By Hugh C. McBride

In 1993, Marcello Arsura moved from his hometown in the wine region of northern Italy to the United States, where he embarked upon a prestigious career as a cancer researcher and university professor.

But when Arsura returns to his native land later this year, he won't be greeted as a conquering hero. Instead, he'll be received by Italian authorities as a convicted felon who was deported after serving nearly three years in U.S. federal prison. And though Arsura was regarded with renown in a field populated with individuals of superior intellect – a spokesperson with the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, his last employer, told the Memphis Commercial Appeal that Arsura was "one of the top professionals in cancer research" – his downfall came about through involvement with a common street drug: crystal methamphetamine.

"Crystal meth makes you crazy," Arsura said during his sentencing hearing, during which he was ordered to spend 35 months in jail and then be deported. "It obliterated my ability to objectively assess my behavior… It was like I had out-of-body experiences."

An Immediate and Devastating Effect

Methamphetamine is a highly addictive stimulant that causes the brain to release massive amounts of dopamine, a hormone that is related to pleasure. Speaking in a PBS Frontline special on the meth epidemic, Dr. Richard Rawson of the UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Programs reported that meth's impact on the brain dwarfs the natural rush that results from even the most pleasurable life experiences.

"[With] methamphetamine you get a [dopamine] release from the base level to about 1,250 units, something that's about 12 times as much of a release of dopamine as you get from food and sex and other pleasurable activities," Rawson said. "That's one of the reasons why people, when they take methamphetamine, report having this euphoric [feeling] that's unlike anything they've ever experienced."

One of the many problems with meth is that the drug doesn't only stimulate the brain's pleasure receptors – it also destroys them. Thus, users are forced to taking increasingly larger doses of the drug to get the same high they initially experienced. This heightened use leads to further damage, with studies documenting that former meth users can suffer from diminished cognitive skills and impaired coordination even after years of abstinence from the drug.

Dr. Nora Volkow, who led a study in which meth users were given brain scans and a series of cognitive tests, reported on the National Institute of Drug Abuse website that the immediate effects of meth on the brain are striking, and may only be the beginning of the damage inflicted by the drug. "The reduction of dopamine transporters was seen in all of the abusers," Volkow said. "There is a concern that methamphetamine abusers may be at increased risk for neurodegenerative disease as they age."

According to information on the NIDA website, ingesting even small amounts of methamphetamine can result in rapid and irregular heart rate, increased blood pressure, irritability, anxiety, and heart failure. Long-term users can expect to suffer from paranoia and aggressiveness, delusions and hallucinations, memory failures, extreme anorexia, and dental problems that are so severe they've earned their own slang description: meth mouth.

'I Chose The Dope Over My Kids'

But bad teeth, poor memory, and even rampant aggressive paranoia pale in comparison to what some former users say is the true tragedy of meth use: the complete loss of control over one's own life.

Francis Kekona was an aspiring musician from the Hawaiian island of Maui when he tried meth for the first time after playing a gig with high school friends in Honolulu. Ten years later, Kekona found himself in prison after what Honolulu Advertiser writer Johnny Brannon described as "years of serious drug abuse and a vicious trail of violence."

"I took a couple hits my first day in Honolulu, and three days later I realized I was still up," Kekona told Brannon. Neither marriage to the woman he loved nor the birth of three children could pry Kekona from the grip of methamphetamine addiction.

He became abusive toward his wife and neglectful of his children, and damaged his own health so severely that doctors had to attach a pacemaker to his failing heart. Yet he still couldn't quit. "The day I came out of the hospital with a pacemaker, I smoked," he told Brannon. "I was high as a kite."

Kekona eventually kicked his habit when he entered a treatment program while in prison after being convicted of meth-related kidnapping, robbery, and firearms charges. But the memory of the years he wasted and the damage he inflicted remained at the forefront of his mind. "The dope was unreal," Kekona told Brannon. "I used to kind of like worship the dope. For years, I chose the dope over my kids, over the rest of my family."

'The Drug Totally Takes Over'

Paul (last name not given), a recovering meth addict who is featured on the MethStories website, also found that the drug had the insidious ability to isolate him from those he cared about most.

"My family means more to me than anything in the world," Paul said in a video filmed in the prison in which he was serving a five-year sentence for a robbery that he committed after 18 months of meth use. But not even a family member's threat to banish him from the lives of his loved ones was enough to make him quit using. "When you're on that drug, your mind don't think right," he said. "The drug totally takes over."

Paul, who credited his arrest and imprisonment with saving his life by getting him away from meth, said that he felt that his post-incarceration "calling in life" would be to help keep others away from what he sees as the very embodiment of evil. "This drug will kill you," he said. "It may kill you fast, or it may kill you slow – but it will kill you in the end."

Choosing To Lose

Though some would argue that "choice" goes out the window once meth invades a user's brain, most former meth addicts agree that the decision to start using the drug was one of the worst ones they ever made.

Marcello Arsura, the once-prominent professor who lost his livelihood to meth, wrote in a court-ordered essay on his addiction that "the changes in my psyche were so radical that I lost any interest in my teaching job at a university and chose instead to engage in criminal activities."

But during his sentencing hearing, Arsura admitted that the ultimate responsibility for the devastation his meth use caused fell to him alone. "I do really feel like a fool," he said. "I had everything to lose and I chose to lose it."