For a hip 20-year-old who grew up in San Francisco's counterculture, spending a week in nearby rural Mendocino County was a culture shock. In the otherwise idyllic rural communities and small towns of this northern California coastal region, as in many small towns across America, methampetamine ("speed") has become a virtual rite of passage. Reaz Sacharoff is on the staff of YO! (Youth Outlook), a newspaper by and about Bay Area young people produced by Pacific News Service.

POTTER VALLEY, CALIF -- Standing on the blossom-speckled hills overlooking this northern California town, the last thing on my mind is leaning my head over a mirror and spinning my brains out with a line of powdered crystal methamphetamine.

Aside from the fact that it would wipe the lusty smell of spring wildflowers out of my nose, meth is a drug I tend to associate with the 24-hour electric-lit disco a-go-go of my native San Francisco, not with the picture postcard towns and windswept pasturelands of California's north coast. But Mendocino County's pastoral image was shattered by the death earlier this year of 14-year-old Potter Valley resident Raina Bo Shirley, after she was allegedly abducted by a speed dealer bearing the drug as a gift. Today just about everybody I meet here between the ages of 15 and 25 assures me that getting strung out on chemical concoctions known colloquially as "speed" or "crank" has become almost a rite of passage.

At 13, Daniel fits anyone's image of an athletic schoolboy, his confident stride checked by his baggy jeans and pullover sweatshirt. I ask him where a young kid can cop speed and he gives me an answer that many of his peers will echo: "Anywhere. From friends, neighbors, just about anybody."

"When I run the mile," enthuses Daniel, who sells the drug himself, "I do it (speed) so I can run hella faster and stuff, get more energy."

"If you're down," offers his taller friend, speaking coolly from beneath a baseball cap that hides his eyes, "it gets you goin' and stuff."

I ask this young speed advocate if he does the drug himself, and he looks at me like the answer should be obvious. "Actually, I don't," he says. "I just sell it, because if I do it then I don't make no money."

For those unfamiliar with the language of chemical stimuli, "crank," "meth," "speed" and "crystal" are all terms for a family of psychotropic drugs best known for their properties as nervous system stimulants. In small doses, speed can make the body temporarily unaware of any need for rest, sleep, or food. In larger doses, speed produces a "high" accompanied by confidence, enthusiasm, rapid heartbeat and often anxiousness, paranoia, and confusion.

Mendocino County seems to have developed a distinct nomenclature around methamphetamine, which includes terms like "gak," "spiz-whack," and "geeter" -- terms I've never heard in the Bay Area. But as far as who uses the drug, it's hard to guess. I find no one look or other activity that seems to define users of methamphetamine. Indeed, some of the most overtly radical and punked-out youth I interview are also the most adamant in their disdain for the drug.

In the parking lot of a health food store, I ask one 17-year-old skater with a shaved head and a ring through his eyebrow if he could procure a package of speed. "I'm not interested," he replies, adding sarcastically that "you can get any drug you want in half an hour."

"Speed's bad," chimes in his friend. "Speed dealers are bad, speed takers are bad, the speed freaks suck. They'll steal from you."

"I think it's over-popular," a 20-year-old woman interjects. "I used to do a lot of speed and I lost my daughter and my home and everything I had. Now I see it coming on harder and harder in Mendocino."

Autumn and her friend Mystic, both 14, are kicking back outside Mendocino High School, next to a "No Tobacco" sign. "When I first did speed," Autumn confides, "I didn't mind the coming down, 'cause the high was so good. When I got used to it, I hated the coming down. That's when you start wanting to do more. You feel like you're nothing if you can't do it again."

Now Autumn, who wears an army surplus jacket over a black spandex top and cords of woven hemp (the stalk of a marijuana plant) around her neck, says weed is her "everyday thing". She keeps away from speed "as much as I can." Her mother, a back-to-the-land hippie, was a speed addict until the age of 43, she says, and Raina Bo Shirley was a friend and former classmate.

"That was Raina's first time doing speed, and she did it with a stranger, without knowing if that person would look out for her, which he didn't," Autumn says. "She screwed up, and she paid for it worse than she should have."

It occurs to me, midway in my investigation, that I might have become a speed freak if I'd grown up here. For me, drugs were always a facet of San Francisco's counterculture, and the freedom to do them a part of spreading one's wings. But for young people who want to escape in Mendocino's small towns where all the cafes close by 9 PM, there are no venues for new music, and skating is illegal on city streets, drugs seem to be the counterculture. In San Francisco, open land and hiking trails are further and fewer, but the countercultures are there as a safety net for those who shun the traditional institutions of family, church, school and sports.

I ask Sharon, a 19-year-old expectant mother and former speed freak, what she would do down the road if her child became obsessed with speed.

"Nothing," she says, looking down resignedly. "What could I do? My mom tried to stop me and it just made it worse." Sharon ended up living on the streets in San Francisco, quitting the drug when she found out she was pregnant.

"So I'd just tell 'em, 'Hey, I don't want you doin' it, but if you're gonna do it, at least do it at home."