Helping People Addicted to Methamphetamine

This work details the physical and psychological descent into methamphetamine addiction, using interviews with addicts to illustrate, and describes paths to recovery.

Meth addiction also ravages life for spouses, children, and other family members, as well as communities.

In this work, two experts on methamphetamine addiction and recovery explain why this drug has such a physical, psychological, and social draw for addicts despite all the damage it causes.

Methamphetamine, made easily in clandestine labs from over-the-counter ingredients, can cause depression, rapid tooth decay, psychosis, sensations of flesh crawling with bugs, paranoia, skin lesions, and kidney damage. Still, use has spread nationwide. In this work, two experts on methamphetamine addiction and recovery explain why this drug has such a physical, psychological, and social draw for addicts, despite all the damage it causes. Vignettes from addicts take us inside the subculture of meth users. Authors Taylor and Covey explain why this drug and its addiction is different from other illicit drugs and why, therefore, the treatment needs to be specifically tailored in order to be effective. Stephan Jenkins, singer for the band Third Eye Blind, says methamphetamine makes you feel bright and shiny, but it also makes you pathetically and relentlessly self-destructive, so much so that you will do unconscionable things to feel bright and shiny again. This drug, made easily in clandestine labs from over-the-counter ingredients, can also cause depression, rapid tooth decay, psychosis, sensations of flesh crawling with bugs, paranoia, skin lesions, and kidney damage. Still, use has spread nationwide from California to Maine, with known addictions now highest in the West, Midwest, and South. Treatment admissions for methamphetamine addictions have increased more than fivefold in the last decade, with a federal report in 2006 showing 136,000 known cases. Meth is particularly addictive to women because it causes rapid weight loss. The results, as shown in recent cover stories in Newsweek, National Geographic, and USA Today, are pain for far more than the abuser. Meth addiction also ravages life for spouses, children, and other family members, as well as communities. In this work, two experts on methamphetamine addiction and recovery explain why this drug has such a physical, psychological, and social draw for addicts despite all the damage it causes. Vignettes from addicts let us see inside the subculture of meth users. Authors Taylor and Covey explain why this drug and its addiction is different from other illicit drugs,...

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