When Kevin Ball of Terre Haute, Ind., got laid off from a construction job a few weeks before Christmas in 2002, his girlfriend suggested a way to make quick money. With a few bottles of allergy pills, a little acid, and some other supplies, he could cook up methamphetamine, a drug that's as easy to sell as it is to make. "I could turn $140 into $3,000," he says.

Naturally, it wasn't long before Ball started sampling his own product. "People say it's a bad drug," he says. "But when you first start taking it, you think they're all liars. You feel like you can do anything."

The feeling didn't last. As months went by, Ball lost interest in just about everything except for meth. Even after he was arrested and thrown in jail for manufacturing the substance, the obsession lingered. As soon as he was released, he resumed cooking and using the drug. He got arrested again, was released again, and went right back to where he started. "The third time I was arrested, I actually thanked the officers," he says. "They thought I was high, and they were probably right. But I just wanted it to be over."

Of all of the illegal drugs available in this country, meth is the cheapest and easiest to get -- so easy, in fact, that more than 12 million Americans have tried it at least once, according to a 2005 report from the Office of National Drug Control Policy. (Far more Americans -- 94 million -- have tried marijuana, but it doesn't have the same highly addictive properties of methamphetamine.)

What's the draw? Meth releases a burst of dopamine, which often leads to an intense rush of pleasure. Users describe a euphoria that can last 12 hours, more than even crack cocaine can deliver. The drug also gives many users a feeling of increased confidence, desirability, energy, focus, and sexual prowess.

"The broad appeal of methamphetamine may be due to the fact that the drug's effects closely mirror desirable goals in society," according to the Drug Policy Alliance, an agency that promotes treatment rather than incarceration for drug users. "It offers seemingly limitless productivity, better sex, weight loss and strong feelings of self-confidence and happiness -- at least in the short run. Its use, like the use of stimulants in general (from coffee and Red Bull to Adderall and cocaine), is deeply embedded in our culture, which emphasizes working harder, looking better, and fitting a week's work of activity into every day."

With chronic meth abuse, users are likely to need more of the drug to experience the pleasure it promises.

Unfortunately, pleasure is not meth's only effect. Meth can produce strong feelings of paranoia and aggression that make users more susceptible to both violent rage and suicide. Long-term users are also vulnerable to serious health problems, including, heart trouble, stroke, and depression. In addition, meth can cause severe tooth decay due to its dry-mouth effect, tooth grinding or clenching, long periods when oral hygiene becomes unimportant to the user, and its tendency to cause cravings for sugary drinks. Exposure to toxic chemicals in the smoke also harms the teeth and gums. Because meth causes the sympathetic nervous system to go into overdrive and damage organ systems, many chronic meth users may have a wasted appearance and look years, even decades, older than they really are.

Equally disturbing, recent studies suggest regular meth use may do lasting harm to the brain. Meth destroys dopamine receptors, making it harder and harder for users to experience pleasure. As reported in Current Opinion in Psychiatry, memory and other thinking skills tend to keep deteriorating for months after a person quits using; one small study involving brain scans of meth users showed that although the meth abusers regrew most of their damaged dopamine receptors, they continued to exhibit a level of damage to memory and motor coordination similar to that seen in people with Parkinson's disease.

And if people become addicted to meth, destruction often follows. Burglary, assault, domestic violence, child abuse, and neglect -- the impact of meth addiction goes far beyond each user. Ball, now a coordinator of a 52-bed treatment facility for drug addicts, has seen it all. "[Addicts] will rob from their parents to get more meth," he says.

In a 2006 survey, nearly half of all sheriffs across the country ranked methamphetamine as public enemy number one. In western states such as California, Arizona, and Nevada, every single sheriff said meth was the biggest drug problem in their counties. In many counties, the majority of inmates are there because of meth.

The drug's byproducts can also be hazardous to the environment. Meth is usually manufactured in illegal home labs found in kitchens, bathrooms, motel rooms, restrooms, and garages. The hazardous chemicals used to manufacture it are known to damage vital body organs or to cause cancer or brain damage. The resulting toxic waste -- which may include battery acid, toluene, and lye -- can cause chemical burns, nausea, or chest pain, or severely irritate the nose and lungs of anyone exposed to them, especially children. In addition, the leftover chemicals are often dumped into sewers or nearby woods and streams, causing extensive contamination.

For now, the drug is extremely common in the West and Midwest but relatively scarce in the Northeast. Still, it's only a matter of time before the epidemic reaches every part of the country, says Jane Maxwell, PhD, a research professor with the Center for Social Work Research at the University of Texas. Case in point: In March of 2007, agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) seized 75 pounds of meth in a single New Jersey raid.

Drug epidemics come and go, "but this is one epidemic that hasn't leveled off," Maxwell says. Many states have cracked down on mom-and-pop meth labs and restricted the over-the-counter sales of pseudoephedrine, a key meth ingredient, but meth or "ice" from Mexican factories has filled the void -- and then some. The Drug Enforcement Administration reports that methamphetamine seizures along the U.S./Mexico border jumped 75 percent between 2002 and 2004.

The DEA reports that the typical meth user is a white man in his 20s or 30s. He probably has at least a high school education, and he probably has a job. In recent years, the drug has become increasingly popular with women, teenagers, college students, and minorities. As the epidemic spreads, simple stereotypes of users continue to break down, Maxwell says. Street kids use it, but so do lawyers, movie executives, and homemakers. "Housewives try it to lose weight," she says. "And for a while, their houses are cleaner than ever."

Research shows that meth use has made its way into the workplace. Quest Diagnostics, a company responsible for more than 7 million workplace drug tests a year, found that in 2003 meth use among U.S. workers surged by 68 percent (although it decreased in 2005, partly as a result of workplace testing). According to a Los Angeles Times report, the California Bar Association stated that one in four attorneys in rehab is addicted to meth. And the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has recently fingered meth as a troubling problem for many U.S. workers, especially truck drivers, athletes, restaurant workers, construction workers, factory workers, miners, and white-collar workers -- jobs that tend to employ large numbers of young white males, the group most often associated with meth use.

"All these groups are especially susceptible to the illusion that meth is beneficial," reports the Department of Labor on its Web site. Citing fatigue, long hours, and the push for productivity in those industries, the agency notes that "workers may use methamphetamine in an attempt to be more productive… they are tricked or lured into believing that meth reduces stress by increasing their performance, concentration, and productivity by giving them energy to take on additional work shifts or to work for longer hours without the need to rest."

Indeed, workers may become extremely productive after they first start using meth, but their work quality declines with ongoing use, according to the Department of Labor. The agency notes that many workers are "low-intensity users" who swallow meth, mix it with a drink, or snort it, giving them a surge of energy to finish a task. But these bursts of energy and almost superhuman focus may soon give way to an air of distraction and an inability to focus. When coming down from a high, or "tweaking," workers may be anxious, unusually irritable, confused, and paranoid. For these reasons, the agency says, meth use can contribute to workplace violence, and -- in the case of addiction -- to identity theft, which helps people support their addiction.

Just like everyone else, workers have heard horror stories about meth, but they still think they'll able to dabble in the drug without getting hooked. "I've never met a user who didn't think he could handle it," Maxwell says. As Maxwell reported in a report for the Gulf Coast Addiction Technology Transfer Center, about one-fourth of users in Los Angeles County started taking meth because they thought it was a safer, cheaper alternative to other stimulant drugs. Nearly one-fourth of users were looking for extra energy and strength, and one in 10 was simply hoping to lose weight.

Perhaps the only bright spot is that meth addiction doesn't have to be a life sentence. Contrary to the popular misconception, users don't get hooked for life on their very first try, Maxwell says. Of those 12 million Americans who have tried meth at least once, only about 5 percent say they have used meth in the previous month.

When users do get addicted, "treatment works," Maxwell says. One effective treatment approach, called the Matrix Model, is a 16-week outpatient program combining cognitive behavioral therapy, education about the effects of meth, and a 12-step program. As Maxwell explains, it takes a multipronged approach to helping people conquer their cravings and avoid the situations and behaviors that encourage meth use. Depending on the seriousness of the addiction, some people may need to spend time in an in-house treatment program, where they can avoid dangerous temptation.

As reported by SAMHSA in 2006, demand for meth treatment has skyrocketed in recent years. Many people seeking help have trouble finding a program that isn't already full. The shortage of treatment options is especially severe in rural areas, including parts of the West and Midwest where the epidemic is most extreme.

In Terre Haute, Ball says he could easily fill another 50 beds at his treatment facility if he had the space. He's been meth-free for over two years now, but far too many people in his community -- and in the nation as a whole -- are still waiting for their chance to break the addiction.

—Chris Woolston, MS, is a contributing editor at Consumer Health Interactive and the co-author of Generation Extra Large: Rescuing Children from the Obesity Epidemic (Perseus, 2004).

Further Resources

Partnership for a Drug-Free America. http://www.drugfreeamerica.org

Montana Meth Project. http://www.montanameth.org

References

First published September 20, 2007
Copyright © 2007 Consumer Health Interactive