Crystal Meth Quotes

I don't like hope very much. In fact, I hate it. It's the crystal meth of emotions. It hooks you fast and kills you hard. It's bad news. The worst. It's sharp sticks and cherry bombs. When hope shows up, it's only a matter of time until someone gets hurt.

After a few months in my parents' basement, I took an apartment near the state university, where I discovered both crystal methamphetamine and conceptual art. Either one of these things are dangerous, but in combination they have the potential to destroy entire civilizations.

Hope is the crystal meth of emotions. It hooks you fast and kills you hard.

She's like a hurricane on crystal meth.

First, Lord: No tattoos. May neither Chinese symbol for truth nor Winnie-the-Pooh holding the FSU logo stain her tender haunches. May she be Beautiful but not Damaged, for it’s the Damage that draws the creepy soccer coach’s eye, not the Beauty. When the Crystal Meth is offered, May she remember the parents who cut her grapes in half And stick with Beer. Guide her, protect her When crossing the street, stepping onto boats, swimming in the ocean, swimming in pools, walking near pools, standing on the subway platform, crossing 86th Street, stepping off of boats, using mall restrooms, getting on and off escalators, driving on country roads while arguing, leaning on large windows, walking in parking lots, riding Ferris wheels, roller-coasters, log flumes, or anything called “Hell Drop,” “Tower of Torture,” or “The Death Spiral Rock ‘N Zero G Roll featuring Aerosmith,” and standing on any kind of balcony ever, anywhere, at any age. Lead her away from Acting but not all the way to Finance. Something where she can make her own hours but still feel intellectually fulfilled and get outside sometimes And not have to wear high heels. What would that be, Lord? Architecture? Midwifery? Golf course design? I’m asking You, because if I knew, I’d be doing it, Youdammit. May she play the Drums to the fiery rhythm of her Own Heart with the sinewy strength of her Own Arms, so she need Not Lie With Drummers. Grant her a Rough Patch from twelve to seventeen. Let her draw horses and be interested in Barbies for much too long, For childhood is short – a Tiger Flower blooming Magenta for one day – And adulthood is long and dry-humping in cars will wait. O Lord, break the Internet forever, That she may be spared the misspelled invective of her peers And the online marketing campaign for Rape Hostel V: Girls Just Wanna Get Stabbed. And when she one day turns on me and calls me a Bitch in front of Hollister, Give me the strength, Lord, to yank her directly into a cab in front of her friends, For I will not have that Shit. I will not have it. And should she choose to be a Mother one day, be my eyes, Lord, that I may see her, lying on a blanket on the floor at 4:50 A.M., all-at-once exhausted, bored, and in love with the little creature whose poop is leaking up its back. “My mother did this for me once,” she will realize as she cleans feces off her baby’s neck. “My mother did this for me.” And the delayed gratitude will wash over her as it does each generation and she will make a Mental Note to call me. And she will forget. But I’ll know, because I peeped it with Your God eyes.

Every time I draw a clean breath, I'm like a fish out of water.

It was the hardest boyfriend I ever had to break up with [referring to crystal methamphetamines]

The local dealers were cutting their coke with crystal meth

Homemade is a myth. You want to know some things that are homemade? Crystal meth. Crack cocaine. A pipe bomb full of nails. Now we're talkin' homemade.

Vamps who are dying, or think they are, give a piercing, eardrum-bursting shriek, like the love child of a screech owl and a mountain lion on crystal meth, amplified like a seventies rock band.

Now, I don’t think I’m a stupid guy. I’m just an average guy who does stupid things.

I need a new nervous habit. Nail biting. Fidget spinners. I’ve heard great things about crystal meth.

I think it's better to be comfortable in your skin than to be miserable being who you are. Sure, the meth is horrible. It ruins people from the inside out. It's a waiting game --- it's not a matter of if it destroys you, but rather a matter of when it will. I've made it this far. I'm not sending a message that it's "cool" to be on drugs and tell everyone about it. I don't sum myself up as a drug addict and a hooker. That's not what I am. Those are juts things I do, they don't define me. Jobs and addictions do not make us who we are.

The clown was an evil one. They’re either good or bad, and this one was definitely the latter.

The decision-making part of the brain of an individual who has been using crystal meth is very interesting. When Carly and Andy were in their apartment, they ran out of drugs. They sold every single thing they had except two things: a couch and a blow torch. They had to make a decision because something had to be sold to buy more drugs. A normal person would automatically think, Sell the blow torch. But Andy and Carly sat on the couch, looking at the couch and looking at the blow torch, and the choice brought intense confusion. The couch? The blow torch? I mean, we may not need the blow torch today, but what about tomorrow? If we sell the couch, we can still sit wherever we want. But the blow torch? A blow torch is a very specific item. If you’re doing a project and you need a blow torch, you can’t substitute something else for it. You would have to have a blow torch, right? In the end, they sold the couch.

Methamphetamine is so Flowers for Algernon: All that super-human cerebral ability fades to limited physical activities like stapling carpet scraps to the wall or masturbation antics worthy of The Guinness Book of World Records.

Everyone thinks I do heroin. It's not even true, I do crystal meth.

All these beefy Caucasians with guns. Get enough of them together,looking for the America they always believed they'd grow up in, and they glom together like overcooked rice, form integral, starchy little units. With their power tools, portable generators, weapons, four-wheel-drive vehicles, and personal computers, they are like beavers hyped up on crystal meth, manic engineers without a blueprint, chewing through the wilderness, building things and abandoning them, altering the flow of mighty rivers and then moving on because the place ain't what it used to be. The byproduct of the lifestyle is polluted rivers, greenhouse effect, spouse abuse, televangelists, and serial killers. But as long as you have that four-wheel-drive vehicle and can keep driving north, you can sustain it, keep moving just quickly enough to stay one step ahead of your own waste stream. In twenty years, ten million white people will converge on the north pole and park their bagos there. The low-grade waste heat of their thermodynamically intense lifestyle will turn the crystalline icescape pliable and treacherous. It will melt a hole through the polar icecap, and all that metal will sink to the bottom, sucking the biomass down with it.

He puffed out his pigeon chest and waddled across the room towards me. With his feet pointing outwards, he looked like a fat duck with a grievance.

The lesson here is that a giant cupcake tattoo is typically an indication of two things: (1) Sister go her hands on some crystal meth, and (2) Sister smoked that crystal meth and kept smoking it until she had been awake for seven days and then stumbled into a tattoo parlor with a really bad idea that she had quickly sketched on a napkin from Carl's Jr.

Imagine this: Ice is coming to YOUR house. Can you HEAR it knocking? Are you ready? What will YOU do?

He was on a wildly successful TV show on Disney for two years (playing a singing possum), before hitting the big screen, playing everything from Captain Marvel, to a schizophrenic, to Alexander the Great, to a college kid with a crystal meth addiction. I don't know if he's a great actor, but he's great looking, so who cares.

First, Lord: No tattoos. May neither Chinese symbol for truth nor Winnie-the-Pooh holding the FSU logo stain her tender haunches. May she be Beautiful but not Damaged, for it's the Damage that draws the creepy soccer coach's eye, not the Beauty. When the Crystal Meth is offered, May she remember the parents who cut her grapes in half And stick with Beer.

Because all little girls deserve to be protected. Even the daughters of douche bags.

Nic ha fatto uso di droghe, a fasi alterne, per oltre un decennio, e in quegli anni credo di avere sentito, pensato e fatto quasi tutto quello che un genitore può sentire, pensare e fare.

I’m going to a party tonight,” I said, partly just to say it out loud and partly to brag. Conrad raised his eyebrows. “You?” “Whose party?” Jeremiah demanded. “Kinsey’s?” I put down my juice. “How’d you know?” Jeremiah laughed and wagged his finger at me. “I know everybody in Cousins, Belly. I’m a lifeguard. That’s like being the mayor. Greg Kinsey works at that surf shop over by the mall.” Frowning, Conrad said, “Doesn’t Greg Kinsey sell crystal meth out of his trunk?” “What? No. Cam wouldn’t be friends with someone like that,” I said defensively. “Who’s Cam?” Jeremiah asked me. “That guy I met at Clay’s bonfire. He asked me to go to this party with him, and I said yes.” “Sorry. You aren’t going to some meth addict’s party,” Conrad said. This was the second time Conrad was trying to tell me what to do, and I was sick of it. Who did he think he was? I had to go to this party. I didn’t care if there was crystal meth or not, I was going. “I’m telling you, Cam wouldn’t be friends with someone like that! He’s straight edge.” Conrad and Jeremiah both snorted. In moments like these, they were a team. “He’s straight edge?” Jeremiah said, trying not to smile. “Neat.” “Very cool,” agreed Conrad. I glared at the both of them. First they didn’t want me hanging out with meth addicts, and then being straight edge wasn’t cool either. “He doesn’t do drugs, all right? Which is why I highly doubt he’d be friends with a drug dealer.” Jeremiah scratched his cheek and said, “You know what, it might be Greg Rosenberg who’s the meth dealer. Greg Kinsey’s pretty cool. He has a pool table. I think I’ll check this party out too.” “Wait, what?” I was starting to panic. “I think I’ll go too,” Conrad said. “I like pool.” I stood up. “You guys can’t come. You weren’t invited.” Conrad leaned back in his chair and put his arms behind his head. “Don’t worry, Belly. We won’t bother you on your big date.” “Unless he puts his hands on you.” Jeremiah ground his fist into his hand threateningly, his blue eyes narrow. “Then his ass is grass.” “This isn’t happening,” I moaned. “You guys, I’m begging you. Don’t come. Please, please don’t come.” Jeremiah ignored me. “Con, what are you gonna wear?” “I haven’t thought about it. Maybe my khaki shorts? What are you gonna wear?” “I hate you guys,” I said.

Children lost their arms, legs, and eyes While foreign governments fed us blatant lies Bodies laid on the street, frozen to death While some foreign teenagers took crystal meth

There’s something very wrong when a taste bud is still reporting strangeness five hours after you had a sweetened drink. Do you know that if you smoke crystal meth even once, your entire brain chemistry is altered for the rest of your life? That’s what stevia tastes like to me.” “I’m not sitting here puffing on a meth stem, if that’s what you’re trying to say.

All these beefy Caucasians with guns! Get enough of them together, looking for the America they always believed they'd grow up in, and they glom together like overcooked rice, form integral, starchy little units. With their power tools, portable generators, weapons, four-wheel-drive vehicles, and personal computers, they are like beavers hyped up on crystal meth, manic engineers without a blueprint, chewing through the wilderness, building things and abandoning them, altering the flow of mighty rivers and then moving on because the place ain't what it used to be.

I was diagnosed with ADHD in my mid fifties and I was given Ritalin and Dexedrine. These are stimulant medications. They elevate the level of a chemical called dopamine in the brain. And dopamine is the motivation chemical, so when you are more motivated you pay attention. Your mind won't be all over the place. So we elevate dopamine levels with stimulant drugs like Ritalin, Aderall, Dexedrine and so on. But what else elevates Dopamine levels? Well, all other stimulants do. What other stimulants? Cocaine, crystal meth, caffeine, nicotine, which is to say that a significant minority of people that use stimulants, illicit stimulants, you know what they are actually doing? They're self-medicating their ADHD or their depression or their anxiety. So on one level (and we have to go deeper that that), but on one level addictions are about self-medications. If you look at alcoholics in one study, 40% of male adult alcoholics met the diagnostic criteria for ADHD? Why? Because alcohol soothes the hyperactive brain. Cannabis does the same thing. And in studies of stimulant addicts, about 30% had ADHD prior to their drug use. What else do people self-medicate? Someone mentioned depression. So, if you have been treated for depression, as I have been, and you were given a SSRI medication, these medications elevate the level of another brain chemical called serotonin, which is implicated in mood regulation. What else elevates serotonin levels temporarily in the brain? Cocaine does. People use cocaine to self-medicate depression. People use alcohol, cannabis and opiates to self-medicate anxiety. Incidentally people also use gambling or shopping to self-medicate because these activities also elevate dopamine levels in the brain. There is no difference between one addiction and the other. They're just different targets, but the brain systems that are involved and the target chemicals are the same, no matter what the addiction. So people self-medicate anxiety, depression. People self-medicate bipolar disorder with alcohol. People self-medicate Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder. So, one way to understand addictions is that they're self-medicating. And that's important to understand because if you are working with people who are addicted it is really important to know what's going on in their lives and why are they doing this. So apart from the level of comfort and pain relief, there's usually something diagnosible that's there at the same time. And you have to pay attention to that. At least you have to talk about it.

had led him into the business of small-town marijuana dealing, which must have seemed dark and dangerous at the time, but that now, in these days of crystal meth, seemed as wholesome as running a lemonade stand.

The maple brings tourists who come to marvel at the blazing colours of the autumn leaves and it brings cash dollars in the form of the unctuous, faintly metallic syrup that Americans like to pour all over their breakfast, on waffles and pancakes certainly, but on bacon too. Sounds alarming to English ears, but actually it is rather delicious. Like crack, crystal meth, and Chocolate HobNobs, one nibble and you're hooked for life.

Marketing jingles from every angle lure patrons to turn our backs on our locally owned stores, restaurants, and farms. And nobody considers that unpatriotic. This appears to aggravate Tod Murphy. "We have the illusion of consumer freedom, but we've sacrificed our community life for the pleasure of purchasing lots of cheap stuff. Making and moving all that stuff can be so destructive: child labor in foreign lands, acid rain in the Northeast, depleted farmland, communities where the big economic engine is crystal meth. We often have the form of liberty, but not the substance.

unctuous, faintly metallic syrup that Americans like to pour all over their breakfast, on waffles and pancakes certainly, but on bacon too. Sounds alarming to English ears, but actually it is rather delicious. Like crack, crystal meth and Chocolate HobNobs, one nibble and you’re hooked for life.

The truth is, the path to skid row isn't always laced in crystal meth - there is no concrete path that leads to insanity. Crazy is really just you or me and one bad day that leads to several more bad days. It's those of us who were forgotten about. Those of us who couldn't get help in time. Those of us with a disease that was misdiagnosed.

I’ll tell you what that was, Journal. That was divine intervention. Angel Alvarez was a solid buck fifty of Valtrex-and-crystal-meth-fueled trailer-park scrapper. I wouldn’t have stood a chance. I would have been liquefied on impact had I not been blessed with a guardian angel who wasn’t above tripping a bitch, not even a bitch named Angel.

Every addict I know says the same thing, in one way or another: their drug of choice filled that empty space in their soul nothing else could touch.

I was so empty inside that I took all my cues about who I was from other people.

I can feel the tears and they make me angry. Why do I cry all the time? Why am I so damn emotional?

As a result, our big “attic” room was a Hispanic gathering place. Afternoons, it was crowded with boys from Venezuela and Cuba, jabbering away in Spanish, the world’s fastest language, seeming to all talk at once. It was like living in a cage full of parrots whose crackers had been laced with crystal meth. I found it agreeably colorful. For whatever reason, Brugál had not

The most ubiquitous form on the mainland is crystal, which is often manufactured with such ingredients as decongestants and brake cleaner in what the DEA has called “Beavis and Butt-head” labs in homes and garages. Mobile, or “box,” labs in campers and vans, and labs in motels, have been discovered in every state. In 2006, Bill Maher quipped, “If Americans get any dumber about science, they won’t even be able to make their own crystal meth.

So I got to thinking that perhaps that’s what money is: a crystallization—or, rather, a homogenization—of time and free will into those things we call dollars and pounds and yen and euros. Money multiplies your time. It also expands your agency and broadens the number of things you can do accordingly. Big-time lottery winners haven’t won ten million dollars—they’ve won ten thousand person-years of time to do pretty much anything they want anywhere on Earth. Windfalls are like the crystal meth version of time and free will.

FRECK: (Casually) I bought a methedrine plant today. BARRIS: (With a snotty expression on his face) Methedrine is a benny, like speed; it’s crank, it’s crystal, it’s amphetamine, it’s made synthetically in a lab. So it isn’t organic, like pot. There’s no such thing as a methedrine plant like there is a pot plant. FRECK: (Springing the punch line on him) I mean I inherited forty thousand from an uncle and purchased a plant hidden in this dude’s garage where he makes methedrine. I mean, he’s got a factory there where he manufactures meth.

no longer do I believe that every man and woman in America has an equal chance — we simply aren’t born with equal brains. Not all people can pull themselves up by their proverbial bootstraps, because, as my friend Christi says, “We haven’t all been issued the same boots.

All these beefy Caucasians with guns! Get enough of them together, looking for the America they always believed they’d grow up in, and they glom together like overcooked rice, form integral, starchy little units. With their power tools, portable generators, weapons, four-wheel-drive vehicles, and personal computers, they are like beavers hyped up on crystal meth, manic engineers without a blueprint, chewing through the wilderness, building things and abandoning them, altering the flow of mighty rivers and then moving on because the place ain’t what it used to be. The byproduct of the lifestyle is polluted rivers, greenhouse effect, spouse abuse, televangelists, and serial killers.

By the way, let me shatter a myth about addiction. This whole idea that drugs are addictive... they're not in themselves addictive. Studies have shown that a large number of people can be given opiates for pain and they don't become addicted. No drug, no substance in itself is addictive. Most people who try most substances, even repeatedly, and never become addicted to it. So you can talk about this "highly addictive drugs" like crack and crystal meth and all that. The vast majority of the people who try them never become addicted. So when we ask the question, "is alcohol addictive, yes or no", you know what the answer is? Yes or no. That's what the answer is. If you ask "is shopping addictive, yes or no", the answer is yes or no. Is food addictive, yes or no, is sexual acting out addictive, yes or no, the answer is yes or no. What we have to look at are the susceptabilities. What makes people prone to be addicted. Because the substance itself doesn't explain it. And therefore to put the emphasis on simply trying to stop the flow of drugs, as if that ever made any difference whatsoever, it is by definition to waste a lot of resources and to create a lot of unnecessary pain. That's not where the answer is.

The Mother’s Prayer for Its Daughter First, Lord: No tattoos. May neither the Chinese symbol for truth nor Winnie-the-Pooh holding the FSU logo stain her tender haunches. May she be Beautiful but not Damaged, for it’s the Damage that draws the creepy soccer coach’s eye, not the Beauty. When the Crystal Meth is offered, May she remember the parents who cut her grapes in half And stick with Beer. Guide her, protect her When crossing the street, stepping onto boats, swimming in the ocean, swimming in pools, walking near pools, standing on the subway platform, crossing 86th Street, stepping off of boats, using mall restrooms, getting on and off escalators, driving on country roads while arguing, leaning on large windows, walking in parking lots, riding Ferris wheels, roller-coasters, log flumes, or anything called “Hell Drop,” “Tower of Torture,” or “The Death Spiral Rock ‘N Zero G Roll featuring Aerosmith,” and standing on any kind of balcony ever, anywhere, at any age. Lead her away from Acting but not all the way to Finance. Something where she can make her own hours but still feel intellectually fulfilled and get outside sometimes And not have to wear high heels. What would that be, Lord? Architecture? Midwifery? Golf course design? I’m asking You, because if I knew, I’d be doing it, Youdammit. May she play the Drums to the fiery rhythm of her Own Heart with the sinewy strength of her Own Arms, so she need Not Lie With Drummers. Grant her a Rough Patch from twelve to seventeen. Let her draw horses and be interested in Barbies for much too long, For Childhood is short—a Tiger Flower blooming Magenta for one day— And Adulthood is long and Dry-Humping in Cars will wait. O Lord, break the Internet forever, That she may be spared the misspelled invective of her peers And the online marketing campaign for Rape Hostel V: Girls Just Wanna Get Stabbed. And when she one day turns on me and calls me a Bitch in front of Hollister, Give me the strength, Lord, to yank her directly into a cab in front of her friends, For I will not have that Shit. I will not have it. And should she choose to be a Mother one day, be my eyes, Lord, That I may see her, lying on a blanket on the floor at 4:50 A.M., all-at-once exhausted, bored, and in love with the little creature whose poop is leaking up its back. “My mother did this for me once,” she will realize as she cleans feces off her baby’s neck. “My mother did this for me.” And the delayed gratitude will wash over her as it does each generation and she will make a Mental Note to call me. And she will forget. But I’ll know, because I peeped it with Your God eyes. Amen

The lumbering bagos and topheavy four-wheelers form a moving slalom course for Hiro on his black motorcycle. All these beefy Caucasians with guns! Get enough of them together, looking for the America they always believed they'd grow up in, and they glom together like overcooked rice, form integral, starchy little units. With their power tools, portable generators, weapons, four-wheel-drive vehicles, and personal computers, they are like beavers hyped up on crystal meth, manic engineers without a blueprint, chewing through the wilderness, building things and abandoning them, altering the flow of mighty rivers and then moving on because the place ain't what it used to be. The byproduct of the lifestyle is polluted rivers, greenhouse effect, spouse abuse, televangelists, and serial killers. But as long as you have that fourwheel- drive vehicle and can keep driving north, you can sustain it, keep moving just quickly enough to stay one step ahead of your own waste stream. In twenty years, ten million white people will converge on the north pole and park their bagos there. The low-grade waste heat of their thermodynamically intense lifestyle will turn the crystalline icescape pliable and treacherous. It will melt a hole through the polar icecap, and all that metal will sink to the bottom, sucking the biomass down with it.

THIS IS MY ABC BOOK of people God loves. We’ll start with . . .           A: God loves Adorable people. God loves those who are Affable and Affectionate. God loves Ambulance drivers, Artists, Accordion players, Astronauts, Airplane pilots, and Acrobats. God loves African Americans, the Amish, Anglicans, and Animal husbandry workers. God loves Animal-rights Activists, Astrologers, Adulterers, Addicts, Atheists, and Abortionists.           B: God loves Babies. God loves Bible readers. God loves Baptists and Barbershop quartets . . . Boys and Boy Band members . . . Blondes, Brunettes, and old ladies with Blue hair. He loves the Bedraggled, the Beat up, and the Burnt out . . . the Bullied and the Bullies . . . people who are Brave, Busy, Bossy, Bitter, Boastful, Bored, and Boorish. God loves all the Blue men in the Blue Man Group.           C: God loves Crystal meth junkies,           D: Drag queens,           E: and Elvis impersonators.           F: God loves the Faithful and the Faithless, the Fearful and the Fearless. He loves people from Fiji, Finland, and France; people who Fight for Freedom, their Friends, and their right to party; and God loves people who sound like Fat Albert . . . “Hey, hey, hey!”           G: God loves Greedy Guatemalan Gynecologists.           H: God loves Homosexuals, and people who are Homophobic, and all the Homo sapiens in between.           I: God loves IRS auditors.           J: God loves late-night talk-show hosts named Jimmy (Fallon or Kimmel), people who eat Jim sausages (Dean or Slim), people who love Jams (hip-hop or strawberry), singers named Justin (Timberlake or Bieber), and people who aren’t ready for this Jelly (Beyoncé’s or grape).           K: God loves Khloe Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian, Kim Kardashian, and Kanye Kardashian. (Please don’t tell him I said that.)           L: God loves people in Laos and people who are feeling Lousy. God loves people who are Ludicrous, and God loves Ludacris. God loves Ladies, and God loves Lady Gaga.           M: God loves Ministers, Missionaries, and Meter maids; people who are Malicious, Meticulous, Mischievous, and Mysterious; people who collect Marbles and people who have lost their Marbles . . . and Miley Cyrus.           N: God loves Ninjas, Nudists, and Nose pickers,           O: Obstetricians, Orthodontists, Optometrists, Ophthalmologists, and Overweight Obituary writers,           P: Pimps, Pornographers, and Pedophiles,           Q: the Queen of England, the members of the band Queen, and Queen Latifah.           R: God loves the people of Rwanda and the Rebels who committed genocide against them.           S: God loves Strippers in Stilettos working on the Strip in Sin City;           T: it’s not unusual that God loves Tom Jones.           U: God loves people from the United States, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates; Ukrainians and Uruguayans, the Unemployed and Unemployment inspectors; blind baseball Umpires and shady Used-car salesmen. God loves Ushers, and God loves Usher.           V: God loves Vegetarians in Virginia Beach, Vegans in Vietnam, and people who eat lots of Vanilla bean ice cream in Las Vegas.           W: The great I AM loves will.i.am. He loves Waitresses who work at Waffle Houses, Weirdos who have gotten lots of Wet Willies, and Weight Watchers who hide Whatchamacallits in their Windbreakers.           X: God loves X-ray technicians.           Y: God loves You.           Z: God loves Zoologists who are preparing for the Zombie apocalypse. God . . . is for the rest of us. And we have the responsibility, the honor, of letting the world know that God is for them, and he’s inviting them into a life-changing relationship with him. So let ’em know.

To cut sleep to a minimum, Guderian issued pervitin amphetamines to his men, drugs given the nickname “panzer chocolate” by the men of the Heer. This early version of “crystal meth” allowed long periods of being awake and imparted a euphoric mood, but at the risk of heart attacks, suicide, psychotic violence, or a collapse into addiction.

I sometimes think the recovery community is a picture of what the church should look like. I’ve experienced the Spirit of God hovering in those recovery rooms as a palpable presence, bringing healing to those who struggle and who submit to their higher power. It’s my belief that Jesus, my Higher Power, hears those prayers, whether or not they know his name. His favorite people were, after all, the most broken among us — the outcasts, the misfits, the sick, and, yes, the addicts.

Self-Help: 1914-2014 1914 'Don't give a man a fish. Show him how to fish.' 2014 'Don't give a man a crystal meth. Show him how to cook it.

Worse, the Nazis turned the blitzkrieg soldiers into an army of supermen, plying them liberally with crystal meth—speed—in pill form, shipping thirty-five million tablets to their three million troops. This drug allowed soldiers to advance for days without sleep, dulled their sense of empathy, made them feel euphoric and invincible, and turned them into aggressive, reckless killing machines.

I called out familiar whips of fire and ice, utilizing them like Indiana Jones on crystal meth to eliminate the crowd of wizards attacking me.

Pancakes are sniffed by your own white Crystal meth.

Ice, or crystal methamphetamine, had long replaced heroin in North Korea as the foreign-currency earner of choice for the state. It’s a synthetic drug that is not dependent on crops, as heroin is, and can be manufactured to a high purity in state labs. Most of the addicts in China were getting high on crystal meth made in North Korea. Like the opium of the past, crystal meth, though just as illegal, had become an alternative currency in North Korea, and given as gifts and bribes.

When asked how many of the people he met in those encampments had lost housing due to high rents or health insurance, Eric could not remember one. Meth was the reason they were there and couldn’t leave. Of the hundred or so vets he had brought out of the encampments and into housing, all but three returned. Eric grew weary of wanting recovery for the people he met more than they wanted it for themselves. Such was the pull. Some were addicted to other things: crack or heroin, alcohol or gambling. Most of them used any drug available. But what Eric and Mundo most encountered by far was crystal methamphetamine.

Sarah Skoterro, in Albuquerque, a veteran of thirty years as a drug counselor, remembered the meth years ago was a party drug. Then, she said, “around 2009, 2010, there was a real shift—a new kind of product. I would do assessments with people struggling for five years with meth who would say ‘This kind of meth is a very different thing.’ ” Skoterro watched people with families, houses, and good-paying jobs quickly lose everything. “They’re out of their house, lost their relationship, their job, they’re walking around at three in the morning, at a bus stop, blisters on their feet. They are a completely different person.” As I talked with people across the country, it occurred to me that P2P meth that created delusional, paranoid, erratic people living on the street must have some effect on police shootings. Police shootings were all over the news by then and a focus of national attention. Albuquerque police, it turns out, had studied meth’s connection to officer-involved fatal shootings, in which blood samples of the deceased could be taken. For years, the city’s meth supply was locally made, in houses, in small quantities. When P2P meth began to arrive in 2009, those meth houses faded. Since 2011, Mexican crystal meth has owned the market with quantities that drove the price from $14,000 per pound down to $2,200 at its lowest. City emergency rooms and the police Crisis Intervention Team, which handles mental illness calls, have been inundated ever since with people with symptoms of schizophrenia, often meth-induced, said Lt. Matt Dietzel, a CIT supervisor. “Meth is so much more common now,” Dietzel told me. “We’re seeing the worst outcomes more often.” In

All these beefy Caucasians with guns! Get enough of them together, looking for the America they always believed they’d grow up in, and they glom together like overcooked rice, form integral, starchy little units. With their power tools, portable generators, weapons, four-wheel-drive vehicles, and personal computers, they are like beavers hyped up on crystal meth, manic engineers without a blueprint, chewing through the wilderness, building things and abandoning them, altering the flow of mighty rivers and then moving on because the place ain’t what it used to be.

There were outlaw bikers and meth labs close by. Berenson was readier to believe that. Stories about the badlands were legion. But a pained echo in a chance remark about Dean’s daughter led her to believe that the kid was in some way the problem. She was fourteen years old. Berenson put two and two together and made five. She figured maybe the kid was hanging with the bikers or experimenting with crystal and causing big problems at home. Then she revised her opinion. The quality problems up at Highland Park became common knowledge inside the company. Berenson knew that Dean had a difficult split responsibility. As a director of the corporation he had a fiduciary duty to see it do well. But he also had a parallel responsibility to the Pentagon to make sure New Age sold it only the good stuff. Berenson figured

Knowing who or what God is—or if there even is a God—is not actually the point of Step Two.

So much better than poems music sky sunsets family friends oh! much better than anything that ever was or ever could be amen amen amen,” as Frankie Hucklenbroich describes the rush in her novel Crystal Diary,

Other than the realization that there are no chemical shortcuts to good writing, the most important thing I came away with from the experience was that crystal meth is not a substance to be taken lightly. In the beginning, meth always seems like the greatest drug in the world. And then it doesn’t.

Among the drivers many accidents, mostly attributable to excessive fatigue, could have been avoided if an analeptic such as Pervitin had been administered.”26 Crystal meth to avoid road accidents? Really?

Sister Marie Romaine told us in the fifth grade that Catholics aren’t allowed to do divination—we weren’t to touch Ouija boards or Tarot cards or crystal balls, because things like that are seductions of the D-E-V-I-L—she always spelled it out like that, she’d never say the word. I’m not sure where the Devil came into it, but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to let Deb do readings for me. She was, last night, though, in my dream. I used to watch her do it for other people; the Tarot cards fascinated me—maybe just because they seemed forbidden. But the names were so cool—the Major Arcana, the Minor Arcana; Knight of Pentacles, Page of Cups, Queen of Wands, King of Swords. The Empress, the Magician. And the Hanged Man. Well, what else would I dream about? I mean, this was not a subtle dream, no doubt about it. There it was, right in the middle of the spread of cards, and Deb was telling me about it. “A man is suspended by one foot from a pole laid across two trees. His arms, folded behind his back, together with his head, form a triangle with the point downward; his legs form a cross. To an extent, the Hanged Man is still earthbound, for his foot is attached to the pole.” I could see the man on the card, suspended permanently halfway between heaven and earth. That card always looked odd to me—the man didn’t seem to be at all concerned, in spite of being upside-down and blind-folded. Deb kept scooping up the cards and laying them out again, and that one kept coming up in every spread. “The Hanged Man represents the necessary process of surrender and sacrifice,” she said. “This card has profound significance,” she said, and she looked at me and tapped her finger on it. “But much of it is veiled; you have to figure out the meaning for yourself. Self-surrender leads to transformation of the personality, but the person has to accomplish his own regeneration.” Transformation of the personality. That’s what I’m afraid of, all right. I liked Roger’s personality just fine the way it was! Well … rats. I don’t know how much the D-E-V-I-L has to do with it, but I am sure that trying to look too far into the future is a mistake. At least right now.

The image of us that remains forever is always in a stranger’s car, the windows down, Laura singing, my hands wet with fear. Like the night Laura was singing along to a song called “Blue American.” The boy driving was coming down off meth. Dylan would have been in the passenger seat... One night was longer than a week in those days. One night wasn’t like all the other nights, the way it was later when I’d known the night too well and too hard. In the car, the boy with the blond hair streaked blue ranted on about Jesus and crystal and the desert.

growing increasingly impatient as my host, a well-known fixture on the downtown art scene, meticulously cut up lines of crystal meth. The year was 1988, the last days of the wild, wild East Village,

Bath salts, plant food, crystal meth? Get you some Purple Crack and let the madness begin.

No, what little inspiration I have in life comes not from any sense of racial pride. It stems from the same age-old yearning that has produced great presidents and great pretenders, birthed captains of industry and captains of football; that Oedipal yen that makes men do all sorts of shit we’d rather not do, like try out for basketball and fistfight the kid next door because in this family we don’t start shit but we damn sure finish it. I speak only of that most basic of needs, the child’s need to please the father. Many fathers foster that need in their children through a wanton manipulation that starts in infancy. They dote on the kids with airplane spins, ice cream cones on cold days, and weekend custody trips to the Salton Sea and the science museum. The incessant magic tricks that produced dollar pieces out of thin air and the open-house mind games that made you think that the view from the second-floor Tudor-style miracle in the hills, if not the world, would soon be yours are designed to fool us into believing that without daddies and the fatherly guidance they provide, the rest of our lives will be futile Mickey Mouseless I-told-ya-so existences. But later in adolescence, after one too many accidental driveway basketball elbows, drunken midnight slaps to the upside of our heads, puffs of crystal meth exhaled in our faces, jalapeño peppers snapped in half and ground into our lips for saying “fuck” when you were only trying to be like Daddy, you come to realize that the frozen niceties and trips to the drive-thru car wash were bait-and-switch parenting. Ploys and cover-ups for their reduced sex drives, stagnant take-home pay, and their own inabilities to live up to their father’s expectations. The Oedipal yen to please Father is so powerful that it holds sway even in a neighborhood like mine, where fatherhood for the most part happens in absentia, yet nevertheless the kids sit dutifully by the window at night waiting for Daddy to come home. Of course, my problem was that Daddy was always home.

addicts are everywhere. They’re where we work, play, worship, and go to school. Addiction does not discriminate. It knows no color, no ethnicity, no religion, no gender or sexual orientation.

We have to stop moralizing, blaming, controlling or smirking at the person with the disease of addiction, and start creating opportunities for individuals and families to get help . . .

addiction is not a choice.

crystal meth has such a pull and takes hold so well is that it makes you feel things to the extreme. While your brain is adjusting, you may

Be careful not to give the neediest of your children more time than the others. No matter what the issues, all of your kids need you.

You can’t think your way into right action; you have to act your way into right thinking.

I’d asked God to free Annie but didn’t know what that might look like. I thought it possible her freedom might come in heaven. That’s the way it happens for many, for God-only-knows reasons.

Our only chance of getting our daughter back was to, paradoxically, let her go.

Annie and Tom have a relapse plan to protect themselves should one or the other ever pick up again.

Addiction in the family will change you. You can allow the change to consume and damage you, or you can embrace the lessons that life now presents.

Teachers didn’t know what to make of this smart kid who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, keep track of her things or consistently complete her work.

I don’t have to change anyone. Letting people be who they are frees us all, and my only job is to become the person I wish others to be.

Without a job or a decent place to live, the most fundamental of needs, only the most industrious and the most diligent seem able to make it.

Dr. McCauley told us it’s time to treat addiction as the public health catastrophe it’s become.

For most, drug addiction ultimately becomes synonymous with criminality, and a criminal record follows them everywhere and forever.

Most people do look at drug addicts in moral terms. “It’s your own fault,” they’ll say. “Drugs are bad, and you shouldn’t have done what you did.” If my own kid hadn’t become a drug addict, I might not get it either. Some close to me still don’t.

Those who might judge the disasters of others may not yet have had their own.

Their lives are a miracle, not a fairy tale.

Annie is clean today because of what she’s done, and what God has done in her. We merely supported her recovery and stood by her while she saved herself.

You can't drink 'English afternoon tea' in the morning," the barista said to her, his eyes blazing like shards of crystal meth about to ignite. "Do you want to be responsible for fucking up the universe?

If moments of clarity and realization happened when they should be happening, maybe there would be no addiction.

No buts. My husband raped me while he was strung out on crystal meth the same night I buried my best friend. And that’s not even the worst thing that’s happened to me this year.

Maybe all gay men are made to feel, at some point, that they are wrong in the eyes of God, aberrations whose desires are dirty and shameful, and there is no more perfect reinforcement of this message than to fuck on crystal meth. It is both the escape from the feeling and the confirmation of it.

But he’s also seen his share of affluent teenage beauty queens turned to balding, pockmarked monsters. College kids holding up CVS pharmacies to get a fix. Their families devastated and confused. We’re not those kinds of people. But you don’t know that until you get your first taste of crystal meth. Or experience the euphoria of painkillers stolen from your mom’s medicine cabinet.

Semi-Charmed Life" Doo doo doo, doo doo-doo doo... I'm packed and I'm holding I'm smiling, she's living, she's golden She lives for me, says she lives for me Ovation, her own motivation She comes round and she goes down on me And I make her smile, like a drug for you Do ever what you wanna do, coming over you Keep on smiling, what we go through One stop to the rhythm that divides you And I speak to you like the chorus to the verse Chop another line like a coda with a curse Come on like a freak show takes the stage We give them the games we play, she said... I want something else to get me through this Semi-charmed kinda life, baby, baby I want something else, I'm not listening when you say good-bye Doo doo doo, doo doo-doo doo... The sky was gold, it was rose I was taking sips of it through my nose And I wish I could get back there, someplace back there Smiling in the pictures you would take Doing crystal meth, will lift you up until you break It won't stop, I won't come down I keep stock with a tick-tock rhythm, a bump for the drop And then I bumped up, I took the hit that I was given Then I bumped again, then I bumped again I said... How do I get back there to the place where I fell asleep inside you How do I get myself back to the place where you said... I want something else to get me through this Semi-charmed kinda life, baby, baby I want something else, I'm not listening when you say good-bye I believe in the sand beneath my toes The beach gives a feeling, an earthy feeling I believe in the faith that grows And the four right chords can make me cry When I'm with you I feel like I could die And that would be alright, alright And when the plane came in, she said she was crashing The velvet it rips in the city, we tripped on the urge to feel alive Now I'm struggling to survive, Those days you were wearing that velvet dress You're the priestess, I must confess Those little red panties they pass the test Slide up around the belly, face down on the mattress one And you hold me, and we're broken Still it's all that I wanna do, just a little now Feel myself, heading off the ground I'm scared, I'm not coming down No, no And I won't run for my life She's got her jaws now locked down in a smile But nothing is alright, alright And I want something else to get me through this life Baby, I want something else Not listening when you say Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye, good-bye Doo doo doo, doo doo-doo doo... The sky was gold, it was rose (Doo doo doo, doo doo-doo doo...) I was taking sips of it through my nose (Doo doo doo, doo doo-doo doo...) And I wish I could get back there (Doo doo doo, doo doo-doo doo...) Someplace back there, in the place we used to start (Doo doo doo, doo doo-doo doo...) I want something else (Doo doo doo, doo doo-doo doo...) Third Eye Blind (1997)

I'm sure I could have read the entire four-thousand-page plot summarized in four hundred words on Wikipedia, or I could simply walk into any high school and ask a few questions of the first kid I find who isn't smoking crystal meth.

You should try everything at least once. Except crystal meth.

Some people, a relatively small minority, are at grave risk for addiction if exposed to certain substances. For this minority, exposure to drugs really will trigger addiction, and the trajectory of drug dependence, once begun, is extremely difficult to stop. In the United States opiate relapse rates of 80 per cent to more than 90 per cent have been recorded among addicts who try to quit their habit. Even after hospital treatment the re-addiction rates are over 70 per cent. Such dismal results have led to the impression that opiates themselves hold the power of addiction over human beings. Similarly, cocaine has been described in the media as “the most addictive drug on earth,” causing “instant addiction.” More recently, crystal methamphetamine (crystal meth) has gained a reputation as the most instantly powerful addiction-inducing drug — a well-deserved notoriety, so long as we keep in mind that the vast majority of people who use it do not become addicted. Statistics Canada reported in 2005, for example, that 4.6 per cent of Canadians have tried crystal meth, but only 0.5 per cent had used it in the past year. If the drug by itself induced addiction, the two figures would have been nearly identical. In one sense certain substances, like narcotics and stimulants, alcohol, nicotine and marijuana, can be said to be addictive, and it’s in that sense that I use the term. These are the drugs for which animals and humans will develop craving and which they will seek compulsively. But this is far from saying that the addiction is caused directly by access to the drug. The reasons are deeply rooted in the neurobiology and psychology of emotions.

politically correct claptrap for ‘extremely messed up’. Most of the children in Jessie’s class were the product of appalling neglect, both mental and physical, and abuse, also both mental and physical. They were the children of alcoholics and drug-addicted parents, of parents who spent half their lives in jail, the rest of the time trying to spend their welfare on booze, weed and crystal meth. That was if they even had parents to speak of. Many of Jessie’s pupils were being reared by their grandparents; sad, tired, ill-equipped people whose hearts were in the right place, even if they did not have the wherewithal to help their grandchildren in ways other than to feed and house them. Jessie lifted a pop-up picture book from under a desk and slotted it into what they romantically called ‘the library’, though it was little more than two shelves of tattered books bought and

I asked the boy who wept what it felt like, crystal meth, the prettiest name for a drug besides heroin. Crystal methamphetamine. His head fell back. He closed his eyes, then opened them. 'Come on, you know . . . you're just high as fuck.' Then in a dramatic whisper: 'Everything goes silent like a midnight of the mind.

have crystal meth over in Natchez?” “Of course we do. I’m not interested in the meth. I’m interested in the men who make and sell it.” Walker’s eyes narrow, then go wide with comprehension. “And what exactly do you want me to do?