It happened to Lee at age 18.

"I had to have it everyday, had to have it to wake up, had to have it to function," said 31-year-old Lee, a Honolulu resident.

After over a decade of using ice, lee is approaching one year sober, but it took jail time and living on the streets of Chinatown; homeless and in a constant state of paranoia.

"There were demons," Lee said. "I was talking to demons."

As Lee was slipping into insanity, just down the street at Queen's Medical Center, two researchers were dedicating their lives to solving Lee's problem of ice addiction. They still are.

Dr. Bill Haning, looking for a cure in medicine, and Dr. Linda Chang, trying to find out which one will work, by delving into the place where addiction lives: the brain.

"Before knowing what treatment will work we have to know what's happening in the brain," said Dr. Chang, of the Neuroscience and MR Research Program. "How is the brain affected, which chemical system is affected, and which particular function is affected so the treatment can be tailored to it."

And Dr. Chang now has the funding to find out.

The federal government has given her research program $21 million since 2004. The program uses a $3 million MR scanner to see how ice use changes the user's brain.

"It made be feel I could talk to anybody, do anything," Lee said. "I had unlimited energy. I could pretty much do whatever I wanted."

But when Lee came down the opposite happened.

Dr. Chang's studies show several chemicals in the brain of ice users are significantly reduced including dopamine and glutamate.

When they withdraw from the drug, addicts are unfocused and depressed.

]"If you are feeling absolutely miserable and its a day to day process and you are trying to get through it while you are feeling that way, it's very hard to stay off the methamphetamine," said Dr. Haning, of the Pacific Addiction Research Center.

That's why researcher Dr. Haning believes medication can help. He's trying to find out which one in his clinical trials.

"We are recruiting now for a medication called Modafinil, which is a treatment for narcolepsy," Dr. Haning said.

At PARC, since 2000, Dr. Haning has tested four different medications already found in pharmacies.

He said two of them have showed promise in helping to keep addicts sober until they can get over withdrawal. Those symptoms can last up to a year.

"If someone stops using the drug for a long period of time like six months or 12 months, some of those chemical levels can normalize," Dr. Chang said.

"What we found is that for the people who manage to stay clean for one year, almost all will still be clean at two years," Dr. Hanging said.

That is the hope for Lee and the thousands of other ice addicts in Hawaii who want to get well.

"I want to go back to school and I want to become a social worker," Lee said.

Maybe with the help of science and researchers like Dr. Haning and Dr. Chang, many more can stay away from ice long enough to give sobriety a chance.

"Get help, get sober, because it don't get no better," Lee said.

If you are an ice addict or a recovering addict, you may be able to contribute to Dr. Haning and Dr. Chang's studies.

It's free and completely anonymous and some studies offer compensation.

For more information, you can call the Neuroscience and MR Research Program at 586-7459, or the Pacific Addiction Research Center at 537-7272.

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