Straight Talk About Crystal Meth

Let's get one thing straight. Crystal meth does not make anyone's head shake or jerk back and forth. They don't run screaming through the house jerking and panting for breath. Hollywood loves to exaggerate. The thing is, an experienced meth user appears normal when passing on the street. They adapt. Oh, sure, if you know them personally, you could pick out the traits. Insanity rears its ugly head all too often.

In a Nutshell

It's like the ultimate, motivational flow of energy. It's like you have purpose, though you start thirty different projects or jobs and end up completing none of them because everything in your environment distracts you. Everything around calls you to interact with it in a project, also. And everything is such a great idea, a fun, purposeful thing to do!

On the way to the back room to retrieve the scissors to finally fix the hemline on the kitchen curtain, for instance, you spot the shoes in the floor that you wanted to put blue laces in last week but never did. So you pick the shoes up. Another few inches into the trip to get the scissors, you see a paintbrush on the dryer that you could use to finally finish painting the bathroom with, so you pick that up. A few more steps, and there's the missing camcorder battery your husband was searching for the previous night, so you realize you simply must stick it in your pocket, but you have to set a few things down on the dryer before doing so. You back up a few steps, set everything down, stick the battery in your pocket to surprise your husband with, and then . . . what were you going to do anyway? Something about the kitchen . . . No, maybe it was the bedroom? And the original project with the kitchen curtain's hemline is long forgotten, and truly does not come back to your memory again until you next spy it and remember it needs mending. But you won't remember the fiasco that made you forget it, only that you just never got around to doing it.

And almost every time you are high on crystal meth, the same scenario is repeated, albeit with different playing pieces, different projects, different distractions, or sometimes even all the same ones, over and over again. It makes it very easy to get stuck in your own home for days, even weeks, without going anywhere, without completing anything. Without any true purpose, though you are bound and determined to believe otherwise. And as crazy as it in fact is, to be perfectly honest, it's fun as hell. Well, I mean, it must be, right? There must be something you get out of it in order to keep doing it, huh?

The problem is, it's a lie. Oh, you think and believe and sincerely know it's fun as hell, while you are high, that is. If you have a pretty solid connection delivering to your door, especially. Sometimes it takes months to realize that your house is a freaking wreck and that all this time, My God, the debris, the torn apart crap, the extra computer speakers that you don't really need anyway, laying about everywhere, is quite a sight. Not to mention the fact that the room you smoke meth in never gets vacuumed. A sane person may ask, "Why?" Well, I'll tell you. People tend to drop the tiny, crystal shards, and when that solid connection gets spooked or busted and your frequent flyer miles have landed for a spell, there's no option but to crawl around on all fours and collect those tiny shards that you or whomever may have dropped.

It's funny, really, because when a room full of people are smoking meth and one person abruptly looks at the floor because he dropped a piece, all eyes eventually fall on the owner of the room if the shard is not immediately found. It's an unwritten knowledge, I suppose, between users. Speaking of knowledge, there's so many different ways to pull microscopic debris and would-be crystal meth chunks from shag carpet, though I doubt "Jeopardy!" will ever feature the category. In case they someday do, I'll keep those memories and information to myself, thank you.

But when that connection runs out . . . when it's time to withdraw . . . when you're sitting around looking at this world of a mess you are in and realizing that you must clean it up without the "motivation" that contributed to its unsightly disarray, things appear quite different. They appear quite different, indeed.

Other Messes

It's like repetitive death when knowing every single little detail of neglected emotion that you will never be able to give to your children the same way, because when they needed it, you did not give it. Maybe you didn't realize it because you overlooked them constantly when high. Maybe you did realize it. What's the difference? Perhaps you figured you'd make it up to them, "but for now, I just got to get one more hit."

It's knowing they have grown traits and reasoning and beliefs due to your cowardly escape into drugs while they yearned for and needed loving guidance. It's knowing in the depth of your very being that you would rather be slain over and over again instead of reliving the memory of seeing their faces when their hearts break . . . because they think you love drugs more than you love them. And you see how they drew that conclusion.

But worse, knowing that they normally hide their heartache from you because they know it hurts you deep down. And hurting you deep down is not an option for them. Never. How about this? Knowing they try not to ask too much of you, because they are trying to love and understand this new, confusing parent who is always busy or on edge or sick or making wrong choices or acting stupid. Or promising to paint their bedroom whatever color they like but, like all the other projects, never completing it.

It's knowing that if you were to ever find a genie in a bottle, the only wish you could mutter (through the waves of deafening sobs of gratitude that there exists such a chance) would be "I want to go back to the day that I decided to try drugs and reverse the decision." The only wish that could top that may be "I wish drugs had never been created," but that would carry significant effects and probably wouldn't do as much good as you had hoped, because we as humans will always find something to push the limits with, to feel better, to be "happy."

And damn, if all that up there ain't just the happiest of things that you'd picture for your life and family, put the freakin' stuff down and actually say "No!" when It comes calling for your choice.