In a national climate transfixed with the opioid epidemic, a shadow has been cast over the insidious resurgence of meth in Wisconsin and the Chippewa Valley

“I knew right away, right away, that I liked that drug better than any other drug I had ever done,” Sarah Ferber says.

The drug was meth. Ferber had experimented with drugs from marijuana to cocaine — but she felt the danger of this new drug the first time she used it.

She knew it wasn’t easy to get where she lived in Eau Claire. It just happened to show up in a small, one-time shipment from the Twin Cities in Minnesota. Without access, she stayed away. But a few years later, in 2004, she moved to New Richmond, Wisconsin. There, in a quiet, unassuming town of 9,000, just an hour outside of Minneapolis, meth was abundant, and her life spiraled out of control.

In the shadows of an opioid epidemic that has overwhelmed the nation, Ferber’s story is not unique. Meth — slang for methamphetamine — has quietly crept across the country and made an insidious resurgence in Wisconsin. From 2011 to 2015, meth use rose more than 250 percent across the state, attracting new users and converting former opioid addicts. As the phantom drug has taken a hold in rural, western Wisconsin, it’s left law enforcement strapped, families destroyed and many wondering what’s next.

In the Chippewa Valley specifically, meth flows across the state line along highways that sprawl out from the Twin Cities. The drug is produced in Mexico, then it crosses the border, transported into Wisconsin by urban gangs with connections to Minnesota and into the hands of dealers, who then supply users in their suburban and rural counties.

It’s travelled across the Minnesota border hidden in car parts and children’s socks, and it ends up in the hands of people like Sarah Ferber.

Into the dark

People’s paths to meth are different, according to Michael Mansavage, special agent with the Wisconsin Department of Justice. Most often, people cycle through a “buffet” of other drugs and stimulants before they finally land on meth.

“It’s just going through and finding that drug that you really like,” Mansavage says.

Meth changes the chemistry of the brain by increasing the amount of dopamine, a chemical that controls feelings of reward, pleasure and emotion. This sudden release creates an intense rush of euphoria. It also increases heartbeat, libido and aggression. As a powerful stimulant, meth causes people to use energy they don’t have, only to crash after the drug has worked its way out of the user’s system.

Opioids, on the other hand, depress the central nervous system by slowing the signals the brain receives from the body. In low doses, they effectively dull pain sensations. But used in large quantities, the drug can sedate people to a point where they no longer receive the body’s automatic reminders to breathe. Breathing fewer than 12 breaths a minute causes users to enter respiratory failure. Without consistent oxygen, users can slip into comas or simply stop breathing altogether.

Because meth overdose death is less common than those from opioids, the drug’s resurgence has not gained the same attention from the general public or current political leaders. Despite the fact that 31 percent of police agencies nationwide reported meth to be the greatest drug threat in their area last year, meth isn’t part of the national conversation about drugs.

But a lack of policy isn’t stopping meth from gaining increased attention among one group in particular — former opioid users. More and more, opioid addicts are turning to meth because it’s considered to be a “safer” alternative for receiving an intense rush of dopamine with a lower rate of overdose deaths.

“It’s hard to quantify [meth use in Wisconsin] as a problem because with heroin, we have people dying of overdoses,” Mansavage says. “With meth, you don’t see people dying of overdoses very commonly. Yes, it can happen, but it’s not a common thing.”

Fewer deaths do not mean fewer lives ruined, especially for the children impacted by this crisis.

In 2014, Chippewa County Department of Human Services placed 13 children in out-of-home care. Of those cases, 10 were related to meth. Just two years later, the organization was responsible for 127 cases, 95 of which were related to meth.

Many of these children are under 10 years old — and testing positive for meth in their system. After meth is smoked, its residue settles on the floor, toys and furniture. As young children move around their home they can indirectly ingest the drug. Social workers and new guardians have to be cognizant that children may go through meth withdrawal when they leave their homes.

According to Larry Winter, the director of Chippewa County Department of Human Services, this is because the meth they battle in Chippewa County today is more complicated, more sophisticated and more lethal it was just nine years ago. Today’s meth can result in immediate addiction after first use.

Winter became the director of Chippewa County Department of Human Services in 2008, when meth was first taking a real hold in the county.  At that time, clandestine labs dissolved, mixed and cooked over-the-counter cold medications or shook fertilizer and battery acid in Gatorade bottles to produce small batches of the drug locally. The state Legislature passed policy regulating the sale of pseudoephedrine products, and set up a statewide database that tracks the sale of cold medicine.

For a time, this seemed to keep meth use at bay. But like anything else, supply and demand opened a market.

“This stuff is coming across the border the same that we always fought with cocaine and heroin and marijuana,” Mansavage says.

The meth coming from Mexico is different. It’s not made in garages; it’s made in labs by chemists — and its purity is over 95 percent.

In Wisconsin, the supply of high-quality, mass-produced meth worsened the existing problem of local, homegrown meth use, a pattern also seen at the start of the opioid epidemic.

As journalist Sam Quinones describes in his recent book, “Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opioid Epidemic,” prescriptions for Oxytocin were handed out by the pad-full in the early 90s. But when the prescriptions stopped, or pills were no longer strong enough, heroin moved in. Cartels saw an opportunity and began to cater. Literally.

Quinones says addicts could call a number, and dealers would send a driver to meet them and deliver a small balloon full of heroin. It attracted a new market of white, suburban users uncomfortable with buying drugs for themselves. It was potent. It was available. It was low profile.

“What I’ve come to terms with, is that I’ve been doing the work for 25 years, and there’s always a next drug,” Winter says. “Whether it’s meth or opioids, we always seem to be chasing the next drug.”

Winter believes the root of addiction and substance abuse is not the drugs themselves, it’s the systemic issues within the community. Currently, he thinks that addiction is viewed as an individualized, criminal, moral issue, rather than a population-level health issue — and this approach isn’t accurate.

After Ferber received her first criminal conviction for drug possession in 2006, doors slammed shut. For the next four years, her conviction history made it impossible for her to find a job or a place to live, or to keep her kids with her. She fell deeper into meth use and cycled through inpatient treatment.

Without effective, affordable or widely available treatment options, relapse is common among meth users. Unlike opioid treatment, there aren’t any drugs to counter meth cravings.

Rather than blocking receptors like opioid addiction medications do, meth users need to rebuild their dopamine levels. Most treatment programs don’t last long enough for recovering addicts to do this. What’s more, the long-term nature of treatment means it costs about two and a half times more than standard substance-abuse treatment.

After falling in and out of treatment, Ferber hit her lowest point in the middle of 2013. She was using meth intravenously, and within a year was completely homeless and begging others to let her kids stay somewhere safe.

While she was in inpatient treatment programs, she made progress, but she quickly relapsed when she was pushed back out into the real world. These programs taught her about drugs and their risks, but they didn’t address the root of her drug problem. It wasn’t until she entered Alternatives to Incarcerating Mothers Court in 2015 that she started receiving services that did more than simply teach her about meth. Here, they also taught her how to cope with the underlying trauma that led her to drugs in the first place.

After that, her life changed.

“I don’t want to be anonymous,” Ferber says. “They can look me up on CCAP [Wisconsin Circuit Court Access, the state’s online court records system] and look at all my charges and see everything bad that I ever did. So why not get out there and say, ‘Yeah, I’ve done all those bad things, but look at all the good stuff I’ve also done?’”

Ferber has been sober for three years. Today, she’s back in school full time and studying social work. She’s also involved in EXPO, an advocacy group connecting former prisoners to resources and the community to help them successfully re-enter society. Her goal is to be the voice for others who can’t advocate for themselves. Already, she’s learned that this is a slow, tedious process, but she’s in it for the long haul.

Shedding new light

Breaking the anonymity of meth in rural, western Wisconsin is half the battle.

Between 2011 and 2015, the number of meth cases analyzed by the Wisconsin State Crime Laboratory Bureau rose nearly 350 percent. During those same four years, heroin cases rose 97 percent.

In 2013, the Wisconsin Legislature allocated grant money to create three opioid treatment programs in high-need, underserved rural areas across northern Wisconsin. The Department of Human Services chose the northeastern, north central and northwestern regions of the state to receive this grant funding.

Within these regions, Ashland, Oneida, Price and Burnett counties were all highlighted as counties especially affected by the opioid epidemic. But these were also four of the 10 counties with the highest increase in meth use in the state from 2014 to 2015.

As the concern over meth use in rural Wisconsin has risen quietly, the legislation to help mitigate it has come slowly. In July 2017, the law was amended to include the creation of methamphetamine treatment programs by 2019.

But the focus of public policy is still centered on opioids. To fully account for the growing trend of meth in Wisconsin, the drug needs to come out of the shadows into the forefront of policy change.

“Where we are at this point is getting the information out,” Winter says. “And I guess what I go back to is, you know, what do we do with it?”

There is no magic answer. In rural Wisconsin, meth continues to cost lives and ruin families. It’s happening in the shadows, out of sight and out of mind. There is no one path to meth.

Just the problem: fighting two drugs at the same time, and losing sight of one.

Carly Schesel is a senior majoring in journalism with a focus in strategic communication and reporting, and double majoring in political science.

To balance Curb, classes, internships and extracurriculars she believes impromptu dance parties to be the best form of stress relief.

After graduation, she plans to pursue a career in public relations.