Crystal Myths : Meth & Misinformation

[methadist]

REThis article is really bullshit if you ask me.
My "bullshit" is supported by facts. Where are yours?????
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RE: 1,206 people a year is 1,206 too many!
According to DAWN, if you get hit by a bus and you have meth in your system, you go down as one of the those 1,206. In addition, those numbers pale in comparison to another drug called alcohol which is legal and claims 100,000 people per year.
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RE:Even if it is not closely associated with Violent crime as in murders(questionable). . .
Do you have a learning disability. The report said "violent crime", period! And when an extermely anti-drug entity like the U.S. Dept. of Justice says there is no correlation between Meth and Crime, it tends to have extreme credibility !
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RE:. . .it is closely associated with robberies
Once gain, not accoring to the U.S. govt and even if it were, legalization would bring the price down to affordable levels!!
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. . .they (meth users with schizophrenic symptoms) still pose a threat to society at large while they are persisting
Once gain, you are intejecting your OPINION aginst my FACTS - which are backed up by references from credible authorities.
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RE:Meth is addictive. period. (psychological addiction is just as real, ask some people who've been around meth a few years, 90-1 either themselves or someone they know has had a problem
According to the AMA, Eight billion doses of 31 different amphetamines were manufactured in the US in 1971* yet there was no epidemic of mass hysteria/violence as a result of their consumation!!
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REwho cares if it is the MOST dangerous drug or not?
A lot of people who have trouble with the blase' attitude towards the worst drug of all - alcohol
which is involved in 40% of all crime in this country!!
* http://www.chestnut.org/li/trends/methamphetamine.html
[ 16 May 2002: Message edited by: methadist ]
[ 17 May 2002: Message edited by: methadist ]

 

[pr0ficient]

Now Marijuana...That's an addiction!

 

[Dr.groveller]

Originally posted by AbraMontague:

What a stupid comparison. It takes more than a few weeks to get up to a gram of smack a day (months at least). And you are comparing that to a few weeks of cocaine use? Maybe if you put that coke in a syringe instead of up your nose then it might be a valid comparison.
Ooooooh, I have a better one. Getting sloshed for an entire week at Cancun and then stopping drinking is NOTHING compared to a 10mg a day xanax habit. No fucking shit!
Did you follow the thread? Specifically this:
Meet enough cracked out little three-day tweakers with "zombie-eyes", and you eventually decide that meth is a drug of concern.
That was my point that it's a fucking joke! Maybe you should fucking chill a bit.
doc

 

[SFeyesonE]

%)

 

[methadist]

Meth & Death
One problem!! Your stats on overdose are gleaned from a legal source, not a medical one.
Here's a stat from one of the most respected medical resources in the world, the Merck Manual:
"Even massive doses are rarely fatal. Long-term users have reportedly injected as much as 15,000 mg. of amphetamines in 24 hours without observable acute illness."
Crime Correlation
Your stats come from Phoenix & Southern California - two geographical areas which are overrun by Meth abuse. I'm sure the authorities there will go to any means to eradiate the problem - exaggeration & fabrication. My stats come from a higher authority - the U.S. Dept of Justice from a report called "Meth Matters" -compiled by people from a wide variety of discplines (medical,legal, sociological, etc) who presented these findings at the National Meth Abuse Conference in 1999.
Mental Illness
Sure schizophrenia is costly but meth induced schizophrenia is temporary !! If anybody suffers a permanency of this disease after using meth, then guess what? . . .they've had it all along!!!. My article discusses this in great detail
Addictive
You're right, there is no epidemic of mass hysteria/violence from nicotine addiction but there is a mass epidemic of heart attacks, lung cancer, lip cancer, emphysema, arteriolsclerosis, etc. from it!!
The conclusion of my article warns about the danger of Meth. The point of the paper is not to encourage its use but to point out how the U.S. govt has grossly exaggerated its harmful effects just as they have lied about other drugs in this fashion:
Marijuana - Insanity
LSD - Chromosome Damage
Cocaine - Birth Defects
[ 17 May 2002: Message edited by: methadist ]

 

[SFeyesonE]

%)

 

[methadist]

You are the one distorting the "truth"
METH & DEATH
"There were only 43 documented speed related deaths in the entire world " in the thirty year period between the end of World War II and 1975" (a period when they were abused the most) (1)
How's that for deadly????!!!! I'd venture to say more people have died from an overdose of chocolate!!!!
METH & VIOLENCE
"It's a common misconception that methamphetamine is concretely linked to violent crime. I've never seen that before, just as it was never observable with cocaine," Riley said"
- From the lips of the "enemy"!! Riley is a director in the National Institute of Justice, U.S.Dept of Justice
METH & SCHIZOPHRENIA
Temporary schizophrenia is NOT schizophrenia
Your logic is tantamount to saying that Sleep is the same as Death
METH & ADDICTION
"in reality addiction never needed both of these qualifiers"
I never said that - the World Health Organization did!!!!!!
Meth didn't appear to be addictive enough according to the old guidelines, so they simply changed the definition of addiction. Kind of Orwellian, don't you think? Just tear a few pages out of the dictionary!!!
(1)S Kalant, H. and Oriana J. Kalant. "Death in Amphetamine Users: Causes and Rates." Canadian Medical Association Journal. 1975.
[ 18 May 2002: Message edited by: methadist ]

 

[starlightgemini]

Originally posted by euphoria83ca:
its also easy to kick the habit.
/stares at blatent ignorance of he who said above phrase
some people try meth and fall in love instantly. some people try it and ask other meth-lovers "what is so great about this?" cause they just don't *get it*
sure, for some people, they can control their usage without problem. but don't even say for one second "its easy to kick the habit"--cause you can't make a generalization like that.
sorry--sensitive subject for me. i've been *actively* trying to quit since january. and it would appear to be may....yet i have made progress
anyways...
~*~kristen~*~

 

[PhreeX]

I will address a few of these points:
ADDICTION: -
I already covered this one .. it wouldn't meet the definition of "addictive" but I do believe one can become "hooked" on it to the point they are more or less an adddict... see, it doesn't do the same shit PHYSICALLY (as in neurological changes) that, say, heroin does - but there is a VERY REAL physical withdrawal when the user stops using... now if you ask about "psychological dependance" - oh hell yes you can get mentally hooked on it... no doubt about that, I can personally attest and if you think I'm the exception I could introduce you to about 30 other people.. well actually I can't because none of them have working phones, I think a few could be found crashing on the floor of Seth's apartment, and since it's a weekend I know that a few will be slinging 20-sacks over at Tom's house (where they will crash until Wednsday) .. I would wager that Rich still lives with his parents, which doesn't mean yer totally lame, except he is in his 30's .. Jen is more then likely still living in her car where she parks at the Circle-K that Johnny works grave at, he is one of the more successfull speedfreaks because he can sell meth through the store, don't think he has a teephone though, once he got a beeper in trade for a 20-sack and it was hooked up, dunna if he'd have the cash to make a long-distance call back here though.. oh, I'm rambling...
For all intents and purposes, lets just say it may be habbit forming and it can bring along all the nastiness that can accompany true "addiction" such as heroin addiction... to be fair, you can get "psychologically addicited" to anything from masturbation to the internet...
METH CAUSES AN INCREASE IN CRIME: -
No, the criminalization of all drug causes an increase in crime, but if you want to break it down to the SPECIFIC DRUGS that lead to high crime, then yeah, ya gotta put meth up there... we established that it could be lumped into the catagory of "addictive" (though not technically true) .. it's also fairly expensive, especially if you have a tollerance, and a hardcore speedfreak comming off a speedbinge, having been wired for a week can be paranoid and psychotic - if this person is breaking into your home and you stumble upon him, chances are he will run away, but if he is armed there is a good chance he WOULD shoot you.. I only say this because gun fire was all too common at our house, most of the targets were imagined or were mistakes...
In all fairness, I have seen some meth-heads commit some DANGEROUS and VIOLENT CRIMINAL ACTS because they were living the life they were .. of course potheads are not without their share of broken laws due to the influance of their drug - I have seen a few trash a vending machine when they didn't have change for a bag of BBQ Ranch Fritos ..
9.47 BAJILLION PEOPLE DIE EACH YEAR FROM METH - as well as - I JUST READ HOW LIKELY YOU ARE TO DIE YOUR FIRST TIME USING METH: -
I have seen several figures in this thread, and I don't know which is correct... again, if you want to get technical, to "die from meth" would entail suffering from acute toxicity, something that is probably fairly uncmmon .. a good number of "meth deaths" are actually cases of someone having a heart attack, or as methadist said, often the "medical examiners" will conclude it was a "meth overdose" simply because meth was found in the users system .. another bitch of a whore of a tactic when you see these lists of "Number of deaths" is to attribute a death to each drug when someone is found with multiple drugs in his system but the actuall cause of death is respiratoy apnea followed by cardiac failure..
The "little Billy dies on his first time, he only did a bump" stories fail to mention that the meth wasnt the cause of death, it was a pre-existing heart condition and the meth plus night of non-stop dancing simply raised the users heart rate too much ..
METH CAUSES SCHIZOPHRENIC SYMPTOMS: -
Yeah? So? And MDMA causes homosexual symptoms .. the bottom line is that it doesn't actually CAUSE Schizophrenia, just like MDMA doesnt make you gay (well, ok, the latter is open for debate)..
But I think we are going in circles here and I see insults being thrown, lets make sure we keep ourselfs in check with this! This thread is very close to being closed..

 

[AbraMontague]

Here is my favorite statistic to pull out when someone starts talking about how many people actually die from taking speed.
"The danger of death by overdosing on amphetamines is extremely low, with only 79 recorded OD deaths world-wide in the forty years up to 1979, almost all injecting users."
http://www.thegooddrugsguide.com
If you remember, amphetamines were added to the Controlled Substances Act in the 70's (in the US at least). So with pure speed (not made in your uncle's bathtub) freely available, there was only an average of 2 deaths per year over a 40 year period, almost all from injecting (which still rarely causes death).
"Contrary to a popular belief, however, speed–– even in enormous doses–– very rarely kills. Dr. Smith, for example, cites one case in which a speed freak injected 15,000 milligrams of the drug–– 15 full grams–– in a twenty four-hour period without acute illness. For neophytes, it has been stated, "death has followed rapid injection of 120 mg"; but "doses of 400 to 500 milligrams have been survived." 26 "Very few deaths have been recorded in which overdose of amphetamines has been causal" 27 Dr. Kramer declares."
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/cu/CU37.html
Drugs don't get much safer than that. The large number reported by the DEA each year includes anyone who dies (hit by a car, drowns, suicide, old age) and has a detectable amount of amphetamine in their system (could be sudafed even), drug interactions, and impurities/additives in meth. By contrast, NSAID's like aspirin, ibuprofen, and naproxen are solely responsible for approximately 7,600 deaths per year in the US alone (mainly from GI bleeding and peforation). And your doctor didn't hesitate to give you a script for one of these when you complained about pain, did he?

 

[Adom]

Somebody posts a well researched article debunking some rumors, and what do they get, a bunch of antidrug propaganda. I'm sick of seeing this crap on the nightly news, and I'm glad there's information like this out there so people can see both sides of the issue.

 

[pinesol]

metadist is talking big picture dude, you however - are not.

 

[ebola?]

>>it doesn't do the same shit PHYSICALLY (as in neurological changes)
So Amps won't cause changes in the density of dopamine (and other monoamine) receptors in the brain or the natural level of dopamine that is synthesized and released?
ebola
np: red hot chilli peppers

 

[methadist]

Meth has its "physical" negative effects:
1)It is neurotoxic (damages brain cells)
2)Depletes levels of dopmaines
There is a probelm with the above because there is no evidence that these changes are permanent. Degree of damage is dependent upon amount and frequency of use. In addition, recovery is proportionate to abstention.
Also, one should not confuse "physical addiction" with "physical damage"
[ 22 May 2002: Message edited by: methadist ]