Informative Essay On Meth

Meth, also commonly known around the world as ice, crystal, crack, or yaba. This very

potent and dangerous drug is taking our world by storm. Starting on the west coast, it swept the

nation and is now found all over not only America, but the world. There are nearly twenty-six

million users worldwide, and this drug isn’t one that lets you go.

Meth, short for methamphetamine is one of the most addictive substances on the planet. It

combine the hyperactivity of cocaine, with the hallucinations of LSD. The drug is said to give

users a confident, energized, and hyped feelings making them seem invincible to the world. But

it also makes the user extremely paranoid, hallucinations causing them to see things that are not

really there.

It can also make a user violent along with the feelings of paranoia. Why is

something that we know is so bad for us so popular here in America and in many other places in

the world? Methamphetamine provides a long lasting euphoric high, for not so high of a price. A

single hit that lasts anywhere from six to twelve hours may only cost the user somewhere near

twenty dollars, and with so many users, it is not a hard drug for one to get their hands on. Nearly

500,000 young adults try meth each year, so it is not hard to imagine that someone close to you

may have tried, or may be a user themselves. I personally lost a cousin back in February because

he was high on meth, and extremely paranoid someone was at his house, and started running

through a park in the middle of the night with snow on the ground, and a thin layer of ice on the

pond. After paranoia struck him, he tried running across the thin ice frozen over pond, but he

wasn’t as invincible as he thought, my cousin slipped on the ice, and fell through and died in the

pond at Pawnee Street Park in Wichita, and someone who was out jogging that next morning

found him there, no longer holding onto life. I saw first-hand how a chemical can take someone

away from their families, brothers, sisters and their own children. My cousin didn’t return home

to his girlfriend and eight month old son that next day. It takes the lives of many, and the two

college students were a good example in the video, their story unfortunately ending in death.

People turn to drugs to escape everyday problems they have in their lives. It is a way to cloud the

memory and mind from all the stuff that may not be working in ones favor. Altering the mind is

a good way to escape your own thoughts that become too much to handle.

Extremely popular in the state of Oregon and among college students, this drug

wants to be one with our society. Nearly one in twenty college students say they have tried meth.

These are people my age, getting wrapped into an addictive lifestyle with such hard escape. It is

hard to imagine lives being taken and thrown into a life of addiction at such a young age. Police

in Oregon have a challenge on their hands. It is so popular that nearly one in four people that

come through the jail doors in Portland have meth in their system— a fourth of offenders. And

85% of property crimes are accounted for by meth users. It’s a drug that makes someone do

crazy and irrational things.

Meth isn’t just common in the United States with the young crowd, if we travel across the

world to Asia, we see it has an immaculate effect on their society. More than 60% of the world’s

users are located in the continent of Asia, which makes sense because it was designed nearly 100

years ago by the Japanese. It is extremely common in Thailand where it is referred to as yaba. At

one point, yaba had control over nearly all of Thailand, with a captivating three million users at

its peak. In some cases, even bosses hand out this drug to their employees to keep their

production up, some users could report being able to work two full days and nights nonstop,

seeming almost superhuman.

Even with all these negative effects and extremely high addiction rate, this drug is still

used in prescription medicines to help children with ADHD. Although it is rarer now, doctors

still can prescribe the Schedule II drug to children or adolescents. It seems crazy to be able to

legally prescribe something that is so bad for the body and so addictive even if it is in smaller

doses than users use to get high. (www.drugabuse.gov)

We see now how this drug that is three times more powerful than cocaine can alter the

minds and lives of nearly everyone that uses. It leaves the body looking grave and deteriorated

and users may even leave intense scars on their bodies from picking at the imaginary ‘bugs’ they

feel crawling in their skin. The power this drug has is terrifying. Nearly 92% of users relapse

after treatment, getting sucked right back into the storm. This drug even the most popular in our

county. Law enforcement has to crack down and really be looking for the signs because this is a

drug that has no intentions of stepping down, we have to take it down. This is a drug that

takes

control and has no intentions of letting go.