Wells has worked with clients in Muncie for more than 20 years, and said it is imperative for addicts who aspire to become rehabilitated to surround themselves with like-minded people. In Muncie, there are only four listed drug and alcohol treatment centers.

About 30 percent of the drug-related charges Delaware County Circuit Court Judge John M. Feick hears involve meth. About 80 percent of the criminal cases at the county court are based on some form of addiction.

Feick said that while many of the county’s property crimes can be attributed to heroin users, domestic violence tends to be an issue with meth addicts.

“The guys will get on it and think that they’re Superman,” Feick said. “Then they can’t perform and they start beating up on the women ... and they do it where the kids are. It’s dangerous.”

A 2014 study from the Journal of Drug Issues found that 56 percent of meth addicts perceived that their use resulted in violent behavior.

Fighting the widespread use and distribution of methamphetamines is a top priority for Muncie Mayor Dennis Tyler. Since taking office in 2012, Tyler has enlarged the city’s drug task force and approved overtime forms for investigators to build cases for prosecution. Tyler realizes the Muncie Police Department’s revamped focus on meth has caused an upsurge in the total number of busts.

Prior to becoming mayor, he worked for the city’s fire department for 42 years without ever being called to a lab bust. These days, he finds himself conducting educational sessions for schoolchildren about the dangers of drug use.

The Delaware County Sheriff’s Department and MPD have also worked to teach Muncie citizens how to spot meth labs by smell and activity, in an attempt to fight meth.

“We have educated the public,” Muncie Narcotics Police Officer Scott O’Dell said. “From weird chemical smells to finding remnants of a meth lab, … people are kind of understanding now in the community what to look for.”

Once a meth lab is confiscated, everything within the house must be removed and decontaminated because of the toxic chemicals found in meth ingredients. According to Muncie police, 142 lab busts have been recorded in Delaware County this year. One clean can cost taxpayers $10,000 to $30,000, MPD said. If the damage is too extensive, the property is often demolished.

Ball State faculty members have also gotten involved in the community’s commitment to fight meth. Michael Hicks, the director for the school’s Center for Business and Economic Research, helped publish a study earlier this year on the benefits and costs of eliminating over-the-counter pseudoephedrine in Indiana. The university also provides educational programs and information sessions to help students understand the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse.

Hicks still thinks Ball State could be doing more.

“Faculty and staff and many individual students have participated privately in things that better their community,” he said. “But, as an institution, Ball State has been a tepid partner and has, over the time I have been here, largely supported the business advocacy groups at the expense of more broad-based relationships. … This is a research university, and our efforts to leverage that within the Muncie community continue to fall flat.”

Hicks also mentioned while online databases show meth production arrests aren’t common near campus, the school feels its effects.

“The crime and general extreme decay of parts of Muncie hurts the university significantly,” he said. “It is a painful thing to say, but far and away the biggest drawback to Ball State is its location.”

The day after Christmas last year, Flanery paid $120 and checked himself into a detox program at The Salvation Army Harbor Life, a substance abuse treatment center in Indianapolis. A week into rehab, Flanery said the rehab center needed an additional $220 to continue therapy, which Flanery said he couldn’t afford at the time. Upon premature discharge, he lost hope for sobriety.

Lt. Esteban Pommier, the executive director at The Salvation Army Harbor Light Center, said that while the rehab center does its best to accommodate as many clients as possible, resources are limited.

“Although our normal rates are already discounted considerably, we still operate on a sliding scale fee system,” Pommier said. “Each exception to our established low-fee schedule is considered on a case-by-case basis.”

Feick doesn’t usually get to choose whether to send someone to rehab or jail, unless a plea bargain is involved. Even if he could, he thinks incarceration serves as the better option at first. Many people show no signs of wanting to be rehabilitated. For those that do, they are required to be off the drug for six months prior to entering rehab.

With the county jail at full capacity, however, many meth users are back on the streets in no time, according to O’Dell.

As a waiter, Flanery said he earns $600 a week and funnels $150 into a binge — the longest of which kept him awake for 22 days straight.

Leftover money goes to finding a place to stay at night. Sometimes it’s a hotel, sometimes a homeless shelter. Sometimes it’s at his dealer’s house. He understands the risk he takes staying at a cook site — possession of meth in Indiana is, at minimum, punishable by six months to two-and-a-half years incarceration — but his cravings overpower his voice of reason every time.

In his rare moments of sobriety, Flanery curls up in a corner and lets his emotions pour.

“When I do come down, I just sit, and I [cry],” he said. “That’s my real self coming out.”

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In addition to the rising total of meth labs in Indiana, the use of Small Production Capacity Labs, known as “one-pots,” has risen in recent years. In 2014, 90 percent of seized labs were one-pot method operations, a seven percent increase from 2013, according to statistics from the Indiana State Police.

The one-pot method allows for methamphetamine cooks to reduce the time it takes to create a batch by combining meth ingredients into portable containers, such as a 2-liter bottle or glass jar. The entire process can take less than an hour, which means law enforcement must act fast to catch the culprit.

Oftentimes, once a batch is made, the cook will discard the bottle, which contains poisonous toxins and explosive chemicals, in public places.

One-stop shopping centers like Walmart provide meth cooks with all the necessary ingredients for a batch. For addicts, the availability and affordability of products can be an obstacle in stopping their use.

“All I have to do is ... get a 48-count of pseudoephed, which only costs me $10, and I’m getting a $100 worth of dope ” John Flanery, a meth user in Muncie, said.

Since the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005 limited the amount of pseudoephedrine an individual can purchase each month, it has opened the door for some people to go store to store in order to get enough pseudo to sell to a cook for either money or meth. These people are known as smurfs and present an additional problem for law enforcement.

Muncie Police Narcotics Officer Scott O’Dell and his unit have ways of keeping track of who purchases sudafed, but the details are kept secret.

“I don’t like to give out too much information on what we do and how we do it,” O’Dell said. “There are things that we have in place that we follow, and it has really helped us.”

Jason Grellner, a detective in Missouri, told NBCnews.com that tracking systems, "invite more people into the criminal activity because the black market price of the product becomes so much more profitable.”

Muncie Mayor Dennis Tyler has lobbied with the Indiana General Assembly to restrict access to sudafed since 2013. Various medical associations have opposed, claiming it would overwhelm burdened doctors and make medicine harder to obtain for the public.

Tyler doesn’t think that argument is satisfactory in the midst of a meth epidemic.

“If they are serious about really wanting to eliminate [meth use], ... this one isn’t rocket science,” he said. “All they need to do is get [pseudo] off the shelves.”

Earlier this year, Michael Hicks, the director of Ball State’s Center for Business and Economic Research, and Srikant Devaraj, a senior research associate and project manager, published a study on the potential impact that making pseudo a prescription-only drug would have on Indiana.

The study estimated a $5.8 million increase in respiratory drug payments to Medicaid users, and a 106 percent increase in antihistamine payments. Indiana would need to spend $1.8 million more annually for Medicaid, and potential out-of-pocket costs for households were estimated to be anywhere from $15.9 million to $61.2 million per year.

"Our study suggests that the cost exceeds the benefits,” Hicks told the Daily News in March. “Unless there’s some benefit we haven’t foreseen, and we don’t think that’s the case, it would seem that this legislation would have costs without benefits.”

In 2006, Oregon became the first state to require a doctor's prescription for cold and allergy medication. While the amount of “lab incidents” in Oregon decreased by 90 percent over the next two years, meth availability stayed consistent with the nations, according to a report from the Cascade Policy Institute.