Vicki Peterson has consulted with the Montana Department of Health on HIV and drug abuse prevention. She is a harm reductionist.

Q: Describe what is going on with methamphetamines in Montana, how did that get on the radar screen?

There are a lot of issues surrounding methamphetamines in this state. I work for a tribal college. Let’s start by saying I am a former methamphetamines user. My preferable way of using was self injections, which is how I was infected with Hepatitis C. One of the aspects of methamphetamines use that gets overlooked is that- if you are in an oppressed environment or are oppressed financially or emotionally, like the native people have been for 500 years, then methamphetamines is the best thing that you can get your hands on. There is nothing like it to make you feel powerful and creative and brave. Whether that manifests in real life or not doesn’t matter because inside you just feel wonderful.

It is the most euphoric experience I have either had. Heroin is a nice warm fuzzy feeling. A lot of people go one way or the other. I was a speed freak. I still am, caffeine, whatever. I don’t want to go slow, I prefer- especially at my age- to go fast.

I have been talking to Alan Clear [a prominent figure in the harm reduction field] for eight years. They look at me like I am nuts. People on the east coast go, “What’s the big deal? We have always had speed…” But it’s a different scene. I think speed on the east coast has always been part of a much bigger drug using lifestyle. But out here, we have specialists. We have speed specialists where that’s the only thing you do, the only thing you want to do.

Q: I always saw speed as amphetamines like a generic upper- but out here it’s crystal meth, like it’s something else. Is it?

I don’t know if I can answer that. I haven’t used it for eight years. When I was using it, it was more yellow in color and goopier, but I have heard for the last couple of years we have had glass appear- and you put it in your syringe and you can shake it up. Well, I missed out on that! My life would be way too chaotic on it though, I am just dysfunctional.

Q: Were you a poly drug user or did you stick to methamphetamines?

Over the years, I tended to focus on one thing at a time and really obsess over it and then get the shit kicked out of me, clean up for a while, go a couple years without doing anything, but then pick something else up. But I hit a wall. I would go pretty fast.

Q: Methamphetamine is being portrayed as a new epidemic- like the new crack. Do you see it as a distinct drug that stands out in regard to its threat, or is it being over-hyped?

I think it is really complicated. There are similarities in the type of individual who pursues a speed high as opposed to a down high like oxycontin or heroin. The media has a tendency- the media really makes a big deal out of the drug of the month, and I think methamphetamines is the drug of the month. It is a world wide issue. Maybe in that respect it is bigger, because it has gripped so many countries. If you look for oppression- like India- you will see a lot of methamphetamines. It is a dirty drug. It is chemical. It originates out of scary, toxic chemicals, and it doesn’t take much if you get the right stuff.

Q: Looking back, how did your drug use start?

I am from a really small town with a ski resort with a lot of rich people around. My dad ran the ski resort. The people in California would come over. There was always that contrast. Plus, I was always a little bit nuts.

I never even saw a black person until my parents kicked me out and I went to LA. I was actually born in LA, but my family moved to the ski resort when we were young because my parents didn’t want me to grow up in a big city with all of that… well, diversity. But in LA, there were more people crossing the street at one time than who lived in my whole town. I was terrified.

I was angry about human beings. History. Civil rights, women’s lib. It was sad and depressing. I didn’t like being here. I got strung out on speed. By the time I was 18 I was pretty strung out on cross tops. In those days they were interesting. I would stay up for days at a time. Unusual stuff like that.

I was really strung out on cocaine, alcohol and other stuff in Reno, Nevada. I was so angry and hateful and mean that the solution occurred to me I should have a kid. I don’t want to go into details, but it was insane.

By the time I realized I was pregnant, I was mortified by what I’d done. It was the first clean and sober thought that I’d had. I was 34 when she was born. I moved to Montana to raise a kid in a safe place. I was clean for over ten years. But this state is so hard to make a living in. I was making eight bucks an hour working for a lawyer, no child support, I was going to NA meetings, but one of the women I was sponsoring killed herself in my garage, I just had to get out. I just thought, life sucks, I can’t do this, my daughter has already committed her first felony in sixth grade, I don’t want her to be like me, as crazy as I am, and I got involved with this guy. Who was a junkie. After years of on and off drug use I picked up a needle full of speed. It was the first time I ever injected. I was 46 years old. I thought it would kill me. But instead, when I pulled that needle out of my arm it was the first time I ever wanted to live. Birds were singing, flowers were popping up. It was the most amazing experience.

For a little over a year, my life was in a basket and threw it up in the air. I lost my job, I couldn’t work, I couldn’t do anything. I was completely dysfunctional. And this is the most pathetic dope scene I’ve ever seen in the country. There is no prostitute stroll… There is no way- what kind of hustle can you run? You can’t even panhandle. You aren’t allowed to panhandle in Missoula, which is the most liberal city in the state. They have jars- if you want to give money to the people in the street- you can put money in jars in businesses which gets divided up between three Christian organizations.

Q: How has your professional work affected your personal experience with drugs? You didn’t use for ten years, but then you relapsed…

I don’t call it a relapse. I hate that word. It has a lot of American connotations of failure. Of weakness or whatever. I don’t consider what I did a relapse. A breakdown maybe. It was ultimately my daughter in the end, and I have to qualify this because there are so many women who haven’t been able to stop drugs because of their kids, but when my daughter was born, she was not taken away from me and put in some bassinette. I told them I would kill them if they did that. My daughter slept with me for years. She still calls me every day. Even though I went off the deep end, and it took a while to find out what was going on with me, eventually it was like, “What am I going to do?”

At one point she just looked at me one day when she was 12 and said, “Why are you doing this?” And I grabbed her arm and said, “Let me show you…” I was going to inject her… She got away. But I was afraid that is where it was going to go. I would rather be dead than let that happen to my kid. I could hear her towards the end of my little run, she was the one.

She asked, “Where are we going to go?” I just wanted to get clean enough to get her away from me. I showed up at a million NA meetings. I just wanted to get her to school and back. She would check my arms everyday when she got home from class. Eventually it worked. Weird things happened. I got a job working in the woods, burning huge piles of glass as big as a house. Gradually, I just came out of it.

By the time I was four months clean, I had been using with this guy from Oregon and the first time we shot up he asked what my status was. And I thought, my status? What is he talking about? And he said, “Your status- do you have HIV?” I said, “HIV, what does that have to do with anything?” He said, “If you choose this as a lifestyle, you owe it to yourself and the people you shoot with to know your status.” I was flabbergasted. He said he was going to be safe and not share with me. After being clean for a couple of months, that scene came back into my head. I thought I better get a test for HIV.

I went to a hospital in California. I got one. I told them I was a slut. I didn’t want to tell them I was a user. I didn’t want that on paper anywhere. Fortunately as things turned out, one of the women that worked there knew me from my days in recovery and when I was sponsoring half of Calispell. She knew what I had been doing while I was back out there. She was connected to the Planning Group [every state has a Planning Group to help allocate and oversee the distribution of Ryan White funding for HIV control] and they needed an IV-drug user. So she told them I would be great. They called me and I said, “Who the fuck are you? Are you nuts?” I was pissed. They ended up calling me four times. The fourth time, they offered to send me to Denver for a “Harm Reduction Conference.” I thought these people are stupid. But I went. And I had one of those white light experiences.

There was something about the literature that I picked up that talked to me like a real human being. There was something about the cohesiveness of the people there, the realness, the self respect they had, in a way I couldn’t put into words. I brought as much of their literature as I could back to Montana with me and went to the health department. I said, I went to your conference, what do we do next? Well, they wouldn’t hire me. When I went to the department, they would hide their purses from me. But after six months they hired me part time as the first outreach worker for Montana. I was doing IDU outreach. I have just embraced it, the whole thing. I ran an underground needle exchange in Montana.

Q: What was that like in such a rural state?

As time went by, I assumed more and more responsibility for this state. I was going all over in a little Geo Metro. I was doing sensitivity training, I was teaching people injection technique, how to clean syringes, why it was important to engage injectors in their programs. I went to conferences all over the place.

Q: So do people still hide their purses?

No. Most people don’t realize I didn’t finish high school. In fact, I just started going to college- the college where I work. It is the third largest tribal college in the country. They have a social work program.

We are in a culture that is constantly bombarding us with images of what it means to be successful. We watch movies- I call them Steven Spielberg houses- the first time I saw Poltergeist, I looked at that house and I thought, “Who lives in a house like that?” It becomes the norm, what’s expected in mainstream life. A lot of people don’t live in houses like that. You go into an Indian reservation… You want to see third world conditions, go to places in Brownie or Fort Belknap, the first reservation in this state. They don’t even have prenatal care because they can’t afford liability insurance. That’s how shameful the situation with Natives is. Even today. It has never stopped. The oppression has never stopped. And introducing methamphetamines… Here’s how I explain it. The lucky smart kids on reservations get scholarships for college. The unlucky smart kids deal drugs. There is a huge market. In this county alone, the state estimates there is a 9.5 million dollar illegal drug industry.

Q: How would you say Montana compares to other states in terms of problems with drugs and drug addiction?

There are nine states in this country with less than a million people. Of those states, we are second to the bottom in the amount of money we spend on substance abuse treatment. Alaska, with half our population, spends like four times our amount, almost 40 million dollars, for all their substance abuse programs. There is a map on the SAMHSA site that tells you how much each state spends.

“Treat people like human beings and they will rise to the occasion.”

I am not saying that I think that the most popular treatment models are very effective, because they’re not. But if we spent as much money looking at different treatment models... SAMHSA has so many publications that talk about how it is so important to build people up rather than tear them down in treatment- I don’t see that happening anywhere. Treat people like human beings and they will rise to the occasion.

I’d like to take all this money spent on “research” and give it to IHS- the Indian Health Service.

Q: So what is the disjunction between SAMHSA and all of the treatment providers out there?

There is a book called, Changing the Conversation. They got providers together all over the country and they said, “We need to build people up instead of tearing them down, teach women how to be good mothers, etc.” But it was not implemented because it was deemed too expensive.

Q: So what does Montana need at this point?

More treatment money. We need to design more options for treatment other than the 12-step model. The 12-step model was supposed to be free; you go to meetings, maybe put a buck in the hat when it goes around. But the treatment programs have built their programs on it and they charge for it. They can’t do anything else.

Q: What number people in Montana do you think need treatment?

Matrix, which was a research program for methamphetamine treatment, was implemented in seven sites; two in Hawaii, four in California and one in Billings, Montana. Out of all of those sites, Billings had the highest rate of injection drug use. The state has yet to even acknowledge the IV-drug use we have.

Working with the Health Department- you have all these misconceptions about mainstream society. I am amazed at how many working class people just get wasted at the bar, or how many secretly smoke pot. You get the justice you can afford to pay for here.

I am actually not in favor of medical marijuana. A couple of years ago the drug policy people were over here and the harm reduction people were over there… I don’t want to deny sick people relief, but on the other hand, I am really tired of seeing poor kids go to jail for pot because their parents don’t have access to the resources that would keep them out. And the consequences of a drug-related felony conviction on your record are too severe. No college scholarships- that is brutal. It is classist. You can murder someone, rape someone, and build your life back up.

We need to make the criminal justice system for rich kids and poor kids.

The dialogue needs to be, my daughter’s friend had a baby recently. The next thing I know the parents don’t want the kid to know they smoke pot. For God’s sake. For how many generations have we been doing this? When does it stop? Of course we have some pretty screwed up families who can’t talk to their kids about anything at all. It’s a complicated issue.

This election is bringing a lot of people out into the process that were never there before. People are starting to pay a little more attention to what is going on. It is an opportunity. There is a great lack of awareness of ‘anyone but us’ in this country.

A lot of really good people just aren’t aware there are options. They are afraid. They are scared to death. They come here to raise their kids- Montana is the last best place. But Montana has the second highest rate of illicit drug use among young people ages 12 to 17 in the United States. That is a scary statistic.

This is America, we’re not supposed to be afraid here.