Images bring drug horrors to life

Former addict shows ugly side of meth

By KEVIN KOELLING
Managing Editor, Perry County News

LEOPOLD — Many faces appear in images David Parnell projects on a screen behind him as he speaks. One, the face of a small girl, has marks around her mouth. They’re cockroach bites, he explains.

The torso of another child has large pink areas. They’re bleach burns, Parnell explains. The father in that home didn’t want to take time away from making meth long enough to or take his youngster to the hospital, or even to wash off the chlorine bleach that caused the burns.
Another child was less fortunate, left in the home to die when it caught fire. The parents got themselves out, Parnell said.

“Conditions are very harsh in meth homes,” the meth-addict-turned-motivational-speaker told students gathered in a gymnasium at Perry Central Com-munity School Tuesday. Drug users are careful at first, to avoid raising suspicions, he said, but once addiction takes over, they no longer care about their own or their homes’ appearances. “They only care about getting high.”
As his pictures showed, ad-dicts care little about the children around them.

Tuesday morning’s was the first of six presentations Parnell was giving in Perry County that and the next day, courtesy of the county’s Education on Drugs and Alcohol Support Group. Much of his talk focused on the effects children suffer when their parents’ attention turns to drugs.

He’s been there.
His wife asked him to go to the store to get some milk for their children once, he explained. He refused. The $30 in his pocket would buy him some marijuana, instead.

“Don’t let anyone tell you pot’s not addictive,” he urged.

Lack of concern for children was apparent in many of the images Parnell showed. Homes were littered with laundry, rotting food, and in some cases, pet feces.

“Meth robs people of the ability to love or care for other human beings,” he said.

In a corner of one home stood a spear fashioned by a child from a thin board, knives and duct tape. It served as a weapon against rats, he explained. In another home, meth was “hidden” in a “sippy-cup” sitting on a table. A child would have no way of knowing its contents as he placed the spout against his lips and turned it up.

Under one trailer, children were found hiding in the discharge of a broken sewage pipe. They were there, Parnell said, be-cause they were afraid to be inside with their addicted father.
Image after im-age drove home the ugliness of meth addiction. In one picture, a 13-year-old girl scrawled a “help me” message on a bedroom wall. Another shows marks in the skin of children who found and poked themselves with used needles. An addict’s skin in another photo is covered with sores born, Parnell explained, of a maddening itch driven by the body’s inability to digest the chemicals.

One of Parnell’s pictures showed the ingredients used to make meth. “They’re all poisonous,” he noted, “but we think if we mix them up, they’re not poisonous any more.”

Parnell relates a tale he heard once, confirmed later by jailers — incarcerated addicts will eat their own scabs or drink the urine of others, thinking they can get high from drugs exiting the body.

In his own story, of 23 years of drug abuse, of seven years’ addiction to meth, earlier pictures show Parnell as a basketball player. In Parnell’s story, those images of normal, healthy activities are supplanted by pictures of him “tweaking,” remaining high and without sleep for days at a time. Pictures of his second suicide attempt mark the moment he turned his life around.

His first try was a hanging that failed. He passed out and his body went into convulsions, which caused the rope to break. His sister found him.

“I know the Lord helped me,” he said, “but I didn’t take advantage of it.”

He stopped using drugs for a time, but continuing to associate with other users, he was drawn back.

Parnell’s drug abuse started when he was 13 years old and got high with his dad, he explained, but he doesn’t blame his father. “God gave us all free will,” he said. “I can only blame myself, not my father. We have to stand up and be adults about our own actions.”

In the beginning, he said, drugs “made me feel strong and clear.” It wasn’t long, however, before he went from playing basketball to “caring only about where I would get my next high.”

“I thought I was never going to let a drug control me, but they always end up controlling you,” he told the Perry Central audience.

Parnell said it’s common for abusers to think they’ll “make fast, easy money” in the drug trade, “but I don’t personally know anyone who got rich selling dope.”

A trip he made once from his Tennessee home to Oklahoma to parlay drugs into quick cash went bad, he explained, turning into a two-year prison sentence. After his release, he got his wife into the habit, convincing her “it won’t hurt you.” Parnell said he’d always told himself he would be there for his children, but when they approached the bedroom where he and his wife were locked away doing meth, “Get out of here!” became the common response.

During one high, Parnell put a 12-gauge shotgun to his wife’s head and threatened to shoot her. She got free and called the police.

“Thank God this time she did,” Parnell said. “The police came and took my guns away from me.”

He re-armed himself later with the help of his wife. As a felon, he couldn’t legally own weapons, he said, but he convinced her other addicts were intent on breaking into their home to steal their drugs. He used one of the two firearms she purchased in his second suicide at-tempt.

His meth use had spawned hallucinations of “shadow people,” he recalled, seen at first only out of the corner of his eye. They eventually evolved to visions he watched “walk around the room.” He also began hearing voices.

“I heard a man’s voice saying my wife and children would be better off if I was dead,” he said.
His wife had quit using drugs and started going to church, he said. She and their children were praying for him.

Parnell warned the students the next set of images were so graphic they might cause fainting or vomiting.

“I felt the best thing I could do is kill myself, but that’s never the best answer,” he told them.
On one occasion, he convinced his wife to lie down with him, he said. She did, but she told him she and the children would be leaving. He grabbed a rifle and put it to his chin. She tried to prevent his suicide, but he pulled the trigger.

He was surprised to find himself conscious, he said.

“I remember hearing the gun blast, and I was trying to hold my face together,” he said, advancing the projector to images obtained from the sheriff’s department in his area. They provided them to him, he said, when he told them this would be their use.

The tip of his tongue had been blown off and the roof of his mouth exploded, he said.
Parnell’s children knew he was badly hurt, he said, and his mother arrived in response to a call from one of them telling her the parents were fighting. “Why did you do that?” she demanded.

Moments earlier, “I could have told you why I wanted to die,” Parnell said. “Now I was asking myself ‘why?’ ”

As doctors worked to save him, “my family was awaiting the phone call telling them I had passed,” he said.

When he awoke three days later, his wife was there. She informed him she was pregnant with their son.

“I knew he was a gift from God,” Parnell said. “It’s my belief all children are.”
Writing on a notebook, he said, he informed her he wanted to warn people about drug abuse.

She supported that desire, urging him not to wait until he healed. He agreed, saying he’s no longer embarrassed about his appearance and hopes, “the way I look can help some young person not put this poison in their body.”

In concluding, Parnell urged the students to call the police if they suspect someone is using or making meth.

“You may be saving their life or the lives of their kids,” he said. “Some things are worth protecting, like the children of our community.”

Perry Central High School Principal Jackie Wright said Wednesday he had heard comments from a few students, who found the presentation “very meaningful and educational.”