Meth is like...instead of getting your salary once a month, your boss comes to you and gives you the salary over the next 20 or 30 years saying here it is all. If you eat up all the money too soon you're fucked, but you can't say meth took something from you, like a robber stole your TV set because it simply isn't true. Meth just gave you an opportunity to mismanage your resources.
I can vouch this is a pretty great fucking description of this shit.
Well I agree wholeheartedly to most of what Ksa said, but this statement in particular does not apply to every drug equally. Some drugs are much more habit forming than others, meaning once you try them you are far more likely to end up with a habit than after trying certain other drugs. Very few people begin using a drug with a future daily habit in mind. From this you can deduce that psychotropic drugs can have an impact on the amount of control you have over your behaviour. It ends up being a philosophical or spiritual question about free will. The lab rats surely can't stop what's coming to them once they get a taste of that sweet drug laced water.
To clarify my point, let's assume there is an imagined drug out there that (so far) has caused 100% of users to develope a habit. Ksa's analogy about a person's freedom to manage his resources would still ring true, but does it really apply when no one manages to use said resources in a sustainable manner? The same goes for a person's control over his behaviour while on a psychotropic drug which I will get into after the next quote by reference to psychostimulants.
I just disagree with that. Alcohol is very hard on the body as is with meth and i think its just as close to the damage it can do. Im not saying meth doesnt do damage but i think the images they show in the media are the very extreme cases. Sure they could be on meth but i think alot of that is basic hygiene and sleep that are making them look that way. Im sure you could come up with some good mugshots for alot of shit. No drug should be villainized here like meth has.
Alcohol is a horrible drug once a person loses control over it's use, it can be extremely destructive in terms of social environment, somatic and mental health. That being said, there is no contest between recreational drugs for who does the most damage. Bottom line is: You are fucked if you use a drug daily or fail to use it at the low frequency you originally intended to stick to due to addiction. The tolerance will eventually cause a desire to up the dosage, leading to an increase in the total amount of substance that the body is directly exposed to (physical/chemical properties doing direct damage) and has to metabolize/excrete. You don't want to lose control over your drug use, which unfortunately happens to most of us at one time or another.
Now the images on meth are rough, they might be photoshopped a little, but I agree that almost everything you see on these pictures is due to behavioural factors:
-The teeth decay is due to clenching of teeth, sweet drinks, infrequent food intake and dry mouth (the last being direct pharmacological effect though)
-The wounds in the faces are due to compulsive scratching and picking of the skin
-The weight loss is due to a diet too low in calories and lack of sleep
-While this isn't reflected in the pictures, the psychological changes, especially psychotic states are massively facilitated and exacerbated by lack of sleep
Unfortunately, what stimulants do is not just make you feel stimulated, leaving you in full control over your behaviour. They influence your behaviour. It is no coincidence that meth users skip their sleep and meals (to the point where both become the exception), it is no coincidence they clench their teeth and have to consume a lot of sugar (in order not to starve), it is also no coincidence that compulsive behaviour like skin picking or scratching is seen in a lot of users. This is exacerbated by the pharmacological effects, mostly vegetative (sweating and paresthesia providing cues for compulsive scratching or skin picking, dry mouth exacerbating the dental health issue).
Of course it's perfectly okay to consume methamphetamine on a recreational basis, assuming a user has full control over his drug use. This is usually not the case and even if it is it can not be foreseen. Chances are occasional recreational use turns into a full-on daily habit and this is when things get ugly. Almost everyone tries booze, not just individuals predisposed to SUD. The vast majority of people who try methamphetamine already have a pre-existing SUD though, which is why alcohol seems more benevolent and not as addictive, the reasons are mostly cultural imho.
I'll assume you've never been on stimulants daily for extended periods of time or you'd know how heavy such a habit can be on the mind and body. There just is no way around it with use spinning out of control. Personally, I used to have trouble going to bed at night despite taking my amphetamine in the morning right after waking. The half life of methamphetamine is significantly longer, up to 30h in some unfortunate individuals. How are you going to maintain healthy sleep patterns or stick to a healthy diet when you never ever have any appetite or desire to sleep and wake up 3h into the night feeling fully refreshed?
Again, legit medicinal use at low doses can be well tolerated over very long periods of time (yes, genuine methamphetamine IS available as medication in the US, the brand name is Desoxyn). The danger lies in the substance use turning into abuse, due to conditioning/reinforcement leading into addiction which in turn leads to tolerance increasing the side effects and load on the body. Especially the tolerance to the appetite suppressing effects of methamphetamine (this is not the case for amphetamine) increases underproportionally relative to the desired effects, causing the lack of appetite to turn into a bigger problem with rising tolerance.
Once you're hooked you aren't gonna give a shit whether the boozers are worse off than you when it comes to their somatic health - A fucked liver, brain and peripheral nerves is what awaits them, cardiovascular disease or a major psychotic episode is not unlikely to kill you. It's just like the MS patient won't be cheered up by the fact of not having Parkinson's and vice versa - A direct comparison makes no sense whatsoever unless you are dead set on acquiring one habit or the other. Me personally, I start to develope a liking in booze whenever I use stimulants, so picking one or the other isn't really an issue that way.
Both can be extremely destructive, but both can also significantly enrich a person's life when used "responsibly" (you never know in advance if you can pull that off, I sure the fuck can not).
So in short: I don't listen to the media. I avoid news sites that write about "meth" (I avoid all news sites actually), I don't read the newspaper and I haven't watched TV in 12 years. I do know the "faces of meth" meme and I dislike it for the same reasons you do. However there is more truth to it than you might think.
I neither have a problem with stimulant users other than that they can be annoying as shit and usually degrade in character throughout their use, for whatever reason that is (probably mostly social factors). That's just my experience with stimulant ab(!)users. It is also my first hand experience, that it is hard to maintain control over stimulant use for some people (here: me) and that it can be a very destructive habit causing severe long lasting psychosis that in many cases can never be recovered from in full. It wreaked social havoc on me. You have no idea how quickly shit can spin out of control. Almost 15 years of easily compensated recreational drug use, then total decompensation on every level within less than 2 years of daily use (amphetamine salts used orally, intended as a study aid).
If you need sources for specific statements I made, tell me which ones and I'll try my best to provide peer reviewed sources, eventhough a lot of what I say is based on my own experience and on observing others.
Gotta sleep off my IV amphetamine binge sometime today. What day is it? Speaking of... Shit! I forgot to take my crazy meds and haven't eaten anything in 40h - whoops! Well at least I stocked up on "Lipton Ice Tea Sparkling" and malt beer.
My teeth feel as if they have aged by a year during the last 24h, no amount of compensatory hygiene will alleviate that feeling.
Well, I say 'hooray for olanzapine', which is as close to an antivenom for amphetamine as there is.
