Most mainstream Utahns are unaware of the chaos of this world — the notion that parents on a meth high stay up for days and nights and days and nights around the clock. Then they crash into a deep slumber. More of a coma really. And during this sleep, there is often no one to care for the children.

Most Utahns have not seen a home where meth is used. They don't know about the clutter, the dirt that accumulates when every ounce of attention and focus is going to support a drug habit.

In these homes, children are a nuisance, an irritation. Forgotten, if the parents can get away with it.

So, the children suffer.

Behind this invisible cloak, thousands of Utah children live with abuse. They live among toxic, cancer-causing fumes.

They ask their mothers for food and are told: "In a minute."

But time is distorted in a meth high. "Tweakers," as they are called, fill the hours with mundane, repetitive tasks like housework. "Next thing you know, it's four hours later," said Tasha Keele, a mom in recovery. "You're too busy tweaking on your laundry" to think about a child.

So children, many times, starve.

"Methamphetamine affects kids more than we can possibly imagine," said Penny Grant, a University of Oklahoma pediatrician and Child Abuse Network advocate who recently spoke in Salt Lake City. "My dog has a better life than 99.9 percent of these kids."

Grant calls a meth house a "den of poisoning."

Meth's ingredients are only part of many potentially deadly hazards facing children whose parents use or make the drug. Parents set meth pipes on night stands. They store chemicals next to baby bottles. They leave straws on countertops.

"What do kids like to do? Put things in their mouths. Where do kids like to play? On the floor. Where is meth? Everywhere," Grant said.

Meth houses are often uninhabitable dumps.

Children live in filthy conditions rife with guns and pornography. One child's room in Salt Lake County was wallpapered with sexually explicit magazine photos.

Youngsters are subject to all sorts of atrocities, including neglect, abandonment and physical and sexual abuse.

And the degree to which children suffer appears worse than with other drugs, say pediatricians studying the impacts of meth.

"Meth is just different," Grant said. "The kids are just different."

Children aren't even an afterthought to methamphetamine addicts. They are given no thought at all. They're locked in rooms, dumped on strangers and left to fend for themselves. One mother knocked her young son out with NyQuil so she could do meth. All that matters is the next high.