Crystal meth, known in Iran as shisheh, or crystalline glass, has in a very short time become Tehran’s drug of choice. Meth is to sedative opiates, one could say, what new Tehran is to old Tehran. Injecting meth brings a quick rush of energy: energy to keep pace with zooming inflation and attaining unimagined achievements. It boosts your self confidence so that the parade of late model Porsches becomes palatable, so that you can more easily imagine yourself the soon-to-be lucky owner of a penthouse in one of north Tehran's residential towers. It heats up to a boil your hidden talents, letting you rise out of an expanding and indifferent crowd. It melts away the inhibitions that seemed to be the largest barrier between you and all the new sexualised human objects. It will make you optimistically elated, more so than the evening news on national TV. And without a hint of exhaustion you soon expand your domain to the latest international currency indexes and precious metal options. When you smoke meth, you become loquacious, a poet – and profuse verbiage is the currency of middle class trade in this metropolis.
The city is always ready to help. You can usually walk a short distance in any direction and purchase history’s cheapest drug at a trifle per gram. You can sprinkle a dash into your pipe, or snort it through your nostrils and inhale deep into your lungs as you promenade along Hemmat highway. The crystal meth chimes with a marching drum-roll in your head. You are finally tuned into the rhythm of the city, ready for the next 72 hours.
But Tehran has a bipolar temperament: euphoric, then sulking and dark. Too soon, your heart begins to drop, as does your body temperature. You sense your skin shrivelling onto your dry bones, you feel your mouth desiccated like south Tehran’s destitute streets. Your heart is squeezed like the alleys of north Tehran at noon, their most depressing hour.
You feel vanquished as migraines smother your once exquisite talents, and disorientation turns your dream palaces into desolate ruins. You flap like a wounded bird, and you try to close your eyes to force sleep, just as parts of the city are forced into sleep by the energy-saving rationing of public lighting. But, alas, you are not the city, your eyes are closed but sleep is evasive.
Night has again fallen and Tehran is in the grasp of meth. Because you are not alone. While there are no reliable statistics on drug use in Iran, the state welfare organization suggested last year that at least 8.2% of all Tehranis aged 15-45 had tried meth. The government admits they lack statistics on addiction, but officials have suggested meth is the 'second most widely used drug in the country'. In 2010 alone, the authorities seized 1.4 tons of methamphetamine, the main ingredient in crystal meth. In the Iranian year 2013-14, they seized 3.5 ton of crystal meth and closed down 375 laboratories making it. But authorities have uncovered only a small number of the labs - euphemistically called ‘kitchens’ as in the United States – making meth.
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