A methamphetamine addict of two years, Pettus was jailed in 2003 for being caught with drug paraphernalia. It was then, he said, he made his 911 call to God, and signed a pact with his savior that he'd never touch the drug again.

"And not even two hours after I got out, I was high again," Pettus said.

The highly addictive drug, made from legal items easy to purchase and produced in home laboratories, has spread like wildfire in communities around the state over the last two decades.

Numbers on the success rate of people overcoming their addiction to meth are sparse, but area rehabilitation workers will quickly say what they think the chances of beating the habit are: slim.

"Out of the meth addicts, maybe 5 percent have been successful," said Neil Breiner, director of the Anniston Salvation Army shelter's rehabilitation program.

Pettus, 50, started using meth in 2001 on a buddy's recommendation, when he was a maintenance man in Jacksonville, because he was told it would make him a better worker.

And it did make him a better worker, Pettus said, until he couldn't work without it. Then he couldn't work at all because of his addiction, but at that point he thought he couldn't live without getting high.

Eventually his sons cut him off, his wife divorced him, he lost his job, became homeless. Then Don Pettus withdrew from the world.

"A friend looked at me and asked, 'Man, are you just waiting to die?'" he said. "All I did was do meth or look for it."

Meth is so addictive because it enters the brain quickly and lingers longer than other drugs, according to a recent study done by the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory. Meth spreads to all parts of the brain, unlike other drugs, and releases the euphoric chemical dopamine in greater amounts, according to the study.

In 2007 the number of new methamphetamine users dropped to 157,000, significantly lower than the 259,000 reported in a 2006 survey, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. The survey reported the average age of new meth users at 19.1 years.

"There were kids that I knew, that I saw growing up from small children, that became addicted to it," said Capt. Richard Smith, commander of the Calhoun/Cleburne County Drug and Violent Crime Task Force.

Smith said 200 meth labs were seized in the area in 2008, and 29 percent of the task force's cases were related to meth. Fifty-four meth labs have already been seized in 2009, Smith said.

He said watching so many addicts fail to recover has jaded him, though he tries to stay optimistic.

"I've still not seen one who successfully beat it, that didn't eventually go back," Smith said.

Smoking the drug made Pettus' front teeth rot out, and when his tolerance got to where smoking and eating methamphetamine didn't get him high enough, he started using needles.

"It just feels so good, and then it don't," Pettus said.

He went without sleep, one time not resting for 20 days straight. He said life became a lucid dream, an unreality where he saw shadow people scamper in dark corners, or spy on him from above as they hid in trees. He even helped others get addicted along the way.

"People can actually mark the downfall of their life by when they met me," he said.

He pawned everything to pay for his addiction, including a hand-made guitar a gas station clerk in Ider sold Pettus 15 years ago, with "The Lord is my shepherd" inscribed on the inside.

"Oh gosh I wish I had that guitar," Pettus said. "I had planned on passing that down to my sons, but nope."

In January 2005 he checked into the Anniston Salvation Army shelter, where he met Breiner, who almost turned him away.

Breiner said addicts have to be "sick and tired of hurting," that they can only get help when they want to help themselves. He didn't see that in Pettus, who was so thin at the time his ribs poked at his skin and his cheeks appeared caved in to his jaw, hidden beneath a long beard and shaggy hair.

But Breiner put Pettus to work in the shelter, where he stayed during rehab, and a contentious relationship slowly blossomed into friendship as Pettus stuck with the program.

With false teeth, a trimmed goatee and a stout gut that would make any mother proud, Pettus graduated from the Salvation Army's rehabilitation program in July 2005 and, unlike countless others who relapsed and went back to living in the shadows, he has been clean ever since.

"I had to eat crow on that one, he proved me wrong," Breiner said.

Pettus now has two jobs, a strong relationship with his sons and is even courting his ex-wife, hoping they can one day be remarried.

But his struggle continues. Four years later, he still has cravings that sometimes come to him in dreams, with images powerful enough to startle him from his sleep. He can't read for very long without losing concentration, a physical consequence of his drug abuse.

"My life is now centered around my recovery," Pettus said.

And he loves it. Pettus left Anniston early Friday for Dallas, to be there for his grandson's first birthday, something he might not have lived to see or even known about had his addiction overcome him again.

He works with others like him now at group meetings, calls his life purpose-driven. It's reflected in his personal motto, one attributed to Irish philosopher Edmund Burke.

"All it takes for evil to prosper is good men doing nothing," Pettus said.