How Meth Is Used

We get a great many emails from people who are considering experimenting with methamphetamine. Questions like, "Can you use meth just once?" "Can I try crystal meth without getting addicted?" "Is it true that methamphetamine is instantly addictive?" "My friends are using methamphetamine, and they seem okay."

So in this section, we're going to honestly tell you some of the great things methamphetamine does for you when you begin using it, and then we're going to honestly tell you where that will lead. Meth would be terrific if you could use it only when you felt like it, but normally, that's not the way it works. Methamphetamine works in a very critical area of your brain, and it affects very critical processes within that area. So don't compare meth to marijuana, because that's like comparing a kitten to a highly irritated mountain lion. So here's some truth about methamphetamine:

Like all addictive substances and behaviors, methamphetamine begins as a solution, but it doesn't stay that way. What begins as a solution to your problem, becomes the problem. And it's a big one, because it completely takes over. While meth starts out making you feel incredibly more confident, will ultimately have you hiding behind the couch from voices and people that aren't really there. While methamphetamine gives you super-human sexual drive and stamina, will ultimately leave you either incapable of achieving an orgasm, or impotent and unable to feel sexual arousal at all.

And while methamphetamine helps you concentrate better, after a while, all you can concentrate on is getting more meth. And in many cases, your children, family, friends, and anything else you ever loved or cared about will either become secondary to methamphetamine, or be neglected entirely. Typically, meth doesn't "share" its victims. It consumes them entirely.

And if like a lot of people, you start using meth to lose weight, you'll continue to lose weight - so much so that like many meth users, you'll start telling people that you have an eating disorder to excuse the fact that you look like a skeleton. And given enough time, you'll also start telling people you have a skin condition as an excuse for why you have sores on your arms, neck and face. And in many cases, you'll ultimately end up looking so strange you won't have to make up excuses anymore. And that's because the only people that will go near you are other meth users, who also look like hell and whose lives also revolve around methamphetamine.

And when it comes to sex, your inability to achieve orgasm, or being completely impotent are going to become the least of your worries. If you keep doing meth, ultimately the only people who will even want to have sexual relations with you are people who look as bad as you, people who are giving you meth for sex, or people who want your meth.

Normally we look at inhibitions as things that are good to be rid of. But some inhibitions are there to protect us and meth is going to take those away as well. Like having sex without a condom with multiple partners, all of whom are complete strangers and people you'd never even associate with if you weren't using meth.

And for many, it'll take away other inhibitions too - like leaving your children with people you don't know, or leaving them completely alone for days at a time. You'll feel a lot less inhibited about committing crimes as well, because meth will tell you it's okay as long as the end result is more money for more meth. The bottom-line is that ultimately, anything and anyone that gets between you and meth is going to be of secondary importance, or no importance whatsoever.

LIke we said previously, meth - like all addictions - doesn't share its victims. Ultimately, meth will hijack your brain and completely convince you that it is everything, the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega. It's going to lodge itself in the most primitive area of your brain, and that's where it lives and operates from because that's where all your most basic and primal needs and instincts are. Methamphetamine doesn't have to worry about the rational part of your brain, because it disables it. So as well as everything else, you're going to lose the ability to make a rational decision.

And we're not trying to scare anyone, it's just a fact. The clinical name for it is "anhedonia." And it's the inability of your brain to feel pleasure from normally pleasurable things. Things like eating, exercising, hanging out with your friends, sex, etc. And that's because meth ultimately destroys your brain's reward system. You can get it back, but it's a long road back for some. But don't take our word for it, go ask several recovering meth addicts if that's true. Just log on to the KCI Meth Forum and ask that question, because they'll tell you the truth.

Just remember - what begins as the solution to the problem BECOMES the problem. Not usually, not sometimes - EVERY time - given enough time. That's the way meth addiction works, and that's the way ALL addictions work.

But like we said earlier, everybody is a little different. Some people go downhill fast with methamphetamine, others take longer. Some people are actually able to hang on to jobs for a while and even run businesses. But no matter how fast you go downhill, make no mistake, when you're using meth, you're going downhill. Like all substance addictions, methamphetamine addiction is progressive and relentless. If you continue to use it long enough, you're going to end up in an institution, behind bars, in treatment, or dead. And of all those outcomes, the least likely one is death. However as any recovering meth addict will tell you, while meth usually doesn't kill you, in the end it always makes you wish you were dead.

On the next page, we're going to take a look at such factors as dosages and the actual methods of ingesting or taking meth.