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Methamphetamines
First impressions can always be deceiving; a person’s first impression of meth is usually a feeling of having all the energy in the world it is very intense and your body doesn’t need sleep. You can stay up all night and do whatever you feel like doing. (Booth) Eventually though, meth can start doing terrible things to your mind and to your body. Your face develops scabs all over, your teeth start to rot away, remembering things becomes harder and harder. Everything associated with meth after the initial feeling of when you first do the drug is very terrible. Going into depth and learning the truth about this harmful drug may possibly make a person want to change their mind about ever trying meth. The long term effects of this dangerous drug are so horrible that if everyone knew the truth, then maybe they would never even want to have a first time experience with trying meth.
Taking even just a small amount of meth can cause many different things to start happening to your body all at once. First you feel very awake tons of energy like you could go out and do almost anything you wanted to, absolutely no appetite, and your heart rate will shoot up dramatically. Those are just a couple of things that will happen to someone the first symptoms mentioned were also just short term, and happen mostly in the first stages of using the drug. Other things someone might begin to experience after excessive use are, anxiety, insomnia, severe hallucinations, severe anorexia, and eventually sometimes even death.(cite needed)
Meth is considered a very powerful schedule 2- drug. This means that the drug is very powerful and very easy for someone to get addicted to quickly. (cite needed) It is also a stimulant, which targets your central nervous system; much like caffeine and energy drinks it gives your body a huge boost of energy. Because of all the excess energy and good feelings associated with it meth is much easier for people to become addicted to. It is also a lot more powerful than most drugs and the high can last for a very long period of time. Meth can be made from inside some ones home and is much cheaper to make than most stimulant drugs. (cite needed)
Just combine the right toxins in exactly the right doses, iodine, hydrogen peroxide, cold medicine, and batteries just the right way and you have yourself a very highly addictive and dangerous drug, meth. All over the country meth labs are proving to be more and more dangerous for the people using them and the communities they are forming them in, and law enforcement that is busting the labs. The communities are endangered because even a small meth lab could cause a huge fire and potentially damage other houses in a neighborhood. The law enforcement is endangered because upon finding the labs they could be severely hurt by either the lab itself or the people who are running it. These labs are so dangerous because all the chemicals they are cooking with are very toxic and extremely flammable and have the potential to explode or cause fire at any moment in time. Lately the people who are making the meth are locating their labs in more rural places with stronger odors than a small community mainly because the scent of the lab would be much harder to pick up on if they were out in the middle of somewhere like a dairy, because those odors are so much stronger. (clint)
A lot of people can be severely injured, or sometimes-in very extreme cases even killed in a meth lab. Almost all of the things that are used to make meth are very toxic and very dangerous to work with because they are so flammable. One of the main ingredients is very flammable and just one little slip up can cause a horrible fire, and anyone cooking the meth or around the actual lab can be very severely injured. There are fires all over the place because of these meth labs constantly exploding. In one case some people were working on a meth lab in their home and it eventually ended up catching on fire, two of the people were trapped under some stairs and burned to death right there on the scene. (Gard)
Another main attraction of meth that might lead a person to wanting to try the drug, especially women is the fact that it can drastically decrease your appetite. While on the drug food just doesn’t taste good and your body doesn’t feel very hungry. This will cause a person to loose a lot of weight with absolutely no problems in doing so. In recent statistics the number of women who are using the drug has been growing, the common description of a woman user is usually had low self-esteem and a very poor body image. Some other reasons that a women might be more prone to using the drug would be that they come from an abusive relationship and need something to turn to while trying to escape the pain. In 2004 statistics showed that in an addiction center in Montana 49% of the patients being treated for meth abuse were in fact, women. (drug addiction)
After a long period of time using the drug, the symptoms can begin to get more and more severe. Someone can start experiencing an extreme case of insomnia, because the drug is stimulating and gives you all kinds of energy your brain may never feel the need to give your body any sleep, a person could stay awake for days at a time. Doing this is very harmful for your body, not resting for long periods of time can have many harmful physical and emotional effects. Violent behavior may be yet another horrible symptom, someone may not be able to control what exactly they are doing, or possibly just become violent because they cant get a hold of the drug and all they have to look forward to is their next high. Paranoia is yet another symptom; you could start really believing that people are out to get you. Of all these symptoms the one that is the worst because you can physically begin seeing it on your body is when you start having illusions. Most commonly meth addicts start to believe that there are bugs crawling all over your skin. These really are not bugs though, and one of the reasons someone might think this is because meth is composed of so many poisons, the toxins start to leave your body through the pores, and then give you the feeling of bugs crawling all over you. After a while you may start to pick and scratch yourself all over just trying to get the bugs off of you. After a long enough time of this self-mutilation, cuts and scars will begin showing up, they are usually very deep and very visible. Another one that is very visible and disturbing is something known most commonly as meth mouth. Basically what meth mouth does to you is it starts eating away at your teeth and gums. Soon a person can start loosing their teeth, their gums look red, puffy, and extremely infected. (booth)
Another reason people may really start to enjoy meth the first few times they try it is because it sends out a very high level of dopamine out to your entire body. Dopamine is a happy chemical your brain can produce naturally anytime something good might happen to a person. It releases throughout your whole body and makes you just feel really happy and really good. Overtime without the use a meth a users body can begin to not be able to produce its own dopamine, the brain becomes dependant on the drug and without it someone may never feel happy or excited. After long-term use it could take a recovering addict up to at least two years for his or her brain to actually start sending out dopamine and giving someone a feeling of happiness. (drug facts)
There are many different ways a person can take meth, all of which can be very harmful to your body. Some of the different methods people select to use the drug include the following, inject it, snort it, smoke it, put it in a pill capsule and take it, even sometimes melt the solid and then inhale the gas that comes off of it. Even just after a short amount of time a person can be extremely hooked to the drug, they need it in bigger doses and much more often. Someone could go from needing the drug once a month to needing it once a day and then in extreme cases even almost every single hour. There are a lot of different street names for meth such as, biker’s coffee, chalk, chicken feed, crank, speed, stovetop, yellow bam, ice, crystal, and many others. Some of these can be very obvious, and others might not be. Users might use these names in public places to avoid people figuring out what they are talking about, and to avoid getting in any trouble with the cops. (methamphetamines)
Meth can also be a major spreader of the deadly disease HIV. The reason is because when a person does meth they get a huge burst of energy and feel as though they can do basically anything they want for as long as they want. Also when a person does meth it increases the sexual activity of someone and nothing compares to sex while being on meth. So eventually there are numerous amounts of people most likely having unprotected sex because their judgment is very altered and they wont be thinking clearly. HIV is a very easily spread disease, once one person in a group of drug addicts get it, there is a very good possibility that the rest of them are all going to get it. The main way the disease can be spread might be from the users who are sharing a needle to inject the meth into their bodies Most of the time a lot of meth addicts use the same needle, so if one person in the group has the disease HIV, they can spread it to everyone else who might also be using that needle, so if meth isn’t killing people then HIV definitely is. (NIDA)
Another thing that meth can do is give someone an increased feeling for sexual activity. For the first few times using the drug it can somewhat be known as a form of an aphrodisiac. A large number of meth users admit that one of the main reasons they really get into the drug is because it heightens the good feelings a person might experience while engaging in sexual intercourse. Unfortunately though for these people this effect does not last very long. Soon, roughly around six months of using the drug a person can not even enjoy sex without being on meth, which is another way that someone can get addicted so easily. One of the reasons reported as to why meth is so hard to fight is because of the sex appeal. (methamphetamine)
Meth is a very dangerous and highly addictive drug. People who use it start of thinking that it will cause all their problems and make their lives so much better, but in the end it can destroy someone. A person who uses meth just throws their life away, all they care about is their next high. One of the hardest things to do is get off meth. All around the United states though there is a huge drug war going on, for example the Montana meth project that just launched a huge campaign warning young people about event the first time using meth that it can destroy a life. Maybe if more people really knew the facts about the drug then there would be less of an epidemic and less young people destroying their lives just so they can get high.
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