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Surging trend of methamphetamine abuse rocks the American landscape



Surging trend of methamphetamine abuse rocks the American landscape

Old 03-25-2005, 04:40 PM
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Doug
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Surging trend of methamphetamine abuse rocks the American landscape

"My son scares me."

"I'm worried about my friend. Her husband keeps beating her up. Sometimes she'll go to a battered women's shelter afterward, but she ends up going back to him because of the meth. They're both hooked on it. They've lost everything and live in a motel room now."

"The neighbors have a shack behind their house, and there are some suspicious things going on out there. We worry about the little kids we see over there too."

"My daughter has lost so much weight and has been acting so peculiar…"


"Meth abuse is changing the American landscape unlike any other illegal drug before it," said Carol Falkowski, director of Research Communications at Hazelden. "I answered 13 of those calls myself after the story ran. I suspect we would have had many more, but we had to leave the TV station at 11:00 p.m."

That substantial response to the meth problem in just a 45-minute time span underscores the surging trend of meth abuse across the country, says Falkowski, who has monitored drug trends for nearly 20 years as part of a drug abuse surveillance network for the National Institute on Drug Abuse. According to the 2002 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 12.4 million Americans age 12 and older (5.3 percent of the population) had tried meth at least once, with the majority of past-year users being between 18 and 34 years of age.

Drug abuse emergency room (ER) visits involving amphetamine and meth increased 54 percent from 1995 to 2002, according to the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA), with significant increases cited for cities from the Northeast, Midwest and South. Once largely confined to the Western region of the United States, meth abuse is now widespread in big cities and small towns alike across the country. Cities such as Newark and Baltimore saw ER visits jump by more than 500 percent from 1995 to 2002. SAMSHA also reports that treatment admissions for amphetamine/meth increased fivefold in the United States from 1992 to 2002.

Meth is playing havoc with our criminal justice system as well. In 2003, male arrestees tested positive for meth at high rates in several major cities, including Honolulu (40.3 percent), Phoenix (38.3 percent), Sacramento (37.6 percent), Des Moines (27.9 percent) and Omaha (21.4 percent).

A dangerous stimulant drug
Developed in the early 1900s to treat fatigue and narcolepsy, meth is a synthetic stimulant with a high potential for abuse and addiction. Chemically speaking, meth is closely related to amphetamine, but the effects on the central nervous system are greater with meth. The drug stimulates brain cells and enhances mood and body movement by releasing high levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine. It also appears to have a neurotoxic effect, damaging brain cells that contain dopamine and serotonin (another neurotransmitter). Continued use of methamphetamine is believed to reduce levels of dopamine, which can cause movement disorders like those seen in Parkinson’s disease.

When the neural tissue in the brain is damaged, the effects can be long-lasting, Falkowski explained. “Meth exposure can damage the areas of the brain related to both cognition and memory. In some cases, even years after discontinuation of use, some brain functioning may not be fully restored.”

Meth can be taken orally, snorted, injected, or smoked. Methamphetamine hydrochloride, which can be inhaled by smoking, is often called “ice,” “crystal,” or “glass,” because its clear chunky crystals look like those substances. Immediately after smoking or injecting the drug, meth users experience an intense, euphoric “rush,” followed by 8-12 hours of high-energy behavior, during which they do not eat or sleep. While those who snort or take the drug orally do not experience the same “rush,” they have the same sustained behavioral effects. Meth causes increased heart rate and blood pressure, and can cause strokes. Meth abusers can also suffer respiratory problems, irregular heartbeat, extreme anorexia, cardiovascular collapse, and death.

“Methamphetamine was the most popular drug in San Antonio in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, when I was in my teens,” said Jim Atkins, manager of Admissions and Case Management at Hazelden in Center City, Minn. “I fell in love with it the very first time I used it. It took away all of the awkwardness and self-doubt of adolescence and instantly made me feel like I was invincible. When alcohol was added to the equation, I would act on pretty much any impulse that popped into my head. Unfortunately, some of the impulses that pop into the head of an 18-year-old are not very pleasant, and a lot of damage was done to a lot of other people.”

Atkins said he would go for days--sometimes up to a week--without sleeping, causing sleep-deprived psychosis. “In addition to being under the influence of the drug itself, the psychosis from sleep deprivation kicks in, adding to the weirdness. I would have visual and auditory hallucinations, which were sometimes quite entertaining, and sometimes very frightening. Toward the end, they were almost always scary, especially the auditory hallucinations. It’s not like you hear some voice telling you to kill your poodle; you hear sounds that are actually there--like the wind or a dog barking--and you think it’s someone calling your name.”

The hallucinations and paranoid delusions common to meth users (which one young woman described as “heart-stopping scary”) place those around them at high risk, because users can react violently if they feel threatened. This combative and unpredictable behavior makes it especially challenging for police and emergency management teams who go to the scene of a meth emergency.

Internet fuels meth’s popularity
Unfortunately, meth is relatively cheap and can be manufactured from products and medications that are commonly found on the shelves of farm supply, grocery, drug and hardware stores. Prior to the enormous popularity of the Internet, the manufacture and distribution of meth was more guarded and controlled--often by Mexican drug traffickers, who continue to smuggle it into this country.

“In the ‘old days’ there were fewer labs but they made huge quantities of meth,” said Atkins. “Then the Internet came along, and the formula for making it spread throughout the world in the blink of an eye. Today, there are little meth labs all over the place.”

Whether in a home in the country, an apartment in the city, or in a run-down shack on a farm, clandestine meth labs are accidents just waiting to happen. “Mixing volatile, poisonous and flammable substances has toxic and sometimes explosive results,” said Falkowski, adding that every unit of “finished product” of meth produces six units of dangerous waste that contaminates surrounding buildings, groundwater, wells, land and air. Because of the dangerous toxicity, meth cleanup requires a hazardous materials response, which means the Fire Department, a hazardous materials team, and a specially trained team of meth technicians are needed. Cleanup typically costs between $3,500 to $5,000, but some lab cleanups cost as much as $20,000. As police budgets decrease and meth labs increase, the problem of locating and dismantling meth labs increases exponentially.

These first responders can never know what awaits them when they approach a clandestine meth lab, and they can never fully prepare for the shock of finding young children in the midst of filth and danger. Some 3,400 children were affected by meth lab-related incidents in 2003.

“What I’ve seen as it relates to children are sights that normal people would have flashbacks for years about,” said Sgt. Dave Kouras, a clandestine meth lab technician for the St. Paul Police Department. In the meth documentary, “Shadow Across America,” produced by Hazelden and Twin Cities Public Television (TPT), he describes finding malnourished, frightened and neglected children with respiratory problems, liver damage, injuries, or other problems from having been exposed to their parents’ toxic drug and lifestyle.

Many experts are also worried about the growing popularity of meth among girls and young women who use it to lose weight. “Young girls who never used drugs before are told by a friend, ‘Here, just smoke this and you can lose five pounds in a weekend,’” said Falkowski. In no time at all, however, they can end up addicted and emaciated, looking very much like the World War II photographs of Auschwitz prisoners.

Once known as a party drug, meth also seems to be making its way into the workplace, where employees use it to combat overwork, stress and long hours.

Treatment works for meth addicts
The good news: Meth addiction is treatable. “My biggest fear is that the masses will start believing the fear mongers who want them to believe that meth is so different from other drugs that people who are addicted to it can’t be successfully treated,” said Atkins. “Any time a ‘new’ drug comes on the scene we go through this. It happened with cocaine, oxycontin and ecstasy, and it will happen with the next big drug craze. But addiction is not about drugs, it’s about people. Treatment isn’t about beer or pot or valium or cocaine. We’ve been successfully treating meth addicts,for many years, and their abstinence rates a year out of treatment are statistically no different than they are for all Hazelden graduates--about 60 percent.”

Because of the extreme physical toll meth abuse takes, Atkins said that patients often need to sleep and concentrate on nutrition when they first begin treatment. Because meth addiction and withdrawal can resemble bipolar disorders and other mental illnesses, it also takes time initially to sort out what symptoms are caused by the drug vs. another condition. After this “differential diagnosis” is made, however, treatment for meth addiction follows the same path as does recovery from other drugs.

Intensive treatment is key
Hazelden has consistently found a multidisciplinary approach that integrates the Twelve Steps as a fundamental guide to be the most effective mode of treatment for alcohol and other drug dependence. As is evidenced in the accompanying article, it has also determined that the 16-week Matrix Model works extremely well as an intensive outpatient treatment protocol for alcoholics and addicts, especially those addicted to meth.

Often, staying clean and sober means changing one’s environment, said Atkins. Sometimes, recovering addicts enter a halfway house as an intermediary step after treatment, because their home situation is not safe or conducive to recovery. “The key is to provide them with the level of care they need. We don’t treat meth addicts or heroin addicts; we treat individuals, all of whom have their own story to tell and their very own unique set of circumstances to face.

“We talk and listen to the patients without judgment,” Atkins continued. “We hold up a mirror to them in a respectful way to help them see the consequences of their addiction. We teach them what they need to do each day to stay sober. Recovery from addiction is not easy, but it is no more difficult for someone addicted to meth than it is for someone addicted to alcohol.”

Hazelden offers a number of books, videos, workbooks and other information on meth abuse, addiction, treatment and recovery. A new trade book, Meth: America’s Home-Cooked Menace, will be published in July by Hazelden Publishing and Educational Services. Hazelden and Twin Cities Public Television recently produced and aired a two-part documentary on meth abuse: part one, on the problem of meth abuse, is called “Meth--Shadow Across America,” and part two, about the solution, is titled “Life After Meth.” The latter includes testimonials from recovering meth addicts.


--Published in The Voice, Winter 2005
 
Old 03-25-2005, 08:08 PM
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Ann
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Thanks, Doug. My son is a meth addict and it's articles like this, as grim as they are, that give me hope for his recovery one day. And the information helps me understand his addiction and what it does, and that helps me too.

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