Meth: a Ticking Timebomb Gone Viral

Regrets...I've Had a Few

I'm watching 'Alone, Grizzly Mountain' at the moment...I love seeing human nature and how we are without all the clutter and activity...the devices, technologies and comforts all taken away. That's how we lived not that long ago...exposed to the elements and dangers...the only difference is on the TV show, there's no tribe...and isolation is what causes the most tap outs.

When I began my drug use, it was speed that was available. It made me confident, happy, sociable...I had energy to burn and would dance the nights away or talk endlessly to others at parties or bars...it was fun back then.

Amphetamines are amphetamines right? Well, I'm here to tell you that's wrong. When I was young, we smoked pot grown in the bush from strains that had medium levels of THC that we thought was the best. If I were to go back and give my friends the hybrids that are grown now, we would all be greening out (vomiting from overdoing it).

Methamphetamine, or crystal meth, is not the same drug only stronger than the speed we took back then, or at least, the effects are very different. Meth doesn't make the user want to go out and talk, dance and sing, it isolates the user. We become paranoid, it causes OCD like symptoms, it dries the body internally...sucking all the water out of the organs and peeing it out because of its diuretic effects.

We become so manic when high, that we literally forget to drink water in order to replace all that is lost over the days and nights we are likely to remain high (I wouldn't sleep for up to three and four nights and hardly drink any water during this time) and of course, this can have major short and long term effects from constant dehydration. The colon is the most water hungry organ in the human body, and so, constipation is inevitable for anyone addicted to meth...kidney stones are also likely as well as thickening of our blood raising the possibility of heart attack and stroke.

Brain damage is a forgone conclusion. A scan of my brain to see what I have done in my thirty years (or it could be forty or twenty five...it's hard to count exact days when there are breaks in between...not counting all the other meth-like drugs I took during this time) of abusing this drug would be a very scary proposition for me to undertake, knowing there is no way to repair the damage done. All I can thank for my being able to write as I do? My guess is brain plasticity...I am quite literally a walking, talking miracle and how I am not dead or completely unable to function I cannot fathom.

There is no doubt I have sustained damage that will reduce my life expectancy, and going by the stats, I should already be dead...yet, here I am, still typing away and producing worthwhile pieces of writing that may just be a part of why I can still function as I do.

In any case, I will accept my fate, as we all must...and you never know, stats don't identify 100% of cases and I've been lucky so far. Maybe I have a purpose, or maybe I will be diagnosed next week. I just hope I don't turn around one day and regret all of this life I have lived...but that's an easy thing to say now.