Note: At the bottom of this post you will find a link to view the Faces of Meth.
If you are walking at night and come to the edge of the cliff, the smart thing to do is turn around. If you take another step the result is not likely to be good. Many drugs fall into the same category. To start taking some drugs is like walking up to that cliff edge, only the results are not so veiled. There have been many folks that have gone before you that have crashed and burned on the rocks below.
In the early 70s I lived in Rhode Island. I was single, and occasionally would party with a group of folks. Usually it was beer drinking and some pot. I had an ambivalent relationship with pot. Sometimes it made feel nice and mellow. Sometimes, though, it made me feel depressed and paranoid. I can achieve depression all by my lonesome, and feeling paranoid is no fun. At some point I decided that I did not like rolling the dice with unsure results. So I quit smoking pot. One evening before I quit, I went to visit my party friends. I walked in the house and they were all sitting around the coffee table. Upon the table were needles, a tourniquet, and other heavy duty drug paraphernalia. I had come upon a cliff in my walk through life. I turned around, and never went back to see those folks.
Meth is a terrible scourge upon our society, especially in rural areas. There are things that can be done to limit the problem, but we as a society choose not to. According to a 2009 Rand Corporation Study, the societal cost of meth lies somewhere between $16 and $48 billion dollars. In states like Mississippi and Oregon that have made Sudafed a prescription drug again, they have been rewarded with astonishing decreases in meth labs and property crime rates. See Surprise: Making Sudafed Prescription-Only Is Smart (And Pisses off Greedy Drug Companies) which is where I obtained the above facts.
Below is a link to a Memphis TV news site. There is a series of pictures of meth users early in their addiction and then several months to a few years later. The change in these folks is astonishing and disturbing. I do not believe you can scare anyone straight. I’m not even sure you can really warn them about a potential cliff they should avoid. But, maybe, just maybe if they could see their future they would think twice before stepping off the edge.
Warning: At least to me this was a disturbing slide show to go through.
Faces of Meth — link is gone
There but for the grace of God go I….
David, What a powerful message you have written. How thankful I am to God that you walked away. Wish others would do the same. Those pictures are so disturbing.