Meth Addict Hopes His Pain Helps Others

Posted on May 21, 2006

A withered, wasted-away 34-year-old meth addict, who lives on a hospital bed in his father’s house, is the subject of a film about his agonies--produced as a warning to would-be speed users.

AP:

CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. - Wide-eyed and appearing catatonic, Shawn Bridges couldn’t muster any talk from his hospital bed, his gaunt, tattooed body wracked by years of abusing the powerfully addictive witch’s brew of chemicals that is methamphetamine. The footage from the documentary the 34-year-old trucker commissioned about his slow, agonizing decline does the talking for him. And he hopes the 29-minute film, shot by a southern Illinois television videographer, speaks volumes to children and others headed down a similar path to drug addiction.

By his family’s account, Bridges already died twice, his heart so ravaged by meth over the years that it stopped and had to be shocked back into beating. “The bottom half of his heart is dead,” his dad laments on camera.

As the documentary “No More Sunsets” shows, Bridges’ life now isn’t much. Largely bedridden, his constant companions are the catheter that funnels the urine out of his body and the feeding tube sticking from his stomach.

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