CLARKSTON - Not even once. That is the common message when it comes to the campaign against methamphetamine.

Students at Clarkston High heard that message Thursday during a presentation on the dangers of the illegal drug.

"No one wakes up and says ‘today I want to be a meth addict,’" said Travis Talbot, executive director and board president of “Lead On America. "’Yeah I think I am going to try meth. Yeah I think I am going to be the best meth addict I can be.’"

According to its website, Lead On America is “a community based (non-profit) organization that is dedicated to educating citizens in cooperating with law enforcement in the local war against drugs.” It is based in Lynwood, Washington.

The Bantams were told that the drug eats holes in an addict’s brain, reducing capabilities, that 90 percent of people who try the drug become addicted after their first hit and that the average life span of an addict is just five years after becoming addicted.

"This is why we say don't even try this drug once," said Talbot. "I am amazed in relations, boyfriends, girlfriends, best friends and such, how they could pass a pipe to somebody else knowing what it does to that person."

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), methamphetamine increases the release of very high levels of the brain chemical dopamine, which is involved in motivation, the experience of pleasure, and motor function.

”Long-term methamphetamine abuse can also lead to addiction, a chronic, relapsing disease, characterized by compulsive drug seeking and use, and accompanied by chemical and molecular changes in the brain,” according to the NIDA website. “Some of these changes persist long after methamphetamine abuse is stopped, and some reverse after sustained periods of abstinence.”

At the CHS assembly, a former addict, “Jamie”, told her story of going from being a good student and athlete to a meth user in trouble with the law.

"I began using meth when I was 15," said Jamie. "I went to a party, a kegger, just to hang out and do whatever and I ended up trying meth for the first time that night. Let me tell you something from that first night, I loved it, from the first hit I took, I loved it. The people that gave to me were older, like mid-twenties, so to them it was just another way to sell it."

Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna also spoke at the assembly. He has been accompanying Talbot to presentations as part of a program called Operation: Allied Against Meth.