There’s Something in the Meth

Ever hear a paranoid meth freak tell you that there’s something in the methamphetamine? I heard this time and time again. Dude, yes, there is. There’s meth in your meth.

Of course, there must be someone manipulating the stock for mind control purposes, for alien abductions, for attic laboratories. One roommate felt ‘violated’ by the recording devices hidden in stuffed animals. One user was sure that there was ‘something poisonous” in the meth he was using.

If you’ve watched a friend, roommate, parent, or child go mad from methamphetamine, you know there’s no hysteria in the meth hysteria today. It’s not reefer madness, it’s real. And help is hard to find once those neurons that let you hope and think and feel are destroyed. There’s a generation of human shells walking around. Dead men walking.

Sure, you can blame it all on people stupid enough to try the stuff, but cut some slack for those who made an impulsive choice. Have you tried alcohol? Good thing it’s not quite as lethal, at least not as quickly. I tried it twice, way back before Marko died, always up to try another good time. I didn’t have one, so I didn’t revisit it. I’m lucky.

Today another 25-year old girl was found dead, one of the few survivors from the old circle of friends ‘upstairs on Parliament Street.’ Five years of intensive psychiatric care, and a shrink stupid enough to prescribe Adderall for her addiction problem! Adderall, like Ritalin but worse, hardwires the mind to need speed. It’s nearly the same thing as methamphetamine, just not quite as strong or fast acting. The poor girl, once a vivacious, beautiful dreamer spent five years as a mere skeleton, checking the walls for bugs (both kinds), refusing to eat, scratching holes in her face. She died alone after one last hurrah. I’m speechless, but sadly, I’ve been in this place before. Marry, then bury. What can stop this? I’m not sure.

In all the recent press about poor little crazy girl Britney Spears, my heart has gone out for a pop icon I didn’t really care for before. With the immense pressures of fame, her impulsivity which I among many share, her disastrous marriage, and her serious postpartum depression, there’s only the money to assuage the emptiness. I always joked that I would like to ‘try’ and see if money could help my instabilities. All I am saying, is give cash a chance. Well, my dear Ms. Spears has illustrated its helplessness in restoring self-esteem or happiness. Her latest irrational incident holding her son hostage allegedly was a nightmare scenario of her losing her mind, muttering that K-Fed had planted the bugs in her home. DOES THIS SOUND FAMILIAR? Not one person, including her medical spokespeople, has ever pointed out the paranoia and madness that comes from the Adderall. COULD HAVE BEEN THE METH IN THE METH. While her alcohol and Ecstasy use have been greatly examined, has anyone thought that the treatment might be the cause?

I researched so many treatments, police and psychiatric programs, medical and naturopathic care, and drew a big blank. Even the seasoned psychiatric staff at Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, and the judges in drug court, had no bleeding idea how to talk to, care for, or protect the meth addict. The drug-induced rage you hear about in zombie flicks is science fiction for the most part, but not when it comes to the meth in your meth. It’s terrifying for the few who are able to put the drug down and go on, they may or may not be better off. Many effects of the instantaneous brain damage are permanent. Which means you may always be convinced your wife is part of a CIA plot. Or you may always be unable to feel an emotion because you have no more dopamine wiring.

I likely wouldn’t be so reactionary if I weren’t still doing the body count. And it’s not about ‘my circle.’ Truck drivers, ministers, and dieting housewives are constantly making the news for their descent into meth. Apparently, it feels so good at first, and then after your first three-day bender, you’re already certifiably insane and you’re just waiting it out until the end. You might starve to death before you overdose.

In some ways it’s the Government Liars’ fault for being so hysterical about other drugs and not arming people with reasonable facts and choices. Everyone who grew up in the Just Say No generation can’t trust the information they were given. Obviously, marijuana didn’t cause murderous rampages, so the info about meth must also be outlandish. It makes you feel terrific and thin and able to complete two double shifts, a bonus if you need the money, as most blue collar North Americans do. In fact, job efficiency and productivity is the main reason the drug is becoming an epidemic in Thailand and other Asian countries. Life’s a bitch, then you work, then you die.

Please pray for E. and her family and friends. If you have any strategies or information or an inspirational story that might help, please share it. I feel incredibly hopeless today. The madness is not just far away in the hills of Hollywood, safe for a greedy gossip gorge. It’s close to home, mine and yours, too. Let’s pray for each other and share any answers or hope that we can.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adderall

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17808933/#storyContinued

http://todaystoronto.com/content/view/100/88/
My review of Toronto author’s book about meth.

http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/Astronauts-Wife-Poems-Eros-Thanatos-Lorette-C-Luzajic/9781847287335-item.html
The Astronaut’s Wife: Poems of Eros and Thanatos.

Death is the Icing on the Cake: Jerry Langton’s Iced-Crystal Meth, the Biography of North America’s Deadliest New Plague

Ever hear a speed  addict tell you meth makes you smarter? It seems to be a popular delusion, even among those who had (or once had) a reasonable level of intelligence. Just before they start moaning about hidden cameras and microphones, they tell you how their IQ jumped 30 points. It’s easy to laugh at the obvious incongruity, yet anyone who has loved someone whose life was slam-dunked by methamphetamine knows it’s not funny. They know it’s incredibly difficult to get help, and that recovery is pretty much a delusion, no matter how hard the user tries.

Finally, someone explains the mysterious, monstrous world of crystal methamphetamine. Toronto writer Jerry Langton began his strange journey while writing a book about the Canadian Hell’s Angels. Meth was once the territory of bikers and wartime suicide bombers, but now its bizarre and tragic legacies are epidemic across North America, ambushing all sorts of communities the way no other drug has. Everything they told you in grade five health class about madness, instant addiction, and robbing (or raping) your mother for marijuana has come true- about meth. Iced: Crystal Meth, the Biography of North America’s Deadliest New Plague never gets hysterical though the facts are truly nightmarish. Meth is an epidemic of virulent proportions, spreading rapidly throughout the world, devastating families, police forces, hospitals, and even the environment. It’s a war that shows no signs of slowing down. Did you know that trees near meth labs die? Did you know that houses that were formerly meth labs cause cancer in the new, squeaky-clean tenants? Did you know that hospitals are closing down because the majority of patients in their burn units are meth cooks and their family members, usually people who won’t be able to pay for their treatment after their profits blow up with their faces?

The human mind and body are pretty  resilient and stand up to all kinds of abuse and experiment. Langton unscrews your head and shows what’s happening upstairs when you mix meth with your brain. It just might be that fried egg you saw on TV- “this is your brain on drugs.” Well, everyone knows that the odd New Year’s on blow or an occasional hippie-fest isn’t going to kill you overnight and that you’ve got plenty of brain cells to spare. You might end up an addict- there’s no doubt that millions of lives have been ruined by cocaine. But it’s usually not after one hit. Everyone’s different, of course, and that’s a chance you take when you do anything. You might get hit by a bus on the way to work, too. But what if the chances were pretty much certain that after a few times, you, too will be tapping the walls for hidden microphones, convinced your family is not really real, and willingly risk an exploding death to make more crank? What if this drug really does change your personality, not just enhance it or bring out the worst? There’s too much talk about ‘strong minds’ and not enough talk about science. Langton shows the science of meth and it’s terrifying.

“Although scientists anticipated the fact that meth would have a significant effect on brain tissue, few were prepared for what they saw the first time a user’s brain was image mapped,” Langton writes. UCLA’s Paul Thompson told him, “It was shocking, it was like a forest fire of brain damage.” Cocaine prolongs the time that dopamine lingers in the brain- meth forces your brain to “crank” it out. Hence, the high is (apparently) unlike anything you’ve ever felt. There is nothing in nature that will spew so much dopamine. With these massive surges, you DO have heightened senses, sharpened intelligence, supersonic auditory and other sensory abilities. Your brain treats you to feeling like superman a few times. And after that, you have nothing. After that, you may never feel anything again, even on the drug. This is why the depression and suicide rates are so high and recovery rates are so low. There’s no turning back, and there’s nothing left of your mind. Much of the brain damage from methamphetamine is permanent.

Though web sites proliferate on meth and risk management, or harm reduction, the scientific truth is not on this drug’s side. There’s managing the risk of starving to death, which may be the appeal for the diet-obsessed faction who never took drugs recreationally but got hooked on meth. Want to lose your teeth? Though the sites say that “meth mouth” is a myth, Langton observes that “five out of five dentists” know it’s true. Anyone who has watched ‘meth mom makeovers’ on crappy talk television can rest assured those hideous hags are the rule, not the exception. Meth would make Marilyn Monroe look like something out of Michael Jackson’s Thriller.

Langton does his research and lets you decide. There’s not much to refute in the troubling picture he presents. The saddest thing I’m left with is overall hopelessness: a drug that is so addicting, rehab is a joke. There’s not much left of life after meth. Suicide is often the only way out, even for addicts who have shown enormous strength in abstaining. Everyone I know who was addicted to methamphetamine first entered their love affair claiming that meth made them happier and smarter. Not much further into the cycle, even the non-religious ones  declared the drug to be the Devil itself, a demon, Lucifer, or hell. This book will help you understand why your loved ones can’t necessarily just decide to get better. When I accused one beloved friend of loving meth more than he loved me, he just sobbed, “Not because I wanted to.” I’m not one to subscribe to the sweeping sentimentality of the Just Say No generation, but Just Say Know has led me to a blanket condemnation of this sick, twisted mind game straight from hell. Meth is not derived from plants and supported in anthropology by happy animals or by shamanic rituals- it comes from poisons underneath your sink. Battery acid, drain cleaner, gasoline, lantern fuel, hydrochloric acid- enjoy.

Will you get addicted if you try it? More than likely, though maybe not. If you’ve already tried it and it “didn’t work” or “did nothing for you”, count yourself lucky.  On  scales used to measure addictiveness, meth gets a 98 out of 100. “Nothing else, (not even crack) breaks the 80 mark,” Langton writes. Langton knows that drug statistics aren’t always reliable, so he doesn’t use one terrible stat for shock value. He paints with a broader brush, and questions how the stats were measured. But no matter what source he looks to, one thing is clear- even the worst statistics are understatements.

www.thegirlcanwrite.net