Rod Flora had it all.

Wife. Kids. A good job. Two home-based businesses. A home he was buying. And even rainy-day savings.

But then he tried a drug called methamphetamine

Glancing in his rearview mirror, Rod Flora noticed the squad car. Next, the red and blue flashing lights.

Flora quickly made up his mind. He wouldn't be pulled over. Not this time. He wasn't going to jail on methamphetamine charges again.

Flora floored it, grabbed the loaded .44-magnum gun from under his seat and sped through Terre Haute streets, driving a van hauling ingredients to make meth.

Flora's passenger bailed. Flora thought he would, too. The van lurched to a stop as he threw the gear into park, without braking first. The gun tumbled out of his hands.

He threw open the door and ran -- but not far. The escape would be short lived, but not his prison term.

Even before Flora regularly started using meth in his 30s, the high-school dropout had his share of trouble. A burglary arrest in the late 1980s. A drunken driving charge a couple of years later, accompanied by a fight with the state trooper who was making the arrest.

But after a prison sentence in the early '90s, Flora was determined to make a better life for himself. The job offer wasn't great -- about $4.25 an hour for delivering and picking up rent-to-own furniture.

But he stuck with it and kept proving himself. The promotion came along with a raise and even a house and car -- paid for by the company.

When he had a drunken driving accident, crashed the company car and lost his job, the competition hired him. Again, he proved himself and advanced within the company, even surviving buyouts. Assistant manager: $25,000 a year. Manager: $50,000 plus bonuses. Not bad for a 10th-grade education.

"I was addicted to work," he recalls. Even for a workaholic, the sometimes 80-hour work week and 60-mile drive to and from work were too much.

Methamphetamine, someone told him, would help. Early on, $25 worth of the drug would last him for a week. It worked for a while, relieving the stress and keeping him going.

His use progressed to a gram or two a week. He avoided alcohol, which previously had been his addiction.

"The meth really got a hold of me," he said. "Once it's got you, it's got you."

Eventually, he left his job and turned to making methamphetamine for a living. He learned to make it because of the cost of his habit. He'd drawn down bank accounts. He'd sold personal items.

He tried 28 or so different methods, coming up with his own recipe for the cleanest, purest product. He'd spend about $14,000 experimenting to arrive at that formula.

Among meth users, he quickly gained a reputation to match his product. It was plain and simple. Flora made choice meth, and at the time, likely the most.

"That was the best part of the whole process. It was better than taking the drug yourself," he said of making meth. "It kind of gives you a high, itself."

Police would later say he was "the No. 1 cooker" in the Wabash Valley before his arrest. One addict -- who said Flora's meth was her favorite -- even named her youngest son after the prolific meth cook.

Flora may have been the best, but the drug still took its toll.

His friends had been replaced with users.

He was a skeleton of his once 175-pound frame.

His skin bore permanent reminders of the addiction: Scars from burns on his chest and shoulder from making the drug, and track marks on his arms from injections.

"I became everything I hated. A junkie -- a needle junkie," the 36-year-old wrote from prison.

Before long, paranoia set in. He acquired night vision equipment, surveillance cameras and bug detectors to avoid being discovered.

His first meth-related arrest among many came in November 2000 when he and others tried to steal anhydrous ammonia from a Parke County co-op. It would be the first of many methamphetamine-related arrests. Time after time, he posted bail and was released.

A high-speed chase in October 2001, which ended on Terre Haute's south side, was the arrest that put Flora out of business.

"I think if they didn't catch me I would be dead by now," Flora wrote in a recent letter from prison, where he has nearly three years left to serve. "At the end, I was looking forward to dying. I wanted to die. Hell, I was a needle junkie. How much lower could I go?"

By March, Flora agreed to plead guilty to six felony charges and make an educational video for the Vigo County Drug Task Force to show to kids as a warning about meth.

In the video, Flora, clad in a bright orange jail outfit, tells of what methamphetamine has cost him: His job, his businesses, his home and freedom. He elaborates in a letter from jail. "Everything was starting to fall apart around me: My job, my family, marriage and my self-respect." All he cared about? Getting high.

Looking back, "I had everything," Flora explains in the video.

Now, "I have nothing. I lost it all."