This post originally appeared at https://www.badgerinstitute.org/the-naked-truth-about-wisconsins-crazy-meth-infestation/

We need to pay more attention to Wisconsin’s most insidious drug problem

There are worse things than dying.

That was the crazed, drug-induced argument of the naked-from-the-waist-down guy on meth with the dog leash around his waist who broke into Shelly Weber’s place begging to be shot because he was certain he was, according to Juneau County Sheriff’s Department reports, infested with “mudpuppies.”

But it’s also an argument — and not a crazy one this time — for paying more attention to the meth epidemic in Wisconsin.

We pay a lot of attention to heroin and fentanyl cases in the state because of the common misperception that people overdose only on narcotics. We pay less attention to the abundance of meth cases because there is sometimes a perception that meth — which is much more prevalent than fentanyl or heroin in Wisconsin by at least one measure — doesn’t often kill the user.

In truth, meth overdoses are pretty common and increasing. Drug overdose deaths involving psychostimulants with abuse potential — that’s primarily methamphetamine, to use the full name — rose from 5,716 in 2015 to 34,022 in the United States in 2022, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The number has increased steadily regardless of whether opioids were also a cause.

Users don’t necessarily realize that.

“Heroin and fentanyl are killing people; in their minds, this is not,” said Rob Walensky, investigative coordinator for the West Central Metropolitan Enforcement Group, a multi-county task force in western Wisconsin.

The statistics don’t bear out that belief. You can overdose on meth. But death should not be the only thing users or the rest of us fear.

“There is a lot of violence associated with it,” said Walensky. “They are so jacked up and it lasts so long in their bodies.”

Walensky says it seems like everyone he runs into has a little meth on them.

In 2023, the drug most often identified in samples sent by law enforcement to the State Crime Lab was meth, which accounted for 1,378 of the 4,805 samples tested — more than cocaine or heroin or fentanyl or even THC, the active ingredient in cannabis. Cops and prosecutors don’t send all the drugs they recover to the lab, and pot usage, rarely prosecuted nowadays, is surely much more prevalent in the state than meth usage. But meth, at least by the one measure of Crime Lab analysis, may be more widely abused than any of the other harder drugs.

Man with a leash and a problem

Too many people see drug use nowadays as a victimless crime, said Walensky, because they don’t see the repercussions.

Shelly Weber did.

I initially called Weber, a supervisor in the Town of Kingston in Juneau County, to ask about decreasing population trends in rural Wisconsin. Our state is going to lose more than 180,000 people between 2020 and 2050, according to recent projections, and much of the loss will come in small towns such as Kingston, which only had 57 people in 2020 and could just about disappear by 2050. The conversation quickly pivoted to the local “meth heads.”

“We have a meth problem,” she said, “in Mather,” an unincorporated area in the town.

I couldn’t believe what she told me next. But it’s all in a Juneau County Sheriff’s Office report from March 2020 detailing an incident at Weber’s residence. Shortly before 4 a.m., a 23-year-old Wisconsin Rapids guy who later told investigators he had used meth four days in a row showed up threatening to kill everyone, according to the reports.

Weber’s boyfriend at the time found the man standing inside the house and told him to get out. The man complied and went out onto the porch. But as Weber and her friend called 911, the man demanded to be let back and threatened to “stab all of you,” according to the reports. He broke the glass on the door and, as he was trying to get back inside, was shot by the former boyfriend.

One of the first deputies on the scene found the 23-year-old lying half-naked on the floor of an enclosed porch with gunshot wounds to his abdomen and left shoulder.

“I gave them, I mentioned a 110% I was literally going to kill them if they did not shoot me,” the bleeding man said to one of the deputies, according to the report. Asked why he wanted the residents of the house to shoot him, he replied to the deputies, “because the mudpuppies are in me.”

One of the deputies reported that the 23-year-old had a dog leash wrapped around his waist and “would scream things like, ‘Here come the mudpuppies!’” He said he wanted the deputies to “cut him open and take out the ‘mudpuppies,’” according  to the report.

“I asked (him) why he had a dog leash wrapped around him,” wrote a deputy. He “said he was putting a tourniquet on himself.” He said “the ‘mudpuppies’ were eating his arm and getting bigger” and “if we cut his hand, the ‘mudpuppies’ would come spewing out.”

He “took a dog leash so he could wrap it around his stomach to prevent whatever was crawling up his legs from going further into his body,” he also later told a detective, according to the reports.

“Whatever you do, do not charge those people (for shooting),” he also said, according to the reports. “He repeated they were forced to do it.”

The guy’s attorney, Gene Cisewski, declined to discuss the case from almost five years ago and, although he said he would try to pass along a message to call me, I never heard from the defendant. The man eventually pleaded guilty to felony bail jumping and criminal trespass to a dwelling, and a variety of other charges were dismissed but read in. He served time in jail and was also given probation.

“The guy did get clean and now leads a recovery group,” said Weber.

Unvarnished truth

Meth used to be cooked up in little rural labs. Now it’s more likely to come in from out of state. Walensky says his group tries to target the source of the stuff, and there’s some headway being made there. Just a couple of weeks ago, a Wausau guy, Quo Vadis Lewis, was sentenced to 150 months in federal prison for conspiracy to distribute 500 grams or more of meth and 500 grams or more of cocaine.

The judge in the case said the long sentence was necessary to protect the public, and alleluia. Meth users are victimizing people all over Wisconsin. They need to be prosecuted. They also, early on, need to be told what’s in store for them along with prison.

Juneau County now has an Adult Drug Treatment Court. It did not handle Cisewski’s client’s case but, coincidentally, Cisewski represents the defense bar there and says meth is the biggest drug problem.

Part of the solution, in addition to treatment, he suggests, is giving everyone the unvarnished truth about what meth does.

“Be upfront,” he said. “That is important. Long-term meth use completely scrambles the brain wiring.” He has watched clients descend into addiction. “Teeth rotting out. Twitches and tics in jail still after five days awaiting bond. You’ll start seeing red, blotchy things that are itchy. You know these are just symptoms that show up with meth.”

Not to mention the way you might just come to believe in mudpuppies that are worse than death.

Mike Nichols is the President of the Badger Institute. 

Any use or reproduction of Badger Institute articles or photographs requires prior written permission. To request permission to post articles on a website or print copies for distribution, contact Badger Institute President Mike Nichols at mike@badgerinstitute.org or 262-389-8239.

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