I am one of the millions over 12 who has used meth - crank as we used to call it in the late 80's. It was cheap and a nice high for the price. Some of us made it through those years without becoming addicts while some of us were not as lucky. What I find most interesting, however, is the sidebar ad that appeared at the end of article - Salon's ad for it's wine club. A club for winos! Seeing how the article's theme was highlighting the savage effects on humans one drug can do, it seems ironically funny that the wine-club advert is there.

I, too, was a meth user in the late 80's. Even though it's been almost twenty years since I last used it, if this article had been in a magazine I would have crumpled up the picture of the meth rocks, burned them into a spoon and tried to shoot them in my veins in the hope that some essence of real meth had been captured in them. It is a horrible and yet horribly delicious drug that either kills you, quite quickly and viciously, or you break from and try never to look back.

At a recent conference on anti-depressents i attended I learned that meth kills the cells that produce dopamine, guaranteeing users a life of serious long term depression. The only remedy is drugs like Wellbutrin that increase dopamine output from what cells remain.

Oh, the sex part is due to the fact that meth creates a sensation equivelant to 10 to 100 times the chemical release of the average orgasm. Great stuff, but still well short of the intimacy drug I luckily found.

Still, I often look forward to my late '90s when the doc says my days are numbered and my talents are gone. I will then hook up with the best crank dealer I can find, stockpile some fits and squeeze the last remaining dopamine cells from my body in that once glorious fit of sheer clarity, confidence and exctasy.

Meth and its hyperbolic and often mythological treatment in the media serve indispensable functions, functions previously served by ecstasy, crack cocaine, cocaine, heroin, and before that marijuana. In each case, a legitimately dangerous and addictive substance becomes largely identified with an easily marginalized population of users, and then serves the critical need of distracting attention from normalized use of other equally harmful, addictive substances whose social costs are orders of magnitude more devastating – alcohol, nicotine and food.

The difference, of course, is that the far more socially damaging substances are the drugs of choice of individuals who are in positions to normalize their use, while writing and consuming horror stories about this decade’s new psychotropic threat to order and culture. A dominant culture killing itself by alcohol, food, and nicotine takes some comfort in waging a drug war against the white trash meth users.

I'm tired of the media driven drug scare merry-go-round. There's no meth epidemic, at least if you consider statistics to be a better measure then a handful of horrifying stories.

Not to dismiss any individual's troubles with some drug or another, but there's no reason to freak out about meth, unless someone you care about is hooked.

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/398/whatepidemic.shtml

I haven't read Elizabeth Hand before but after this piece she joins Sidney Blumenthal as a byline to seek out in Salon. I go out dancing a lot and can always spot the meth users -- they're the ones dancing like an out of control Swiss Army knife. Fortunately there's usually only one or two at a time. Hand really balances the long fascinating history of this drug with the tragic details, and to be able to write so clearly, and with feeling, seems rather rare these days.

"Owen points out that neither of these contemporary impressions of crank is unassailable. Meth has cut across class lines as both "mother's little helper" and a frighteningly powerful libido enhancer adopted by the gay club scene in the 1990s. Statistical evidence suggests it is nowhere near as prevalent as for other highly addictive substances."

The last sentence of this paragraph is complete fucking gibberish. Does Salon have copy editors?

It has that crank-like, dry mouth, everything-I-say-is-fucking-brilliant, can't seem to shut up, lockjaw, can't crap, everything is popping, am I having an orgasm or itching, cops at the back door, can't score, red-eye, I-feel-so-alive-I-think-my-heart-is-jumping-out-of-my-chest, I just chewed a hole in my lower lip, kind of feel to it.

Elizabeth? What you doin' girlfriend?

That's why they're targeting medical marijuana clinics, obviously.

As soon as they stop medical marijuana, then all the meth addicts are going to get sober.

It will happen without any effort whatsoever on the part of the meth addicts -- that's the sheer beauty of the DEA's plan.

"(Readers who want even more livid images can go to this site started by the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office in Oregon, where Deputy Bret King has assembled before-and-after mug shots of meth users in the county detention center.)"

Lurid:

1. gruesome; horrible; revolting: the lurid details of an accident.

2. glaringly vivid or sensational; shocking: the lurid tales of pulp magazines.

3. terrible in intensity, fierce passion, or unrestraint: lurid crimes.

4. lighted or shining with an unnatural, fiery glow; wildly or garishly red: a lurid sunset.

5. wan, pallid, or ghastly in hue; livid.

Livid:

1. having a discolored, bluish appearance caused by a bruise, congestion of blood vessels, strangulation, etc., as the face, flesh, hands, or nails.

2. dull blue; dark, grayish-blue.

3. enraged; furiously angry: Willful stupidity makes me absolutely livid.

4. feeling or appearing strangulated because of strong emotion.

5. reddish or flushed.

6. deathly pale; pallid; ashen: Fear turned his cheeks livid for a moment.

This is begining to sound like a NA meeting. I too had a serious addiction to meth in the late 80's. It was cheap, I had a lot of things to do and it gave me the illusion that I was getting a lot done. I finally took a long look at who I was asociating with and my quality of life. I stopped and so did my ex and we just stopped associating with users. It was very difficult to quit. As I look back I am not sure what I would do different to avoid it the addiction. It created so many more problems than I even considered but as with most drugs, it was all an illusion. It was a focusing point for several years. It's very scarry stuff.