.
Certainly Parnell, lying faceless in his bedroom, would agree. When the police and paramedics showed up, in response to Amy’s frantic calls, they gave Parnell little chance of surviving.
“They wrote me off for dead,” recalls Parnell.
Parnell was rushed to hospital where doctors saved his life. Following three days of emergency surgery and rest, Parnell realized he wasn’t going to die. He also realized he’d reached the end of the line as far as his addiction was concerned. This discovery was compounded by a surprise announcement from Amy: his wife told him she was pregnant again, with his seventh child.
Next came a religious awakening.
“As soon as I came to, all I could think about was how much mercy Jesus had showed me,” he recalls.
Parnell had never been particularly spiritual before. Having managed to come within an inch of blowing his brains out, however, he saw the light.
While alive, Parnell was badly disfigured. In fact, he couldn’t talk because he didn’t have much of a mouth left. Writing his thoughts down on a notepad, he let Amy know that he wanted to live. Haven been given a second chance, he was determined to stay straight.
It had taken a bullet to wake Parnell up; unlike many of his meth-addled peers, Parnell would never take another hit of crank again.