METH: The New Crank of the 80’s
and Drug Treatment Center “Killer” of Today.
"Mom, was it fun growing up in the eighties?” My 13-year-old son asked me this morning. “Of course, it was fun,” I replied. “I had a blast.” Those of us who experienced the end of the sex, drugs, and rock & roll era had a blast. However, when the eighties ended, so did our ignorance in terms of the consequences that drugs would have on us and those who loved us.
If you were like me, you partied hard as a teen - drinking, smoking pot, and in the small town in Nevada that I grew up in, snorting bathtub crank – a highly addictive methamphetamine. Shortly after my first Ozzy Osborne concert in January of 1989, my parents drove me out of the fine state of Nevada and dropped me off at my first of many drug treatment centers. At eighteen, the fun had stopped, and I had to face the destruction that I had created while using crank.
Crank was cheap, cooked in bathtubs, and cut with ephedrine. Back then, it was known as the poor man’s cocaine. Today, crank is almost never found on the streets. Ephedrine is illegal, and the bathtub labs designed to cook up a batch are a scientific experiment of the past.
Addiction to methamphetamine, however, is not. Drug treatment centers have seen methamphetamine addiction skyrocket as Crystal Meth, crank’s evil stepchild, has taken hold of many people across the nation, including many in my hometown in Nevada.
Recently a report released by the office of Nevada’s governor, Jim Gibbons revealed alarming statistics. Of those who used drugs, 45% of adults, 41% of adolescents and 82% of pregnant or parenting women report that crystal meth is their drug of choice. Per capita, Nevada has the highest meth use statistics in the nation according to several sources.
If I remember correctly, Nevada was number one in the nation for crank abuse in my youth as well. I don’t know what it is about the high desert that has created this phenomenon. Definitely though, meth abuse is a reality, not just in Nevada but across the nation.
Meth is usually smoked or injected, so the high is immediate. Hallucinations and paranoia can occur once the drug is in the system. The aging process speeds up. Teeth are destroyed. Skin is picked until sores appear. Internal organs are ravaged. But the addiction itself, the need for more, doesn’t go away. Attending a drug treatment center is almost inevitable for the meth addict, and the number of meth addicts far outweighs the resources available in the US, creating a problem for society the likes of which have never been seen before. The drain of meth addiction in every state in America is shocking and ranks with poverty, hunger and illiteracy in terms of major problems of the nation. On top of this, most programs are not very successful with complete and lasting rehabilitation for addicts.
However, overcoming this addiction is possible. Some drug treatment centers are more successful than others, and it is important to ask about their success rate. The higher the success rate, the more likely it is that their methods will work.
Now, I have my own teenager who is so eager to ask me about my youth, so curious about drugs, so interested in everything that made the 80’s a blast for me, including the music. At least he asks questions, and I can say this, he will not go through his teenage years ignorant of the effects of drugs and their consequences.
