hoptis
Bluelight Crew
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Meth
Jack Marx
July 14, 2006 09:46 AM
In any talk about drugs, there is always a clutch who want to argue the toss about whether a certain drug is "addictive" or not, as if "addiction", "dependency", "habit" and "problem" are the John, Paul, George and Ringo of narcotics discussion, each drug authored primarily by one and not the others. Such talk might be useful in a purely scientific context, but where humanity is concerned it is a bigger waste of time than addiction itself. We all know what we are trying to say when we refer to "addiction", and I'm not going to add to the chinstroker's library by attempting to quantify it here. Perhaps a more useful analogy is to simply say that all drugs have a tendency to lead you to 'The Beatles'. Today, we're going to look at heroin, undoubtedly the White Album of the catalogue, but I'll post that around midday. In the meantime, here's that curious gatecrasher called crystal meth, which can only be described as Yoko.
CRYSTAL METH
People have been happy to go on the record about all manner of drugs, but not crystal meth. There's something about meth that's stopping users from talking, and the way they don't talk is strangely uniform - they break eye contact and look elsewhere, a coy smile, a close of the eyes and a swift shake of the head, more like a shiver.
Of course, the friends and acquaintances of meth users are happy to talk, and the nature of their 'happiness' is uniform, too: bitter, exhausted to the point of unsympathetic, and "off the record". For all society's knowledge of the damage drugs can do, and all the broad-mindedness of the drug libertarians, meth seems very much the curve ball nobody saw coming.
The great concern about meth is that, for users of 'lesser' drugs, meth can be taken without prior knowledge. A bit of a shape shifter, meth can come in the guise of white powder, a yellowish goo, a pile of brown glassy shards or a capsule. A lot of people I've spoken to claim to have taken meth for the first time believing it to be coke, speed or ecstasy, only to be informed later of the line that has been inadvertently crossed.
Like speed and cocaine, meth is an amplifier of alertness and confidence, banishing fear, shyness and modesty as if they're grotesque constraints of society. It's a very clean, fresh-aired, 'intelligent' sort of coolness - well-meaning and sociable, but far too muscular to be bothered with anything like compassion. Where MDMA promotes feelings of love and empathy, meth is less philosophical, more interested in primal issues than matters of egalitarianism. And it's here that the root cause of everyone's embarrassment about meth starts to rear its head.
The maypole around which meth does its dance is sex. The same 50/50 inconveniences that come with speed and cocaine apply, for which Viagra seems the most common solvent. But, without exception, all who speak of the wonders of meth refer to the intensity of the sex, where sight, touch and the mere thought of what is going on are invested with an indescribable pornographic magic.
To use the frank words of one user, "Meth turns girls into sluts and guys into creeps who think all girls are sluts." I wouldn't have bothered repeating this were it not backed up by at least some female opinion, but it is and unanimously. As one otherwise very sweet and reserved individual revealed: "On meth I just want to be a dirty slut."
Seems meth not only removes inhibitions, but promotes an almost evil delight in the wholesale confrontation of them. If an individual is spooked by a particular taboo, there is a good chance meth will upgrade it significantly, to the point where, by morning, the individual is entirely intimate with it.
There is no need for me to provide any titillating examples disguised as 'discussion' - if you have an imagination you can doubtless write them yourself. However, a good example of the extremes this can go to is an activity referred to by one gay meth user as "bugging" (other gay men I spoke to did not know of this word, but seemed familiar with the phenomenon anyhow), whereby one actively seeks to have unprotected sex with an HIV-positive partner, the danger of infection not simply ignored or dismissed, but the very thrill of the exercise.
Of course, with sobriety comes the reality of what has happened, no longer imbued with the magic and electricity that accompanied its creation. The memory of how sexy it was is still there, but in order to be able to live with it - or the partner with whom you indulged it - you've got to keep viewing it from a sexual perspective alone. Unless you have a job as a pornographer - or work at the Office of Film and Literature Classification - thinking 'sexy' all the time is just not productive, and you can't be on meth every day.
Or can you?
The repetitive conclusion to every crystal meth tale I know is the loss of relationship, job, friends, money, car/home/assets, teeth, and usually in that order.
What we have here is the classic Faustian contract: sign and you will receive an unspecified period of near supernatural bliss. The cost will be every day that follows.
Seems there will always be people who will sign that contract.
From Age Blogs (as always, with comments, loads of them)