Lasting Scars: One man's story with meth

When you think about meth, your mind might conjure up images of explosions, addiction, fire, and drug busts; however, meth and its harmful effects seem surreal until its image becomes someone you may know.

A visit to the Westville Correctional Facility in northern IN brings you to meet with 31-year-old Michael Pine: a ex-meth user and a burn victim from a meth lab explosion.

The experience of his story extends beyond the words he speaks.  It’s shown in the grafted and scarred skin that still clinches to his body.

Pine stated that he’d never be tempted by meth again.

“Look at me,” Pine said, as he referred to his disfigured skin, “I got a constant reminder.  Constant.  There’s nothing I can do to get away from it.  I mean, I’m in pain.  I’ll be in pain for the rest of my life.”

The continual pain Pine feels now is a direct result from a night two years ago: the night of the explosion.

Now, walking the prison hallways, Michael said he often thinks of the events that led him here.

Pine grew up in West Terre Haute with a fairly normal life.

One fateful night, after graduating high school, Pine stated he was sitting around with friends and experimented with meth for the first time.

“We just did it.  And, later that night, I learned how to cook it,” Pine said.

Over the next decade, Michael continued to cook and use meth.

He stopped for a while after he married his wife, Deidre, and again after the births of his two children.

However, after a third child and the recession in 2008, times had become tough for Pine and his family.

“What did it the last time for me was I had a job.  I was a construction worker and I got laid off, and unemployment wasn’t cutting it.  So, I went to the one thing I knew I could survive with, and manufacturing again, and that’s how the cycle started,” said Pine.

But this time, cooking meth would do more than make Michael money, it would almost kill him.

"I remember bits and pieces of the car ride to Union Hospital. I remember a little bit in the trauma room looking at the doctors telling them to do something, I'm dying,” said Pine.

And he was.

On June 10, 2010, what was a routine night of cooking meth quickly turned into a horrific scene after something caused Michael's lab to explode.

"I remember coming up out of the basement and going out the back door to the backyard and hitting the ground, doing stop drop and roll. That didn't work. It would put it out, but as soon as you rolled back over you're ignited again. It's chemically induced,” said Pine.

Michael's wife, Deidre was also home that night along with their 7, 5 and 11-month old children.

She was the one who went outside to find her husband on fire. 

"After we got those out, it was skin dripping. It was bad," said Deidre Pine.

Michael was taken from Union to the burn unit at Wishard Hospital in Indianapolis, where he would be in a medically induced coma for seven weeks.

"The first day was where, where's Deidre and the kids? Because it was my mom I woke up to and seen and that's when I got smacked with reality and telling me Deidre's in jail and your dad's got your kids now," said Pine.

A drug that had seemed so innocent at first had now destroyed the life of Michael Pine.

Pine recollected the horrors of having lived through that nightmare.

“Yeah. Then I asked myself why?" said Pine.

It was a question that was etched in his mind and branded on his skin, forever.