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For months, Melina Mitts had prayed her stepdaughter, Bryanna, would get arrested.

It may seem like an odd prayer, but Melina knew her 19-year-old stepdaughter was addicted to methamphetamine, was living in one of the seediest parts of Denver without a job and was almost impossible to contact. What she didn't know was how to get Bryanna to stop using the drug.

During the few times that Melina and her husband, Steve, saw Bryanna in the past year, they begged her to stop. They asked her to stay with them, sober up and find a job. They said they would help.

If she continued down the road she was on, they told her, there were only two places she could go: to jail or to the grave.

"They kept praying for the day I would end up in jail, they knew it was either jail or I would end up dead on the side of the highway," Bryanna said last week from the Routt County Jail, just before leaving for a rehabilitation program in Grand Junction.

Her parents' prayers were answered March 27, when Steamboat Springs police officers pulled over a vehicle driven by a 30-year-old Denver man. Bryanna was the passenger. Inside the vehicle, police reportedly found what they called a rolling meth lab, dozens of forged documents that pointed to an extensive identity theft operation and two syringes full of liquid meth.

Bryanna was arrested on suspicion of the possession, use, and intent to distribute and manufacture methamphetamine. She also is facing three charges related to forging documents.

"We had no idea it would be to this extent," Melina said about the arrests. "We are all happy at least she is not dead. At least we know where she is."

Until March 27, Bryanna didn't have so much as a speeding ticket on her record. Two years before, she was the vice president of her class at Standley Lake High School in Westminster. She had a 3.9 grade-point average, was a varsity gymnast and cheerleader and had a boyfriend who was heading to Regis University. Excelling in math and science, her goal was to become a forensic pathologist.

"She was always around very successful people. She stuck her nose up at people (like her now). She was not in the druggie crowd at all," Melina said.

Bryanna's parents divorced when she was 13. Her father is a painting contractor, her mother is an administrator in the health-care field and Melina is in real estate.

"She's from a good, middle-class family. She is everybody's daughter," Melina said.

The Mitts wonder about the path that took Bryanna from a straight-A student to a meth addict sitting in the Routt County Jail.

"We're still looking for answers," Melina said.

The walk-away drug

Deb Hutson, a licensed clinical social worker and certified addiction counselor, has seen the powers of meth addiction first-hand.

More addictive then cocaine, Hutson said, people call meth the walk-away drug because addicts will walk away from their children, jobs, families and lives just to have it.

"People who want this drug give up everything in their life for it," she said.

In the past six months, Hutson, who works with Steamboat Mental Health, has treated 10 people for meth addiction. The addiction, and the social problems that come with it, are on the rise.

"You used to say, 'meth is just a problem in Craig.' The last couple of years, we have seen increases here," Hutson said.

Unlike cocaine, which is derived from natural ingredients, meth is produced entirely from readily available chemicals. Cheaper and producing a longer high, meth also can be a more attractive alternative than cocaine. Smoking cocaine produces a high that lasts from 20 to 30 minutes. Smoking meth produces a high that lasts as long as 24 hours.

Hutson said it gives users a feeling of being invincible, often called the "Superman Syndrome." It also produces a cycle of using the drug for days, not sleeping or eating, and then crashing for days. During the days of sleeplessness, users "tweak," fixating on projects and often taking apart things and putting them back together.

It is the hinge point between not sleeping for days and getting ready to crash when users can become violent.

"They usually keep going until they crash -- and they are going to crash. They can't get high anymore, and that's when they are the most dangerous," Hutson said.

Meth causes the brain to produce the naturally occurring chemical dopamine. Dopamine rises naturally when people participate in activities such as sex, eating good food and exercise, Hutson said. But meth can cause dopamine to increase 600 times the typical amount that a natural high produces.

"That is what people walk away from kids, their jobs and lives for," she said.

The downward spiral

On her 32nd day at the Routt County Jail, Bryanna sat in her blue jail uniform and pointed to the exact date her life started its dramatic downward spiral: Feb. 10, 2004.

It was the first time she had used meth.

Bryanna had just moved out of her dad's house and was living on her own in an apartment in Thornton while she worked as a waitress at Village Inn. She was taking online classes and had a half-credit left before finishing high school.

On Feb. 10, some neighbors from an apartment a few doors down invited her over -- and then asked if she wanted to smoke meth.

In high school, she drank alcohol and smoked marijuana, but she never tried more serious drugs. But in that apartment, she didn't want to say no to her new friends, so she tried it.

"It was like, yeah, this is cool," she said.

She stayed at the apartment for the next two days, sleeping little and knowing she would have to go back to work soon.

"I tried to go to sleep. It totally didn't work. I ended up doing it again and kept doing it for no apparent reason," she said.

The veneer on Bryanna's seemingly perfect life already had started showing cracks before the first time she tried meth, Melina said.

Always independent and somewhat rebellious, Bryanna started acting out at the end of her junior year. Before her senior year of high school, Bryanna was not getting along well with her dad and moved in with a friend's family.

"She had no rules, but there aren't any when you're a good kid," Melina said.

At the start of the school year, she was living with her mom and commuting from Loveland to Westminster. She was in or commuting to school from 6:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. every day.

In the fall, she was kicked out of school for fighting, Melina said, and enrolled in online classes. By Christmas, the family decided it would be best for Bryanna to get an apartment of her own.

"After the first month and a half, that is when we thought, this is really wrong," Melina said.

Bryanna's father seemed to pick up instantly that she was doing meth. Bryanna remembers that within days of her trip to the neighbors' apartment, he was at her door, asking whether she was doing drugs. She denied it.

Melina said part of the hunch came from conversations she had earlier with Bryanna about people she met at the Village Inn, who were involved in meth. The glaring sign, Melina said, was that Bryanna would stay up for days at a time and then crash.

Within weeks, Bryanna stopped showing up for work at the Village Inn. She lost her job, her car was stolen, and soon, she was kicked out of her apartment for not paying rent.

"I cared more about the drugs and getting high," Bryanna said.

She looked at her new friends and saw they all had apartments and were smoking meth for days at a time. She questioned why she had to work so hard when they didn't.

She soon began living from couch to couch and said there were always a couple of guys who looked after her.

The people she started meeting were further and further into the meth scene, she said, and eventually, she was living in Denver's Five Points area, one of the most crime-ridden neighborhoods in the state.

"I didn't know a single person, besides my parents and family, that didn't do drugs. That is really, really sad," Bryanna said.

'I just didn't care''

Looking back, Melina said, she would change "probably a million things." But she also said the family continuously tried to get Bryanna to stop. In the beginning, they kept close tabs on Bryanna. They called the police and even staked out her apartment, watching who was coming in and out.

Every time they saw or talked to Bryanna, she was with different people, Melina said.

Melina tried to shame Bryanna into coming to see them, and even offered to give her $50 for her to visit, saying she would not tell her dad.

"I just wanted to see her and know she was OK," Melina said.

There was never one big intervention, Melina said, but every time they talked to her, they tried to get her to stop.

"We said, you know we can help you, come live here, we'll get you clean, get a job for you. We told her that a million times," Melina said.

Mostly though, Melina said, they just wanted to make sure that when Bryanna fell, she had a soft place to land. They wanted her to know she could come back to her family.

"If it was too difficult to come back, she just wouldn't," Melina said.

Much of the time, her family didn't know where Bryanna was living and said she always was using different cell phone numbers.

They were terrified for Bryanna's safety. Melina recalls hearing a news report about a young girl found dead behind a building in downtown Denver with her hands cut off. Police thought it was part of a drug deal gone bad.

Family members started calling Melina asking when was the last time she had heard from Bryanna.

"It was terrible. We never knew where she was," Melina said.

In the last months before her arrest, Bryanna's addiction worsened. The person who, as a little girl, was afraid to go to the doctor's office because of needles, started shooting up meth.

"I couldn't find a pipe one day. I asked someone if they could teach me how to do it," Bryanna said. "No one made me do it."

Twice she tried to stop using meth. The first time was last May, when a guy she had been dating got arrested. While in jail, he urged her to quit using the drug before it was too late. She was living with her mom and stayed sober for days. Then she went to see him again in jail, was depressed, stopped by her friend's house on the way home and started doing meth again.

"It really doesn't matter how many people you see get in trouble. You see so many of your friends end up in jail. But you just don't get it until it is you that is arrested," Bryanna said.

The second time she tried to quit was at Christmas time, when she again was living with her mom. She had been clean for more than a week when her friends insisted that they see her Christmas Day. They picked her up at her home, and they started doing meth again. "There was nothing that was going to stop me. I just didn't care at all," Bryanna said.

Life or meth

Last week, Bryanna went into a 21-day rehabilitation program in Grand Junction for her meth addiction. Her criminal case is before the 14th Judicial District Court and has yet to be resolved. If Bryanna is convicted of the most serious charges she faces, it could mean years in prison.

Bryanna hopes her arrest will mean a new lease on life, a chance to get clean and start over. She has plans of going to cosmetology school when she gets out of jail and is afraid of going back to Denver and running into her old friends.

Melina said she is cautiously optimistic about the future.

"We are just starting the long, long haul with Bryanna. This drug has got such a hold on her," she said. "Recovery is a lifelong struggle."

Hutson said it can take weeks to get over the physical addiction to meth and even longer to come to terms with the psychological addiction. It's not an easy road, and the highest success rates come from people who are in treatment and join addiction groups.

"The research is pretty bleak on the ones that make it," Hutson said.

When they were arrested, Bryanna and the vehicle's driver, Jamison Todd Fjoser, were on their way to see friends in Hayden. Bryanna, at 5-foot-4, weighed 95 pounds when she was booked into the Routt County Jail. She slept for most of her first week behind bars, she said.

She since has put on 22 pounds. She spent her days in jail watching TV and going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings once a week, and she said she was reprimanded more than once for doing backflips in the jail's recreation room.

When rehab is done, Bryanna will return to jail.

Melina said the family made the decision not to bail Bryanna out of jail, partly because they thought that with the charges, she didn't deserve to be bonded out. But also because they had feared she could run away, and they would never see her again, or she could die. Like many of their choices, Melina still questions whether it was the right one.

"You don't know if you are making the right or wrong decisions, whether you are helping or hurting," she said.

The experience inspired Melina to write a book. It will be titled "Life or Meth."

"It really is that choice, because it can take your life away. Do you want life, or do you want meth. It is really about that for a lot of people," she said.

-- To reach Christine Metz call 871-4229 or e-mail cmetz@steamboatpilot.com