Meth Addiction Quotes

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

You know how people are always saying your parents are always right? "Follow your parents' advice; they know what's good for you." And you know how no one ever listens to this advice, because even if it's true it's so annoying and condescending that it just make you want to go, like, develop a meth addiction and have unprotected sex with eighty seven thousand anonymous partners?

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

I wanted to meet the monster. Why go down if you can go up?

Sophie and I would use her Christmas break to make homemade treats from our very own kitchen. I mean, if thousands of meth addicts can do it, why can't we?

I’ve heard 14 year old meth addicted thai prostitutes say more prescient things than the woman that was supposedly a “professor

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.

I can pretty much guarantee that you will at some point find yourself doing something that at one point you swore you'd never do. You'll do it for the sake of getting high, either directly or indirectly. Trust me. It will happen. You might think you know yourself better than anyone, but you have yet to become acquainted with your addiction. It will introduce itself in ways that you never thought were possible.

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

I was still trying to get my adrenaline levels down to an acceptable level. If a cop gave me a sobriety test right now, I would look like a meth addict in the midst of a giant tweaking.

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.

Don't kid yourself by saying that one time can't make you addicted. It can. I believed it couldn't too when I first tried meth. I was so, so wrong. The worst part about it is that you won't realize what has happened immediately afterwards. Addiction is a gradual process and it doesn't happen overnight. But trust me when I tell you that one time is all that it takes to set this into motion. It can and it will.

I was fucked and I knew it. I had stupidly wandered into some epic rape palace run by meth-addicted hobos and bald men with beards who recently escaped nearby jails and had taken over this place for their torture sessions with hapless young women they found exploring the coast. Even worse, I was going to be the hapless woman who decided to infiltrate their headquarters.

I tried everything I could to prevent my son’s fall into meth addiction. It would have been no easier to have seen him strung out on heroin or cocaine, but as every parent of a meth addict comes to learn, this drug has a unique, horrific quality. In an interview, Stephan Jenkins, the singer in Third Eye Blind, said that meth makes you feel “bright and shiny.” It also makes you paranoid, delusional, destructive, and self-destructive. Then you will do unconscionable things in order to feel bright and shiny again.

These days. Most of us have the attention span of a meth-addicted squirrel.

So, you got shit-faced, spray-painted a barn with a lovely shade of Exorcist-green puke, fucked a donkey while you were there, and started a fist fight with a recovering, meth-addicted nun and her lovechild who were reenacting the nativity scene?

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.

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

The room has Nic’s smell—not the sweet childhood smell he once had, but a cloying odor of incense and marijuana, cigarettes and aftershave, possibly a trace of ammonia or formaldehyde, the residual odor of burning meth. Smells like teen spirit.

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.

Yet they enjoy the high. In the surest sign that selenium actually makes them go mad, cattle grow addicted to locoweed despite its awful side effects and eat it to the exclusion of anything else. It’s animal meth.

Mass shootings are all part of a vast Left-wing conspiracy to undermine the 2nd Amendment and deprive your 6-year-old of his God-given right to bring a Bushmaster to class for "show and tell" ... The one he got from his psychotic, meth-addicted uncle's trailer while the latter was out getting the Confederate flag tattooed on his face. Remember, guns don't kill: the dimwits who insist EVERYONE should have the right to own 'em do.

My main concern was my teeth because they were in constant pain. Meth depletes the body of calcium, the vitamin essential to maintaining healthy teeth. It also includes acidic ingredients that can damage teeth. The ingredients include but are not limited to battery acid: Drano, over-the-counter cold medications like Sudafed, antifreeze, engine starter fluid, and brake fluid. Basically, pop the hood of your car and you can find the ingredients you need to cook meth. I’m no dentist, but I came to the conclusion that was the root of my tooth pain.

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.

I see a dude who looks like a meth addict across the street; I'm going to assume that's what this fiancée thief looked like, right? I mean, obviously, the only reason she would have left you for anyone else is if she suddenly lost her mind and got struck blind on top of it. Pretty action-packed, your wedding day." I looked at him askance. "I don't think that's quite her version of events." "Yeah, well," said Nate, "she's not here, so I'm just going to have to go with my version." "I could buy into that," I said, after a moment's consideration. "Excellent," he said, grinning. "Then you're going to love next week's installment in which he develops spontaneous alopecia.

I couldn't get enough of him. He was an addiction now, and I hadn't decided yet if he was a healthy one like eating apples every day or an unhealthy one like meth.

Every time the telephone rings, my stomach constricts. Long after the euphoria from meth is no longer attainable—Tennessee Williams described the equivalent with alcohol in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: “I never again could get the click”—addicts are agitated and confused, and most stop eating and sleeping. Parents of addicts don’t sleep, either.

It led her to conclude that meth addicts may be unable, not unwilling, to participate in many common treatments, at least in the early stages of withdrawal. Rather than a moral failure or a lack of willpower, dropping out and relapsing may be a result of a damaged brain.

She returned to numbness and despair. Life as it really was. A shrinking world of waiting terrors followed by nameless oblivion. The animate life of the Palms left her encumbered with the fact that she’d have to return to the crack house in the morning. Everything gnarled and black in her heart. Clara turned down seventh street. She heard the sounds of Joe snorting a bump of meth and the terrible rattling tick from deep in the car’s engine. She hoped for a message or warning in the tableau but was left wanting, as always.

Meth users include men and women of every class, race, and background. Though the current epidemic has its roots in motorcycle gangs and lower-class rural and suburban neighborhoods, meth, as Newsweek reported in a 2005 cover story, has “marched across the country and up the socioeconomic ladder.” Now, “the most likely people and the most unlikely people take methamphetamine,” according to Frank Vocci, director of the Division of Pharmacotherapies and Medical Consequences of Drug Abuse at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).

People are a lot easier to be around when they're not tweaking out on meth.

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

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

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.

The bar looked like a place where meth-addicted rats went to die.

A UCLA study has shown that an addict is twelve times more likely to relapse on meth if he smokes pot or drinks alcohol.

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.

A handsome woman with auburn hair cut short, wearing a silk blouse, cardigan, and wool pants, says that she is a doctor. Deeply sad, she admits that for more than a year she conducted surgeries while high on meth. She initially tried it at a party. "I felt better than I had ever felt before in my life," she says. "I felt as if I could do anything. I never ever wanted to lose that feeling.

I look back at the dismal statistics I was given years ago by a nurse about the success rates for rehab of meth addicts—single-digit success. I understand that it’s unrealistic to think that many addicts will stay sober forever after one or two or three or however many tries at sobriety, but maybe the more meaningful statistic is this, related by one of the lecturers at a rehab: “More than half of the people who enter rehab are sober ten years out, which doesn’t mean that they haven’t been in and out of sobriety.

I smoked my first pipe with Seth. I knew the stuff was bad, but I was so tired of being the cop, begging and ragging at him, throwing Pampers in his face when he walked in the door. I wanted to be on the same side again. So I smoked with Seth one afternoon when the girls were napping, and oh my God, I can only think about this for a minute or every part of me will turn into a mouth wanting more: the sexiness of it, fucking Seth like wild for the first time in months, going on even when the girls started to whimper and bang on the door. Then looking out the window and seeing the world shake itself to life: the heavy trees, the sky. And I was back on top. We were going to make it, Seth and I. The voice in my head was back again, telling me stories, too many to write down or even tell one from another.

I don't see money as evil or good: how can illusion be evil or good? But I don't see heroin or meth as evil or good, either. Which is more addictive & debilitating, money or meth? Attachment to illusion makes you illusion, makes you not real. Attachment to illusion is called idolatry, called addiction.

America has devolved,” Lustig once wrote, “from the aspirational, achievement-oriented ‘city on a hill’ we once were, into the addicted and depressed society that we’ve now become. Because we abdicated happiness for pleasure. Because pleasure got cheap.” The supply of it was everywhere. Like street dope.

We invariably come back to testing as a means of understanding drug use, even though assuming these tests lead to truth puts one on shaky ground. You simply can't prove something to be true or false if the means of confirmation are easily questioned. Consider how the National Survey on Drug Use and Health concludes every four years how many meth addicts there are in the United States. First, surveyors ask employers to give their employees a questionnaire on drug use. The survey asks employees whether they have done amphetamines (not specifically methamphetamines) in their lifetime, in the last year, and/or in the last six months. First, it seems unlikely that drug addicts will take this completely optional test; will answer truthfully if they do take it; and will even be at work in the first place--as opposed to home cooking meth. Further, since methamphetamine is just one of a broad class of stimulants in the amphetamine family, an answer of yes to the question about using one amphetamine can't be taken as an answer of yes to using another. And yet, for the study's purposes, anyone who says they've done any kind of amphetamine in the last six months is considered "addicted to amphetamines," and--in a way that is impossible to understand--a certain percentage of these responders is deemed addicted to crank.

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.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been told that meth is worse than most other drugs. To learn why, I continue my research, traveling to meet with more researchers who study meth. They explain that drug users often binge and increase their dosages in an attempt to recreate the initial high, but for meth addicts, with the depletion of as much as 90 percent of the brain’s dopamine, it’s no longer possible. As with many drugs, the dopamine deficiency causes depression and anxiety, but it’s often far more severe with meth. This compels the user to take more of the drug, causing more nerve damage, which increases the compulsion to use—a cycle that leads to both addiction and relapse.

Tuck had always been made smaller made than Stan. Narrow shoulders, tiny hands and short fingers. Even as a young man his brown eyes were always watering like he'd been crying and his face never took hair well. What he had instead were four or five patches of hair that looked like a cluster of bee stingers popping straight out from his cheeks.

the United States, at least twelve million people have tried meth, and it is estimated that more than one and a half million are addicted to it. Worldwide, there are more than thirty-five million users; it is the most abused hard drug, more than heroin and cocaine combined. Nic claimed that he was searching for meth his entire life. “When I tried it for the first time,” he said, “that was that.

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.

The Oregonian published an exposé by reporter Steve Suo that reveals that the government could have contained (and could still contain) the meth epidemic. Only nine factories manufacture the bulk of the world’s supply of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, but pharmaceutical companies—and legislators influenced by them—have stopped every move that would have effectively controlled the distribution of the chemicals so they could not be diverted to meth superlabs.

Sometimes the pain in the room is nearly unbearable. Without respite, we hear, see, and most of all feel with heart-tearing jabs the bleakness of the lives of people whose loved ones have become addicted to meth, though the “drug of choice” hardly matters. Meth, heroin, morphine, Klonopin, cocaine, crack, Valium, Vicodin, alcohol, and, for most, combinations of all of these. The people in the circle are different, yet we are all the same. We all have gaping wounds.

Pleasure, Lustig said, is fleeting; happiness is long-lived. Pleasure comes from taking or getting; happiness comes from giving. Pleasure is achieved alone; happiness with others. Pleasure comes from substances or things; happiness does not. Pleasure releases dopamine in our brains, the constant search for more; happiness releases serotonin, producing feelings of contentment, an end to consumption. All of which means, Lustig said, that pleasure can prod our reward pathways into addiction; happiness cannot.

The grandparents are raising the children because the biological parents have skipped off—for whatever reason, not always meth. The demands of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have often meant that both parents in a military family get deployed at once, and they leave their children with their grandparents. Layoffs of single working mothers lead a lot of families to decide to become multigenerational again. A wave of bipolar disorders and addiction to video games and gambling has also taken a toll on families.

Some people maintain that designating addiction as a brain disease rather than a behavioral disorder gives addicts, whether they are using alcohol, crack, heroin, meth, or prescription drugs, an excuse to relapse. Alan I. Leshner, former director of NIDA who is now the chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, agrees that addicts should not be let off the hook. “The danger in calling addiction a brain disease is people think that makes you a hapless victim,” wrote Dr. Leshner in Issues in Science and Technology in 2001. “But it doesn’t. For one thing, since it begins with a voluntary behavior, you do, in effect, give it to yourself.

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.

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.

liberty is self-mastery—the rule of the self, by the self. To have positive liberty, he explained, is to take control of one’s own mind; to be liberated from irrational fears and beliefs, from addictions, superstitions and all other forms of self-coercion. I had no idea what it meant to self-coerce. I looked around the room. No one else seemed confused. I was one of the few students taking notes. I wanted to ask for further explanation, but something stopped me—the certainty that to do so would be to shout to the room that I didn’t belong there. After the lecture, I returned to my room, where I stared out my window at the stone gate with its medieval battlements. I thought of positive liberty, and of what it might

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

sexual arousal induces dopamine levels comparable to morphine, and lights up the same nerve cells hijacked by cocaine and meth (in contrast with other natural rewards). Internet porn addiction may turn out to be the ‘purest’ behavioural addiction in that the brain changes found in porn addicts could most closely resemble those seen in substance addicts.

A primary factor in this shift is, as The New York Times wrote, “Mostly white and politically conservative counties have continued to send more drug offenders to prison, reflecting the changing geography of addiction. While crack cocaine addiction was centered in cities, opioid and meth addiction are ravaging small communities” in largely white locales. The “pathology” long ascribed to urban communities as integral and immutable characteristics of Black life (drug addiction, property crimes to support a habit, broken families) has now moved, with deindustrialization, into the suburbs and the countryside. By 2018, an estimated 130 people were dying every day from opioid overdoses, and over 10 million people were abusing prescription opioids.

As if they are a mountaineer climbing across the great slopes of Mount Everest, meth monkeys take quite the health risk. Their minds become mush due to sleep deprivation. Like pillows with way too many hours of sleep invested into them, these minds exhaust themselves and become overworked. Like that of old television shows, their minds become reruns on repeat.

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.

McLemore, by now a full-fledged meth addict, came to Springfield in 1996, just as the Nazi dope craze was taking off, and learned how to cook meth using anhydrous ammonia. “I moved to Springfield to get away from meth,” he laughs.

McLemore credits Steve Box with inspiring him to finally conquer his meth addiction. Three years ago, he attended one of Box’s Meth=Sorcery rallies.

McLemore had gone to the rally to humor his wife, who was also addicted to meth.

Methamphetamine has a reputation as an easy drug to get addicted to and a hard drug to quit.

An associated fallacy is that once you’ve acquired a habit, a meth addiction is almost unbeatable.

Meth is portrayed as a kind of superdrug—more potent and more addictive, and therefore more dangerous than any other drug.

You don’t have to go as far as the controversial psychiatrist Thomas Szasz (The Myth of Mental Illness)—who once quipped to journalist and author Will Self, “Putting drug addicts in treatment centers is somewhat like confining people with tuberculosis together and then getting them to cough over one another”—to realize that there’s a large population of addicts out there that mainstream medicine has failed to reach.

God, not government, is the answer to addiction, according to supporters.

But whether once someone is addicted, religion makes any difference, is still a moot point.

Is it possible for his dick to shoot meth or cocaine? Because I’m seriously addicted after one time. I need more of whatever the fuck he did to me. I’m not even kidding. Do fat mushroom-headed cocks have some magic-mushroom jizz?

looked up and down the mostly empty aisle. “It wasn’t just sex. It was . . .” I shook my head and tried to keep my voice down. “Cory, it was so much more. It was the best sex of my life. I can’t even describe it.” His eyes lit up. “How good?” “Is it possible for his dick to shoot meth or cocaine? Because I’m seriously addicted after one time. I need more of whatever the fuck he did to me. I’m not even kidding. Do fat mushroom-headed cocks have some magic-mushroom jizz?” Cory roared, laughing so loud that the man at the end of the aisle stopped and stared. “Yeah, I think I would have heard about that before now. Or had it myself.” “I’m not joking, Cory. Imagine a huge firework rocket. Now douse it in petrol, add some sparkles for funsies, then set it on fire. That’s what he did to me.” He leaned in and did some weird thing with his eyebrows. “It sounds like you had a prostate orgasm.” “Have you ever had one?” “Once.” “And?” “It was a firework rocket doused in petrol with sparkles for funsies and set on fire.” “And you never told me about this because . . .” “If I told you about every sexual encounter I have, we’d never talk about anything else.

I took his hand and pulled him away before he could get into a smack down with Stink Eye Susan and her basket full of plant-based tofu. Christ. Did she even know what tofu was? Marketing really preyed on the stupid. I looked up and down the mostly empty aisle. “It wasn’t just sex. It was . . .” I shook my head and tried to keep my voice down. “Cory, it was so much more. It was the best sex of my life. I can’t even describe it.” His eyes lit up. “How good?” “Is it possible for his dick to shoot meth or cocaine? Because I’m seriously addicted after one time. I need more of whatever the fuck he did to me. I’m not even kidding. Do fat mushroom-headed cocks have some magic-mushroom jizz?” Cory roared, laughing so loud that the man at the end of the aisle stopped and stared. “Yeah, I think I would have heard about that before now. Or had it myself.” “I’m not joking, Cory. Imagine a huge firework rocket. Now douse it in petrol, add some sparkles for funsies, then set it on fire. That’s what he did to me.” He leaned in and did some weird thing with his eyebrows. “It sounds like you had a prostate orgasm.” “Have you ever had one?” “Once.” “And?” “It was a firework rocket doused in petrol with sparkles for funsies and set on fire.

I looked up and down the mostly empty aisle. “It wasn’t just sex. It was . . .” I shook my head and tried to keep my voice down. “Cory, it was so much more. It was the best sex of my life. I can’t even describe it.” His eyes lit up. “How good?” “Is it possible for his dick to shoot meth or cocaine? Because I’m seriously addicted after one time. I need more of whatever the fuck he did to me. I’m not even kidding. Do fat mushroom-headed cocks have some magic-mushroom jizz?” Cory roared, laughing so loud that the man at the end of the aisle stopped and stared. “Yeah, I think I would have heard about that before now. Or had it myself.” “I’m not joking, Cory. Imagine a huge firework rocket. Now douse it in petrol, add some sparkles for funsies, then set it on fire. That’s what he did to me.” He leaned in and did some weird thing with his eyebrows. “It sounds like you had a prostate orgasm.” “Have you ever had one?” “Once.” “And?” “It was a firework rocket doused in petrol with sparkles for funsies and set on fire.” “And you never told me about this because . . .” “If I told you about every sexual encounter I have, we’d never talk about anything else.

Is this a working-class neighborhood?” I ask. “More like a dope-class neighborhood,” says Harris. “A lot of meth addicts live around here.

The more levelheaded outlook that addiction is at least partially a choice—the product of willful desire and human volition—is anathema to both points of view.

And both seem to share the belief that addiction is a form of possession.

There’s nothing magical about meth that automatically turns people into addicts.

As John Booth Davies writes in The Myth of Addiction: “[P]eople take drugs because they want to

Have we engineered foods to rush such a dose of sugar, fat, salt that they imbalance the brain’s reward system, causing it to respond as it does to addictive drugs?

Together, these experiments pioneered the evidence that sugar was addictive and hit the same brain receptors as did drugs such as heroin.

We are every masked nurse on a packed ward, every addict eating from the trash, every kid hoping for more than his crack-ridden street. We are every cop carrying someone’s child from a meth house.

Netherlands, which has a restrictive immigration policy compared to the United States. Most European nations, including the Netherlands, after all, have universal health insurance coverage, which makes drug treatment and psychiatric treatment more available, and the Dutch government subsidizes more housing. Finally, the Netherlands’ big success was with heroin, which has effective pharmacological substitutes, methadone and Suboxone, not with meth, which lacks anything similar. But there may be fewer obstacles than appear. The Netherlands has a private health-care insurance system similar to that of the United States and covered the people who needed health care in ways similar to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, which significantly expanded access to drug treatment, including medically assisted treatment, in the United States.4 San Francisco subsidizes a significant quantity of housing, as we have seen. While California is larger than the Netherlands, the population of Amsterdam (872,000) is nearly identical to San Francisco’s (882,000).5 And while California’s population and geographic area are larger and more difficult to manage than those of the Netherlands, California also has significantly greater wealth and resources, constituting in 2019 the fifth-largest economy in the world.6 And the approach to breaking up open drug scenes, treating addiction, and providing psychiatric care is fundamentally the same whether in five European cities, Philadelphia, New York, or Phoenix.

But every Monday night, McLemore holds meetings at Springfield’s Salvation Army Community Center that attract a regular crowd of thirty to forty recovering meth addicts,

McKinsey also estimated how many customers might develop addiction to, or die from, OxyContin. At one point the consultant suggested Purdue pay its drugstore distributors rebates of $14,000 for every addiction and fatal overdose OxyContin caused, to ensure that chains like CVS and others would keep distributing the pill.

YouTube video of a speech in which Dr. Robert Lustig contrasts pleasure and happiness. Pleasure, Lustig said, is fleeting; happiness is long-lived. Pleasure comes from taking or getting; happiness comes from giving. Pleasure is achieved alone; happiness with others. Pleasure comes from substances or things; happiness does not. Pleasure releases dopamine in our brains, the constant search for more; happiness releases serotonin, producing feelings of contentment, an end to consumption. All of which means, Lustig said, that pleasure can prod our reward pathways into addiction; happiness cannot. “America has devolved,” Lustig once wrote, “from the aspirational, achievement-oriented ‘city on a hill’ we once were, into the addicted and depressed society that we’ve now become. Because we abdicated happiness for pleasure. Because pleasure got cheap.” The supply of it was everywhere. Like street dope.

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

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.

District of San Francisco, where there was an enormous population in a dangerously

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

You know how some people develop addictions to manage their overwhelming emotions? Some people become alcoholics, coke fiends, potheads, pill-poppers, over-eaters, sex addicts or meth-heads. Well, Ann seemed to have a similar addiction to anger, he concluded. Feeling angry served the dual purpose of keeping others at a safe distance while drowning out all other competing and overwhelming emotions.

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.

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

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.

And our beer can had proven to have judgment as trustworthy as a meth addict with a pocketful of stolen credit cards.