James Lee Ash: The rise and fall of a Nevada meth addict
mill...@intergate.com
James Lee Ash: The rise and fall of a Nevada meth addict
JACLYN O'MALLEY
RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL
Posted: 6/25/2006
A drug addiction that knows no social nor monetary boundaries, meth has
exploded in Nevada
In 2002, the new Sierra Nevada College President James Lee Ash Jr.,
hosted a holiday party at his Incline Village home for more than 100
school officials and community members.
There were catered food, decorations, a roaring fireplace and a man
playing a grand piano. Along with his wife, Patricia, Ash greeted every
guest.
A few years earlier, the Ph.D. scholar and ordained minister ended a
10-year stint as president of California's Whittier College, where he
had been credited with turning around its dismal finances and
increasing its student body numbers. Previously, Ash had been a
professor and administrator for a dozen years at University of Miami
and had served on U.S. Department of Education panels and was appointed
to policymaking boards.
But less than a year after that holiday party, Sparks police arrested
Ash in a motel room known for its cheap rates. Ash, then 58, possessed
methamphetamine and hypodermic needles and was in the company of an
18-year-old drug felon.
In drug circles, injection users are considered hard-core addicts.
Those who smoke or snort meth may contend they are only recreational
users, but people who inject do so because needles allow the drug to
travel directly to the bloodstream, providing an immediate and intense
high.
Ash immediately resigned as college president. Soon, he was sued by
Greater Nevada Credit Union for failing to repay a $32,000 loan.
In the next two years, Ash, a father of two adult children, would be
arrested three more times in connection to his methamphetamine
addiction, which occasionally made him psychotic and prompted an
involuntary committal at the state mental hospital. Meth caused him to
lose his wife, career, finances and reputation.
His last arrest in September came months after he completed a
court-ordered, 28-day residential drug treatment program in Fallon,
which he still owes $35,000 for services.
These days, Ash calls Warm Springs Correctional Facility in Carson City
his home after being convicted of two felonies related to possessing
large amounts of methamphetamine. Attempts to reach Ash in prison were
unsuccessful.
The 61-year-old's experiences with meth are an example of how
far-reaching the drug is "" it can captivate anyone, no matter how
intelligent, wealthy or respected.
"Mr. Ash is a prime example of how anyone can fall prey to the
seduction of meth," according to a court document written by officers
investigating his criminal history.
Astonishment
at Ash's addiction
During Ash's 2005 sentencing hearing, Judge Janet Berry called meth "an
al Qaida event in our county."
"This is the most phenomenal drug addiction event I have observed in
the last 10 years," Berry said "And every human being who walks in here
is addicted to meth. For a person of your intelligence and abilities
you had, and the work you had done in your life -- to have multiple
Ph.Ds, being able to mold young minds, being a professor, educator and
leader, then to have this addiction, this drug, destroy everything you
have worked for in your life is really most extraordinary."
Ash told Berry that the last three years had been "extraordinarily"
difficult for him and that he took responsibility for all of his
problems.
"I am grateful at this point to the men and women of law enforcement
who arrested me, because they in fact, literally saved my life," he
said in court.
A prosecutor said Ash's attitude was a factor in his addiction and
subsequent criminal ways.
"Ash had made comments that because of his intelligence or arrogance,
he would not get addicted and he thought that because of his position,
he was above the law," John Helzer, assistant Washoe County district
attorney, said during a court hearing.
"He assumed because of his intellectual attainment that he was immune
to the destructive spiral of the inevitable ... the inevitable that
accompanies addiction," he said.
During his legal troubles, Ash received counseling at A Rainbow Place,
Northern Nevada's Gay and Lesbian Community Center. According to a
letter written by a Rainbow Place counselor, Ash began using meth at
parties in Hollywood and the habit increased when he moved to the Lake
Tahoe area and wanted more energy at the higher altitude.
'Meth seems to be a trap'
When word of Ash's first arrest hit the Whittier College community,
Bill Bell, publisher of the Pasadena Star-News, equated the event to
the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and President Kennedy,
Columbine, and the Apollo and space shuttle disasters.
"James Ash ... one of our most respected citizens, at the helm of our
proud little private Whittier College ... . An ordained minister, he
was hailed not only as a man of God at a college with deep Quaker roots
but as a genius of finance and student recruitment," Bell wrote in an
editorial days after Ash's July 2003 arrest.
"He just projected a pretty clean image all the time he was here," Bell
said in an interview earlier this month. "This goes way beyond my
imagination. Meth seems to be a trap, and unfortunately, he was naive
to think he would get away from it."
During a hearing in the county's drug court, Judge Peter Breen said Ash
needed to strip away the denial that "often comes along with a man who
has accomplished as much as he has."
"If there were ever a person in need of treatment, it's Mr. Ash," Breen
said.
Path of destruction
Following his first arrest in July 2003, Ash was arrested again a few
months later for trespassing at an apartment complex. That event was
related to a drug relapse, court records show. In October 2003, a
Sparks police officer had Ash committed to the state's mental hospital
because Ash was using a knife to cut imaginary rings from his fingers.
Ash told the officer he saw concerts and parades performed in his honor
outside his apartment.
In January 2005 his probation officer was contacted by employees of
Northern Nevada HOPES, a center that mostly assists indigent HIV and
AIDS patients. They said Ash claimed worms were coming out of his body
and that he needed help. Ash left before police arrived, but his
probation officer went to his home on West Second Street and found
numerous bottles of sex lubricant, two bags of crystal meth, 31
hypodermic needles and a gay pornographic video, court records show.
Methamphetamine heightens the sexual appetite and many users, experts
say, have large pornography collections and engage in random sex.
Ash was given a drug test, and when he tested positive for meth, he was
arrested again. He was ordered to drug rehab, which he completed in
March 2005.
Pleading with the court
John Bond, program director for Ash's treatment center, New Frontiers,
begged the court not to give up on Ash.
"I have not found a single offender with the understanding that Ash has
regarding his substance abuse, medical aspects related to it, the
humility of recovery to overcoming and accepting what's left of the
struggle," Bond wrote in a letter March 21, 2005. "...don't quit on him
before the miracle is complete."
Six months after he graduated from the treatment program, Ash was
arrested in a Reno Dairy Queen parking lot. Officers thought they were
responding to a medical call because witnesses said the driver of a
pickup had been in the lot for about eight hours. The driver was Ash,
and when police approached him, he appeared under the influence of
drugs and said he was waiting for a friend. Police found a suitcase
with numerous hypodermic needles and two bags of crystal meth.
Ash asked the officers if there was any way out of going back to jail.
He said he knew having the meth was wrong and said he bought it for
$150, according to a police affidavit.
During Ash's 2005 sentencing, Berry told him, "You no longer function
as a human."
"You are a retarded person who will need to be institutionalized," she
said. "Your intelligence does not outweigh the addictive properties of
this drug."
DopeyOpie8
"projectile vomit chick" <n...@ivecreep.com> wrote in message
news:lri5a2d51d2ki1d0f...@4ax.com...
> On 26 Jun 2006 14:46:19 -0700, in alt.drugs.hard,
> mill...@intergate.com hit the crackpipe and declared:
>>
>>In drug circles, injection users are considered hard-core addicts.
>>Those who smoke or snort meth may contend they are only recreational
>>users, but people who inject do so because needles allow the drug to
>>travel directly to the bloodstream, providing an immediate and intense
>>high.
>
> Just Say No DARE Dragnet Sgt. Friday type docu-dramas about drugs. lol
> --
> we're all stars now, in the dope show...
I think they read better when presented in those little comic book
formats..the same ones that show people going to hell. Ya gotta admit
though...if somebody's gotta go from the pinnacle of success, all the way
down to the gutter..this guy did a pretty good job of it..You know what got
me about his story? Obviously he was a closeted gay...I mean, he was caught
with loads of gay porn. Just a thought here...but I wonder how much his self
destruction was connected to his inability to simply face the fact that he
was gay? Holding something like that inside you your entire life has gotta
be bad for you. Just think, if he'd lived in the old Roman or Greek times,
he could've had a wife, a girlfriend, and a boyfriend, all on the side and
nobody would've thought twice about it...
But here he's in jail, destroyed his life, his livelihood, his family..all
because he craved a bit of dick up his butt once in a while...Geez!
Well, it cudda been worse, if he'd been a member of the Sopranos family,
he'd be dead by now. With a cue stick rammed up his butt.
Mike
Ermac77
wrote:
You can never tell for sure, not from reading this anyway.
Speed heightens all sexual desires.. even repressed/hidden desires you
don't talk about to people.
It's also been proven that everyone (read: everyone) has a latent
homosexuality in 'em, it's just that the vast majority people have a
prevailing taste for the opposite sex.. hence no need to act on some
random fantasies that involve the same sex (of course, shame keeps
those fantasies blocked out whenever possible.)
But speed?
That will make you crave everything, pretty much. Anything that
arouses you in the slightest will be magnified 10 times over. And
you'll obsess over it to a neurotic degree.
Chip Flintknapper
> On 26 Jun 2006 14:46:19 -0700, in alt.drugs.hard,
> mill...@intergate.com hit the crackpipe and declared:
>
>>Those who smoke or snort meth may contend they are only recreational
>>users, but people who inject do so because needles allow the drug to
>>travel directly to the bloodstream, providing an immediate and intense
>>high.
>
>
> Just Say No DARE Dragnet Sgt. Friday type docu-dramas about drugs. lol
> --
> we're all stars now, in the dope show...
I am really offended by the term "Recreational User".
Only Drug War Scums use that term.
They honestly don't seem to know the difference between drugs and alcohol.
Poor, stupid, dirt.