Meth is making everyone insane.
 

In the ER, we see a lot of meth-induced-psychosis, but it has really gotten bad. Meth is cheap, and it is everywhere. Opioids are a problem and fentanyl added to that problem with more overdoses, but meth often goes overlooked because it doesn't cause as many deaths in some places and people don't think it causes as many deaths, and yet, it does, and it is destroying people's minds and leading to a rise in homelessness and taxing our social systems. Here is why meth has changed and why it is causing psychosis so quickly and aggressively and how we really don't have a solution or chance in hell about stopping it from the supply side:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...w-meth/620174/


Again, the war against drugs is ineffective. In some ways, the laws we create to make drugs illegal and to combat drug trafficking only adds to the problem; the article highlights that when it discusses the shift to P2P. We need to work more on demand with education, de-stigmatizing users, programs to reduce poverty and homelessness, so people don't turn to drugs, etc. It won't be easy, but we need to address this issue or the mental health and homelessness will continue to get out of control.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-...-to-stop-using

It's pretty sad stuff. I used to take my young son to this taco place downtown he really liked. I read a story of a fellow who scored some Fentanyl and an hour later was laying dead in the entrance of that taco place the day before we were there once.
Meth or really any drug that causes one to be essentially become incapacitated is pretty horrible. I guess way back it was alcohol, then heroine, then of course Fentanyl which causes so many accidental ODs. Meth is a unique one that erodes at the person, rather than just taking them out. It's pretty sad if the numbers are high and there isn't a strong community effort to confront the problem.

Sounds like it's not my problem

I firmly believe that drugs use is highly linked to mental health issues. Considering also that access to affordable medicine in this country is almost impossible, and how mental health awareness has only recently gotten more spotlight, I can see how drug use has risen over the years. Add a whole year in quarantine for people who already have home related issues.

I have said this on my weight-loss thread, even if you are trying to better yourself, your mental health must come first before making any changes to your body, it is useless to force yourself into a diet and workout program if your mental health is not in line. It is also impossible to be a part of "normal" society if your mental health is not considered and there aren't programs that help you deal with the dark passengers in your mind. Imagine living paycheck to paycheck, barely making it thru the week, why not relax with cheap drugs when the other options is going to an expensive psychologist and expensive medicine.

Bad teeth too. Who needs to eat when you can just get high instead though? I mean it sucks that people get roped into it. We all have our ways of escaping. I prefer virtual reality games or literally getting into an airplane (or my sailboat) and just blasting off this rock for awhile. Regardless we all have our ways of disconnecting, could be as simple as going hiking, or drinking a beer (hopefully responsibly), but we all do it. Meth is not a constructive way of escape but it must be a 'good' way if it leads to pychosis the disconnect must be insane. To me it seems self-destructive. I'm not sure if the average meth user is slightly suicidal or if the experience is just that good they don't care (or both)? I agree that the war on drugs was lost (maybe never had a chance to begin with). I think the only thing that will stop it is if there is some way to 'make' a meth user make the conscious decision to stop on their own. Is there a methadone for meth? I'm not sure how effective that is or not for opioid addicts. It's hard I think for most average people to understand. They may be dealing with mental or physical pain beyond our comprehension. Even if they didn't have a super hard life and just made bad choices anyway they now probably are still in a place that's hard for any of us to understand. The main rule of life is that everyone dies, most of us try to prolong it for the most part but we all find our own balance of pleasure usually at the cost of health. It's a tough thing even philosophically to say how much person has a right or not to choose to live fast and die hard. How much time and effort should we spend trying to make people make better choices? Or 'undo' their bad choices? How do you even reach a mind that has been chemically altered to who knows what? Way above my pay grade... Why is sugar legal?

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I drank and used suboxone, benzos and muscle relaxers for 11 years. I also smoked cocaine once for a year and a half. Alcoholism and addiction are mental illnesses unlike any other. I got sober 7 yrs ago (for the second time in my life) and pray I never go back to my old ways. My only addiction now is trolling this forum.

This explains everything.....

I mean... I see the connection to poverty and such. But it's not (just) a poor people problem. There's something else causing people to seek this kind of escape. Failing to care for each-other? Never having enough of anything (real or perceived)?

It has been linked to early onset schizophrenia and dementia though not clear on if they would have developed those conditions anyway with age.

drugs aren't necessarily the problem, the folks that abuse them especially alcohol are almost always in rough situations...unless a solution is out there to figure out how to get these folks in better situations rampant drug abuse will always occur..

I really wish at the very least for alcohol we could stop the Big Corp from advertising it everywhere.

I see ads all the time. Watch a baseball game? See a bunch of ads for beer, whiskey, etc. We want baseball, a national pastime, to be a family-friendly event. Even going to the game itself you're inundated with alcoholic stuff. Some carts on the concourses only sell beer, have bottles displayed everywhere. There are now massive advertisements with alcohol companies. People literally from Coors or w/e trying to get you to sign up to pledge not to drive home drunk. You're lucky if most of your row isn't full of people double-fisting $15 cups of beer.

And that's just alcohol. I'm not anti-alcohol but none of this type of stuff helps the issue.

I would drink on good days and bad days. Life situations only mattered when I needed an excuse

Well, the first article is long, but basically says the efforts to stop meth production from ephedrine sources like Sudafed encouraged the production of P2P, which created variants that either are inherently more damaging to the brain and less pure or that the other chemicals used to produce P2P are toxic. The result is that people are developing schizophrenia, acute psychosis, paranoia, etc at higher rates, much faster and to a greater degree. In many ways, this is true of synthetic opioids and other designer drugs versus the natural compounds; the natural compounds are far less harmful to the body, but in the case of meth, it is on a whole different level of how it destroys the brain.

The article mentions how long time users of meth could count on a progressive decline in health such as heart disease and mental problems, but the deterioration took years or decades, but now the P2P meth is causing psychosis immediately or within a far shorter period of time. This is what we are seeing in the ER. Far more users are now clinically psychotic, most likely for life.

The second article mentions programs to incentivize sobriety. It is one idea of many that will be needed to address this problem. The crazy thing is I have not only never seen so many homeless, but the homeless I am seeing are far different. It is like a zombie apocalypse out there. They are tweaking hard and talking to themselves. They are collecting all sorts of trash and building their forts like busy beavers that can't help themselves. It is very different than the homeless with a box or tent on the sidewalk or users of alcohol or heroine that pass out somewhere. The meth users leave this path of destruction wherever they go. It is sad and bad for everyone.

Dr. Carl Hart says 80% of users of drugs aren't living entirely dysfunctional lives like we think. Like a guy who chugs a twelve pack each night, many people use drugs while maintaining jobs and relationships. A smaller subset abuse them, but with meth, this is much more common, and with P2P meth, the damage is almost guaranteed.

I think it is time to legalize all drugs (pharmaceuticals and the drug policing machine won't allow it). The synthetic alternatives are worse and causing more damage. Legalize it, regulate it, and reasonably tax it and funnel the taxes back into education and prevention programs.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/10/n...art-drugs.html

In Aus I often see news that says "drugs and alcohol" implying that alcohol is somehow not a drug, it is a separate problem from other drugs.