Drug craving latches onto brain — and grows

Second in a series

The buzz was big in Hollywood five years ago about Terry H. but not as big as the mixture of heroine and crack ringing in his own head that eventually drowned out everything else.

Before the highs and before he was 20 years old, Terry had produced two albums for an arena-level band. A debut album as vocalist, guitar and bass player with his own group was praised by one reviewer as "alarmingly fresh" and comparable to the venerable Kinks and the Replacements. He is the only person his producer ever knew who simply walked into Los Angeles and got a record deal.

It's all gone now — the live shows, the stacks of Marshall amplifiers, the fat paychecks, even the original gold Gibson Les Paul electric guitar — all of it literally pawned and huffed away.

"I ended up with a mattress and a book on the Beatles," says Terry, now in Salt Lake recovering and clearly buoyed by gratitude that he is no longer that "skinny and tweaked-out guy hidden under all that ugliness.

"It got so bad and out of control that I would pick up the phone, dial 9-1 then fire up the pipe, and if I felt like I was going to pass out I would hit the other 1." He watched a buddy give a homeless guy his Jeep and 50 bucks on the promise of a score. He would rent cars and wake up three days later not remembering a thing, with no idea where he was and the car with no gas. "I probably just let it sit there and idle out and not know it. It was the perpetual lost weekend."

Terry, 27, doesn't laugh when he tells those stories. They make him feel embarrassed and guilty that he used to be "utterly thrashed" on drugs. "I can't tell you how great it feels knowing when I wake up in the morning my biggest worry is getting the newspaper and a cup of coffee."

Turns out your brain on drugs really is something like an egg burning in a frying pan.

Depending on the form and dose, drugs in a way fry the brain's pleasure center. They chemically and sometimes permanently singe the circuits. Each little wave of drug ultimately amounts to a cascade of neurobiological changes over time, ranging from nearly indescribable euphoria when it is first ingested to excruciating illness at withdrawal.