When I spoke with Debi Campbell, deputy director of Family Outreach at FAMM — a nonprofit that advocates for sentencing reform — she recounted how she started using methamphetamine when she was working as a cocktail waitress.
“In my early 20s, I started struggling with anxiety. Meth made me feel normal. I started using every day and fell into selling it so that I could get it for free for myself,” Campbell said.
She medicated herself, because no one else would. Doctors would just tell her to treat anxiety by reducing stress, which didn’t solve her uncontrollable shaking when she was overwhelmed by a panic attack. Campbell was sentenced to 19 years and 7 months in prison for conspiracy with intent to distribute methamphetamine.
“I think the thing that struck me the most was the women. I stereotyped what kind of women would be there,” Campbell said. “We picture not women like us, but the dregs of society, and then when you get there you’re shocked because you see yourself, mothers, grandmothers and sisters.”
On the second day of her incarceration, she had an intense attack — panic and fear gripped her — and she didn’t have meth to fall back on to calm her. She was seen by psychiatric services, put on Prozac and hasn’t had a panic attack since.
“When I was diagnosed and given medication, I was just desperate to feel normal. After about four months I didn’t have the anxiety anymore, and as time went by and I took self-help and addiction classes, I realized that had I been diagnosed years before I probably wouldn’t have used meth,” Campbell said.
Her time in prison could have been completely avoided, she says, had she only received treatment for her mental health issue earlier.
Campbell’s initial drug use was what led her to begin dealing. Personal drug use — whether recreational or medical — often leads to crimes in order to sustain the habit of using. Strathdee — the one at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine — explained how initial drug use then leads to other punishable crimes.
“Once a woman is addicted to a hard drug like heroin, fentanyl, methamphetamine, or cocaine, the withdrawal symptoms can drive her to desperation. That can start with petty theft, and it can often lead to sex work. In the drug trade, some women play specific roles, like acting as lookout, or carrying drugs across the border (‘mules’),” Strathdee continued. “If you look at the reasons why women are arrested, the reasons are much more likely to involve drug use or sex work compared to men.”
If a woman becomes addicted to a drug, her body begins to require it in order to function. She goes into survival mode in order to acquire whatever she has been using.