By Matt Simonette

Staff Writer

Several years back, Chicagoan Terry Oldes, 40, who works in finance, was in recovery from a meth use and began writing a chronicle of his addiction.

“I wrote the manuscript as therapy. I wanted to get everything out in the open. I wanted some friends who had been supportive of me all along to understand everything,” Oldes said.

When Oldes’ therapist read the manuscript, they suggested Oldes try to have the work published. The resulting book, “Dancing with Tina,” is to be published by Star Books at the end of September. The book focuses on Oldes’ life from October of 2003 through October 2005, the months when his meth use reached its peak.

Oldes began using after a series of highs and lows beginning in late 2002, when he extricated himself from an unhealthy codependent relationship.

He met another man the following year.

“It was the most unrealistic romantic relationship I’d ever been in. It was the relationship I should have had at age 21, but didn’t,” Oldes said.

The relationship didn’t last and, after the breakup, he found out that the man was addicted to meth.

“I went into a severe depression, and I began looking for something to deal with it,” Oldes said. In time, he turned to meth as well.

He said he had about five months of real fun, meeting new people and partying. He began using regularly with another man, named “Eric” in the book, who became a close confidante.

But Oldes’ life began to take a turn for the worse.

“I looked around, and there were suddenly all these drug dealers, street kids, porn stars and married men around,” he said. “I was meeting some harsh personalities.”

He tried injecting meth once, with a couple. Oldes began to get sick, and one of the men began to get angry at him.

“My heart began to race. This man kept saying, ‘People shouldn’t do drugs if they can’t handle it.’ It was kind of cruel since minutes before he was telling me how much I’d love it, trying to get me to do it,” Oldes said.

After a number of other traumatic incidents, including having someone overdose in his arms, Oldes wondered what direction he was headed in and why he was seeing the things he was seeing.

He entered therapy and relied on support from his friends. It took several months for him to completely quit the drug use. He did not try a support group, but said, “I’m all for CMA. I think some things work for some people; some things work for others.”

Oldes said he gets frustrated with many community discussions about meth. He hopes that his book gets at some of the “nitty-gritty” a lot of researchers and mental health professionals downplay—acknowledgement that meth often produces pleasure for its users and is often tied into their sex lives.

“A lot of people are too politically correct,” he said.

Oldes has finished another book, “A Barrel Full of Monkeys, Or, More Baggage Than Ann Miller brought on the Love Boat,” a collection of essays, which he is shopping around to publishers. He said that he dedicated the second book to the boyfriend who was a meth addict.

“Because of him, I was in a situation where I grew,” he said. “I never would have known that I was a writer.”