Saturday, August 13, 2005

Don't Use Meth...I Think It Might Be Bad For You (A PSA)

Newsweek published an article this week about methamphetamines, entitled "America's Most Dangerous Drug." Apparently, meth is pretty popular these days. Meth used to just be popular in rural areas in this country which is no surprise. The sperm donor grew up in somewhat of a rural area of the Texas panhandle and he used to say there wasn't anything else to do but "drink and fuck." So I guess they needed some more exciting entertainment. Remember how cocaine was in the 1970s and 1980s? When it was cool to do a line in a nightclub? Al Pacino surrounded by mountains of the stuff? That's meth now.

In my line of work (which perhaps someday I'll be appropriately inspired to write about), I see a lot of people who are meth users. Meth hasn't reached top popularity yet where I live; it's still second to marijuana and cocaine. Thank goodness there is intervention now before it reaches epic proportions because the stuff makes you nuts. Really. I mean if you weren't schizophrenic before you started using meth, you will be. Remember those commercials? "Here's your brain. Here's your brain on drugs." With meth, you take the same egg, but instead of breaking it into a clean frying pan, you crack onto a regular city street. From there, you scramble it with everything that is on the road: broken asphalt, gravel, glass from the accident one week ago, and a little dog poo. Perhaps your neighbor just attempted to replace every automotive liquid to man and flooded the street with the likes of oil, transmission fluid, and antifreeze. So scramble that in too. When you're all done, soak the whole mess into a syringe, then inject it directly into your brain.

The results are astounding! It's fun at first. But then you talk and it doesn't make sense to anyone but you - you sound absolutely crazy (check out neologisms). You've got a lot of energy and you talk real fast, and, boy, are you getting skinny! But then you start to get real ugly, because meth ages you real fast. You hallucinate, you start feeling bugs crawl on you. Scratching at them isn't enough; you have to get them and dissect them like you did in biology class, but on your own arm. And your skin starts to melt off (more on that later). Then you get paranoid, so paranoid that it seems really important to purchase a surveillance system for your house, especially if you live in BFE (because your neighbors who live 5 miles away are watching you...). But then you get bored, and you decide to take the surveillance system down and analyze its component parts; it is now in a thousand pieces, lying next to the pieces of the microwave, the TV, and the stereo. In the same place where you may have abandoned your family, unless, of course, they are using meth with you.

Some people make meth in their own homes, aka the meth lab. Law enforcement officials are very concerned about meth labs for an assortment of reasons, including that they explode. The people who make meth often store some pretty combustible materials in their back yards, so, unfortunately, their house may not be the only one that explodes. It is no wonder why these things blow up like they do - it's really hard to cook when you are high. Anyone who has ever had pot-induced munchies knows this - it's really hard to concentrate on the 14-course meal you know you can eat. Of course, anyone who is waiting to use the meth is in the house when the house explodes in dramatic fashion. If they don't die instantly, they will have third degree burns on a large portion of their body (remember skin melting off?). And they won't have health insurance, because they lost the good job they had just a few months ago because of some conspiracy which really translates into a mess of meth-related consequences. Then the community gets really pissed, because their ultra-expensive hospital bills are passed on, indirectly and unwillingly, to a whole bunch of tax payers.

According to Newsweek, our government is fighting the wrong drug war: "The Bush administration has made marijuana the major focus of its anti-drug efforts, both because there are so many users (an estimated 15 million Americans) and because it considers pot a 'gateway' to the use of harder substances." Interesting. Check out these statistics: 70% of local law enforcement agencies said "robberies or burglaries have increased because of meth, as have domestic violence, assaults, and identity theft; 40 percent of child-welfare officials reported an increase in out-of-home placements last year due to meth." So, lets fight marijuana. Because there are thousands of people behind bars for using marijuana, and clearly we have millions more to prosecute. Because pot smokers are really.........what? Dangerous? Violent? Desperate? Reckless? When was the last time you read a newspaper article about an assault in which the perpetrator was using marijuana at the time? As my friend, Poodle, has said many times, "You will never hear about someone murdering another human being while he was stoned."

So what's my point? I don't know; make your own. Don't be a NIMBY. Don't use drugs. Know when your kid is. The other kids are learning how to do it from somewhere.

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