Autumn Nelson looks like just another teen, a bright young woman with twinkling eyes and a sunny personality. There are no obvious traces left from the years of physical and mental torment she endured while using one of the world's most addictive and dangerous substances. Autumn, 18, born and raised in the Duluth, Minn. area, was first introduced to Methamphetamine at a party when she was in the eighth grade. She clearly remembers what happened that evening.

"I was with a few friends on a Wednesday night," she recalled, in an interview at the Teen Challenge home for girls. "I had gotten drunk with friends at a party." Her friends produced a glass globe from a light bulb, with some crystals on the bottom. Someone held a lighter under it and smoke ascended from the neck. "I inhaled it probably three times. You have to blow out real good, because you did not want your lungs to collapse. Then I started feeling funny and energetic. I just kept smoking more Meth all morning. I was up all night long."

She was also awake the next day and the next night. "For the next six months, I did it on and off, if I was at a party. I hung around people who did it. The more I did it, the more I hung out with people who did it." Less than a year ago, she was using Meth every day.

"I thought I could quit doing Meth whenever I wanted and I was just doing it because it was fun." After her mother gave her an ultimatum -- get help or move out -- she left home. She was 16 years old. "I moved on from drug dealer to drug dealer. It got really scary. I couldn't stay around the same people, because my addiction was getting worse." She was doing Meth all the time. Her sleep cycle was spinning out of control. "I would stay up for a month, then pass out for four days." She was all skin and bones, probably less than 90 pounds. Food was not a priority in Meth houses. She was drinking Meth, which gave her a stronger, longer-lasting high. It also had harsher side effects. "It was eating away my insides," she recalled. Her skin itched, and she had trouble breathing. "The battery acid (used in producing the drug) was burning me from the inside out. "I was really ashamed. I saw chemical burns all over my body, and I just knew I was doing Meth too much. But I couldn't stop."

She prayed that God would help her. Help did come, but not in a way she appreciated at the time. Her parents drove her to a drug rehabilitation center in South Dakota. Forty-five days later, in July 2005, she was brought to Teen Challenge's Audrey's Home in Decatur, a faith-based program that accepts 13- to 17-year-old females. Autumn said that, since then, God's power has thoroughly changed her. "When I rededicated my life to God, he took away that person I used to be. I'm not labeled a drug addict anymore. I'm a new person, so I don't have to dwell in the past. "My cravings have gone away. I haven't had a craving in a long time. I haven't been having drug dreams. I have no desire to go back to that world whatsoever. I'm letting God direct my steps, because when I do it myself I always mess up. So I'm trusting God."

While at Audrey's Home, Autumn earned her high school diploma, something she had thought would never happen. She has also been working on her character, studying the Bible and learning to be a woman of her word. "When you're a drug addict, you have no integrity, but now I've become a trustworthy person," Autumn said. Autumn calls the Teen Challenge program "a safe place to grow." "I don't think I would still be clean or sober if I didn't have Teen Challenge to come to," she said. John Harper, director of Teen Challenge Illinois, said the statewide chapter has helped many young drug addicts stay off drugs. Autumn said Teen Challenge has given her hope for a bright future, something she thought she had destroyed. "I'm relying on God more and more, and I'm never going to step out of his will," Autumn said. "It has been a battle. When I turned 18, I wanted to leave the program. But I came to the point where God's will is more important to my life, because he did keep me from drug addiction and he's filled me with more than I could have ever asked."