Haunted by the childhood taunt of "butter ball," Dawn Jackson eagerly embraced the rapid weight loss that came with using methamphetamine.

"I used to call it the Jenny Crank diet," the 32-year-old Eagle Point resident joked.

Jackson first tried meth at the age of 15 with a family member. Two years later she had graduated to everyday use, leaving home to live on the streets and in flophouses with other addicts. The drug’s euphoric high dulled the pain of Jackson’s abusive home life. She would spend the next 14 years injecting larger quantities of meth in pursuit of that "first-time" sensation but not before wreaking havoc on her body.

Staying awake for days and weeks on end, Jackson noticed that her immune system started going downhill. She easily caught colds that turned into pneumonia. She sometimes used so much of the drug, injecting two full syringes of meth — back to back — that she suffered seizures.

The need to feed her veins made Jackson forget everything, including the most basic means of survival. Forgetting to eat and drink for days on end replaced Jackson’s svelte form with a saggy-skinned skeleton.

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"My ex used to tell me that I looked like a sucked-up Safeway chicken with string-bean legs — the skin just hanging.

"But I could always tuck the skin in."

At times, Jackson became so dehydrated she couldn’t find a vein to shoot up. Instead, she buried the needle into her neck or her breast. The drug’s toxins later started emerging through her skin, resulting in acne and quarter-sized boils. Her hair started coming out in handfuls.

"It just seeps out your pores," Jackson said.

"So you try to clean up your face, and that’s where the pick marks come in," she said, referring to the scabs that dot the faces of "tweakers."

Jackson was blind to her body’s transformation even when a police officer told her he hoped she took better care of her kids than herself.

"I just looked at him and thought, ‘What are you talking about? I look good.’"

After about seven years of heavy use, meth had a still higher price to exact.

Jackson started noticing soft brown pockets in her two front teeth like mushy spots on an apple. Picking at the discolored areas opened up pinhead-sized holes. Her teeth, she discovered, were rotting at the gum line. Abscesses in her gums filled her mouth with pus. The only remedy was to pull the teeth, three or four at once.

"Every time I’d eat, they’d fall out," Jackson said. "(Eating) a piece of toast, my teeth would break."

She finally had her remaining 18 teeth pulled in an hour-long dentist’s appointment. She hadn’t even reached her 30th birthday.

"I couldn’t even look at myself in a mirror — the realization that my teeth were gone."

Drug-free for the past year and five months, Jackson nevertheless still suffers the drug’s ravaging effects. Her skin is scarred, her muscle tone is gone, her mouth aches. It’s a story similar among nearly all meth users, experts say.

"It is a toxic stew that people are putting into their bodies," said Dr. Jim Shames, who provides medical care for inmates in the Jackson County Jail.

The phenomenon of "meth mouth" — tooth loss among addicts — has grabbed nationwide attention, becoming the topic of numerous news reports within the past year. While not completely understood, the problem is likely a combined effect of bone loss from the drug’s caustic ingredients and users’ poor diets, chronic dry mouth and poor hygiene.

"There is a unique kind of dental decay that occurs with methamphetamine," Shames said. "And the tooth just really crumbles away."

Jim Hales, who provides dental services to jail inmates, said the severe meth-related tooth decay shocked and disappointed him upon moving to Oregon from Texas in 1992. The majority of his patients in the jail are self-admitted meth users, he said.

"I saw so many of, what I call ‘trash mouths,’" Hales said. "In the general public, you wouldn’t have that."

Once a legal stimulant used by soldiers during World War II and students hoping to stay awake longer, methamphetamine was taken off the market in the 1960s when users started injecting it.

The drug went underground, manufactured in rural labs by biker gangs. Mexican drug gangs and more recently individuals also got into the business. Locally, police continue to make more arrests related to meth every year, and more addicts are admitted to treatment programs.

Meth has gained appeal, experts say, because it is inexpensive and the high lasts so much longer than other drugs. Made from household chemicals, meth, however, is far more toxic than drugs derived from natural plant substances, physicians say.

Meth interacts with the brain’s pleasure center where the neurotransmitter dopamine is produced. Taking the drug releases a massive amount of the hormone, inducing euphoria. Meth users continue taking the drug until the brain’s supply of dopamine is exhausted, resulting in a crash, during which the user sleeps but can also become irritable and violent.

Meth’s fiercely addictive aspect corners many addicts into a treatment and relapse cycle before they give up the drug for good. Like Jackson, most addicts will undergo treatment between five and seven times, experts say.

In the long term, meth use breaks down muscle tissue and can cause strokes and heart attacks, Shames said. Needle users can develop Hepatitis C, sepsis, flesh-eating bacteria, heart infections, embolisms and drug-resistant staph infections. The drug can permanently damage nerve cells, resulting in schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease, chronic movement disorders and symptoms similar to Alzheimer’s disease.

"A lot of people look very psychotic while they’re using, and unfortunately, they can look psychotic after they stop using," Shames said.

Permanent nerve damage also prevents many meth addicts — even after they quit — from feeling pleasure in life’s normal activities and displaying affection. Many recovering addicts experience extreme depression.

"Your world is just permanently a little grayer," Shames said.

The drug’s devastating effect on unborn children confronts Jackson on a daily basis, embodied in her 11-year-old daughter.

"She’s got disabilities that I caused," the Eagle Point resident said.

Jackson simply wasn’t aware of her pregnancy and continued to use meth until she was six months along. Infants subjected in utero to meth typically have smaller brains, lower birth weight and higher instances of attention deficit hyperactive disorder and learning disabilities, Shames said.

Born with myriad mental disorders, Jackson’s daughter has spent time in two state-run centers for children with severe behavioral issues. Regaining custody of her daughter prompted Jackson to sign onto a two-year specialized court program from which she will graduate Tuesday. The memory of her daughter’s rage at returning to foster care when her mother relapsed into meth use nearly a year and a half ago is keeping her clean for good, Jackson said.

"My daughter and myself are worth much more than what I destroyed," she said.

Full dentures have returned some of Jackson’s self-confidence. At 5 feet 5 inches and 180 pounds, she regards herself as "chunky and real healthy" instead of longing for a slim figure. A 2-year-old photo of a skeletal addict — wearing glittery pink lipstick to draw attention from her collapsed cheeks and sophisticated glasses to mask her blank stare — reminds Jackson of how far she’s come.

"I get sick to my stomach, I could almost throw up over it," she said pointing to the photo.

Yet the specter of meth remains with Jackson, making it hard for her to accept compliments from people who, meeting her for the first time, say she doesn’t look like an addict.

"Well, not today I don’t," Jackson joked.

"Some days I’m a grateful recovering addict. Today, I’m just an addict."

Reach reporter Sarah Lemon at 776-4487, or e-mail slemon@mailtribune.com