What's your opinion on meth?

The fact that you have to ask is concerning…
It destroys lives….don’t do it.

I would not recommend it

Anything that is designed to zonk your mind and is addictive is not a good thing. Never tried it, and don’t have an urge to. I’ve never tried heroin either, but I have seen first hand what it does to a person.

I know a lot of addicts, so no I dont recommend it. Yes I tried it and loved it.
Should it be legal….generally I support the legalization so its pure and not tainted with fentanyl so everyone stops dying. I also think crime would gp down once cartels sell legally. Tough question because its incredibly dangerous.

It is very very very very very very bad.

@ragingloli A picture is worth a thousand words.

Seriously? Most people are concerned if they should ingest gluten or red meat. Now that’s a worthy question.

Don’t ruin your life mething with meth.

Also you can DM me if you need more info since my state was the meth capital of the US until Michigan took over.

I think it makes for great TV. Breaking Bad is one of the best shows I’ve ever seen and I will re-watch it for a second time some day. But if I learned anything from that show it’s that the money you could make from getting into the industry isn’t worth the destruction that it will bring.

Meth?
Something that I wish was never invented.

Ultimately. Regardless of the substance, it is clearly a problem with humanity choosing a brief extreme high, for an ever downward spiraling life.

As with almost every highly addictive substance it destroys the user, and will negatively affect anyone who is a victim of trying to help, or even being around the user and the people that the user associates with.

Essentially.
Think of ALL of your friends, and family swimming together.
Then, someone starts trying to swim with a cinder block.
Everyone who is nearby, or tries to help, risks drowning with the user.

Meth BAD.

I have NEVER tried it so I have NO firsthand knowledge. I did have a cousin who appeared to “have it ALL”...that is until he discovered meth. He was a gorgeous man with a beautiful smile. He had a beautiful wife that worshiped him & 3 precious children. He had the perfect job that afforded him the perfect home. Then he met meth & lost control of his life.

He had horrible sores all over his face & one by one ALL his teeth either broke off or fell out. By that point, he was broke & couldn’t afford a dentist or doctor. He lost his house, his big fancy car, & eventually killed the love of his wife. The 3 kids cried every time he came home. Eventually his wife & kids left him. The worse it got, the MORE meth he did. He ended up on the streets.NO family would help him because he’d steal from them with them standing there watching. He STOPPED caring about anything but when he was going to get his next fix. He died before he was 30.

ALL that let me know that I NEVER want to “try” it because I might love it!!!

Anything that makes all your teeth fall out can’t be good.

Meth keeps me employed.

My daughter was a meth addict and manufacturer many years ago. Her recovery and return to her family is truly a blessing.

@filmfann And rare. Very happy for you both.

I’ve lost so many friends and classmates young to meth. If treatment were low cost and readily available it would be such a blessing to many.

And Krokodil is even worse, because it causes straight up necrosis

^I especially liked the pics of necrosis with the maggots crawling on the open wounds. ~

That’s a lot like asking what’s my opinion on murder.

A close friend’s son got caught up in meth as a teen. He wound up living with an older man and trading sex for drugs. Later the man kicked him out because he became too awful to live with. He spent some time on the streets as a weird freak with matted hair who talked crazy and liked to run around naked. Now he’s in jail, been there six months. My friend expects to bury him one day.

I’ve seen many other examples of ruined lives around where I live. There are homeless camps not far away. Meth is a prime culprit.

In short: no, no, no, and no.

Sorry so long:

I tried it and loved it.

Story: I was 15 and living with my boyfriend who was 20 and just back from Vietnam. My parents didn’t know where I was and I’d only been gone a few days. Boyfriend scored some meth and injected me with it. I felt so good I called my parents to tell them I wouldn’t be coming home. Dad tricked me by saying that would be ok and if I wanted some of my things he’d bring them by. I gave him my address. Next thing I know there was the chief of police and a couple of detectives at our door. Meth in jail is NOT fun! I ended up in reform school for 8 months.

I have mixed feelings about whether it should be legal. No because it feels awesome and is very addictive if you’re prone to addiction (I’m highly prone to any substance).

Yes because it would bring in income and the quality could be controlled.

First link is about Oregon decriminalizing hard drugs:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54809825

Second link is about them REcriminalizing hard drugs 3 years later:
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/05/1236075494/why-oregon-is-recriminalizing-even-small-amounts-of-illicit-drugs

I lean toward not legalizing it but there should always be the option of 90 day rehab for users (not dealers) and there should be a choice of traditional vs. secular rehab. I’ve done both and for me, AA/NA several times was useless – just pissed me off. I called the Betty Ford Clinic once and got the names of a few secular recovery groups. That finally worked for me.

Bottom line, if you’re thinking about trying it, don’t. You might be one of those people who can take it or leave it, but more likely…you won’t be.

Thank you @ragingloli That link was very informative. I hope the OP examines it closely.

^^ The problem is so many people think they’d never let it get that far, or it won’t happen to them, or “I’d never shoot drugs”, or “I’ll just use it recreationally or on weekends”, “My friends use it and they’re ok”, “That sort of thing only happens to real addicts, I just use now and then”.

“Yeah, right. Look what your best thinking got you.”

It should not be criminal to posses in small amounts, but that’s as far as I’ll go. I’m generally pro alcohol, cannabis, mushrooms, lsd, ecstasy and a few others that should be legal enough to be clean, but regulating a drug because it’s just too damn destructive to society is absolutely the right call. Society has created niches, like drunks and burnouts, that are supposed to soothe and accept the self destructive addict. We tax them, and give them nice drugs they can live till their 60s on. Meth is just too hard to be any good to society. I’m not too worried about purity. It’s frankly the least of their concerns, they’re doing meth.

Thank’s You all for respoond’s. And I am really sorry for everyone who lost familly member or a friend due to addicition

Drug users should not be treated like criminals unless they commit an actual crime. Stealing to get money, breaking into cars, etc. But using drugs in and of itself should not be illegal in the sense that we should not be punishing for possession unless it is obvious they are selling. We should be focusing on why they use, and how we can help them and hopefully get them better.

I would argue that we should re-evaluate how we are punishing those who commit crimes to begin with. Someone breaks into a car to steal change, what is hitting them with a $300 fine going to do? How does that help the victim?

I lost a family member to an overdose of heroin. It sucked. But he was struggling. Why else do people turn to that type of escape? They are self aware. They know the risks. But escaping their reality makes it worth it. Thats why getting them help is much more beneficial then throwing them in jail for the night and letting them go the next day.

@SergeantQueen I disagree with just about everything you just said. I got in-depth exposure to many of the aspects you just discussed when my daughter got involved with heroin. She didn’t get into it because she was struggling, she got into it because it sounded cool and she ended up liking the feeling it gave her. By the time she got to the point of realizing how screwed up her life was, she was hooked hard. She spiraled down to where she was living out of her car and I believe she was trading sexual favors for drugs.

If a drug is illegal and someone is using it, they are breaking the law. There need to be punishments for that. With heroin, users don’t break into cars to steal change. They steal tools, guns, jewelry, and anything else they can find from their family and friends, or they steal from neighbors. The drug and the addictive quality of it are what are driving these people to this action. With my daughter it was about $10k worth of her mom’s jewelry that she sold for $700. We had her arrested for stealing the jewelry. She spent 50+ days in jail, waiting for her court date. This time in jail gave her a controlled area where she could be monitored while she detoxed…something she would not have done on her own.

You are looking at drug abuse as only impacting the addict. It doesn’t. It impacts their families, it impacts their friends, it impacts the resources of the community they live in…so many more impacts than just the user. The several of the counties around where I live started the sort of program you want. Users would get arrested for drug use/possession. The courts would not sentence them to jail, they would be remanded to a drug rehab program, usually outpatient but sometimes in-patient. Want to guess what the results were? Almost 100% recidivism. Rehab only works if the addict wants to stop their behavior and are willing to change their lives to do so. Most addicts don’t. So these users would go to rehab, get out, go get their score of more drugs, use until they get caught, go back to the court and the cycle starts again. And again. And again. The only thing that stopped the cycle was the user wanting to stop (rare) or the user finally overdosing and dying.

You are also looking at how to make the “victims” of the users crimes whole again. That almost never happens. In our case, I was willing to write off the jewelry if it helped get my daughter clean again. And in many cases, the punishments are not to make the victim whole again. It is to take a threat to society off the streets in an effort to provide at least some modicum of peace for a time to those around the user and to give a negative result of drug use. If you reach out and touch the fire repeatedly and get burned every time, eventually you learn not to touch the fire.

Drugs have a purpose, sometimes. Opioid pain killers have a purpose, for example. But you need to follow the doctor’s prescribing usage to maximize the effect and to minimize the addictive quality of the drugs. But some drugs have no actual purpose other than to screw people up. There is nothing good that comes from using heroin or crack or meth…nothing. There is no reason to allow these to be legalized, unless you are looking to reduce the population in the slowest and most damaging way possible. Or if you are looking to help drug cartels.

You are well within your right to disagree, I am not responding because I will not change my mind and don’t feel like spending the energy on someone who won’t change theirs either, which is fine.

I never said anything about making victims whole again. Our system doesn’t do anything for victims.

Our society is going to get much better once we look at actually helping people vs throwing them in jail. I cannot wait mentalities like yours to finally die out, and it is already starting to. Thank god.

@SergeantQueen Yep, helping people is great…except it doesn’t work with drug users. That’s the point. Those efforts have already been tried and have failed. To continue to try the same thing over and over and expect a different result is a definition of insanity. And it is mentalities like yours that continue to make the drug epidemics grow and flourish. Eventually most of the people like you will OD and we will no longer have to deal with that mentality. Thank God.

I heard somewhere that rehab often Doesnt work because its too easy. When 90s started and my Country had first actual drug wave outside of huge alcohol problem. There was that one specialist who opened a rehab centre. Which Had quite succesfull rate. But he was very strict. Which a lot of people saw that as negative. And when he retired the rate dropped wayy lower. But I might be Just stupid. That’s what I heard few times from teachers and once from my mom

I agree with Queenie.

From my viewpoint, from my observations, is that many females are introduced to powerful drugs like cocaine (included crack,) heroin, and meth by males.
Some men, if they run across a younger girl who doesn’t do hard drugs, they convince them try it.
This can lead to an association with the drug, it’s feeling, it’s addiction, and the male, to the girl. In other words, getting high on heroin the first time, with a guy often can seem like love to the girl.
The girl then becomes dependent on the guy.
There used to be a term for girls who were being controlled by men. The guy had a “white leash on her.” Other terms like “Snow-ho,” and believe it or not, far more offensive terms are used to describe the “relationship.”

The majority of the time, the guy has a past of this behavior, and will cut “leashes,” if they become tiresome. This sends an addict with no street smarts into the world with lots of new problems, and typically after burning some bridges and maybe some legal issues, or worse a when they are with child.
I knew a guy who was a homosexual drug dealer. He had a concubine of young men. Some, were clearly abused. I don’t think a couple of them were even gay.
So. It’s not a gender thing.

But I have seen this story play out with different characters, my entire law enforcement, and personal life.

I think there are almost just two ways drug addiction begins.
Being brought in by a devious person, like I was mentioning.

Or. Escapism.

People with no insurance turn to booze or other things.
People with the means, turn to opiods, or benzoyl.

Obviously. Some people get addicted from medical/mental illness issues. Some can keep ot together for years. Others are on/off.

One of the biggest problems, in my opinion, is that we give people “legal” drugs, to get them off of illegal (non-taxable,) drugs.

This never addresses the addicts substance reliance.
Worse. Some become addicted to the new stuff and still have to have the old stuff. Lives can spiral out of control alarmingly fast.

I have been around people on heroin treatment drugs, like methadone, who can’t stay awake.
These people often have noticeably large amounts of burns in their clothing/bedding, from cigarettes burning while they slept.
They have lots of problems with their vehicles. Many tires/rims, from falling asleep driving.
Those poor souls without means, have to make it to a methadone treatment facility. They wait in lines every morning for their methadone.
If they don’t show up on time, they get “dope sick.” So. Back to the drug…

I also believe locking people up, is bot the answer. I have preached this many times before.
Once you lock someone up for a couple weeks, they lose their job, their place, their vehicle.
Thousands of lives have been ruined over the complete failure of the “war on drugs.”

Now we have people blaming immigrants for flooding the country with drugs.
In reality. America is one of the biggest drug markets in the world.
Where demand is that high, there will always be a supply.

By the way Washington voted to legalize drugs. They are now rushing to undue that. The idea was mishandled, maybe underestimated. The results are not good…