The Shadow People
By Henry Piarrot
Last month, my good
friend Ray Ogle invited me to a Workforce Employer Outreach luncheon where District Attorney General Al C. Schmutzer Jr. was the featured speaker. The program was titled
“Meth Destroys.” By the time he and his staff completed their presentation, I found myself struggling to believe what I had seen.
Methamphetamine addiction is a decades-long problem that over the past 15 years has spread from the southern Midwestern states to all parts of the country. Not surprisingly, the highest rate of meth use is among young adults ages 18-25 and prevails among people of all walks of life. Although its use is considered an epidemic across the United States, nowhere is it a bigger problem today than in Middle and Southeast Tennessee, causing Governor Phil Bredesen to acknowledge,
“If the Southeast represents the new battlefield in the war on meth, then Tennessee clearly is at ground zero.”
First created during 1887 in Germany, for a long time
amphetamine was a drug in search of an ailment. When methamphetamine was discovered in Japan in 1919 it was far more potent and easy to produce. The crystalline powder was soluble in water, making it ideal for injection. Mostly ignored in the US until the late 1920's, the curious concoction was seriously examined as a treatment for nearly everything from depression to decongestion and by the end of the next decade, amphetamine was marketed as “
Benzedrine” in an inhaler form to treat nasal congestion for asthmatics, people with hay fever and even sufferers of the common cold.
During WW2, amphetamines were widely used to keep the fighting men on the move. In post-war Japan, intravenous methamphetamine abuse reached epidemic proportions when supplies stored for military use became available to the public. Astonishingly, throughout the Viet Nam War, American soldiers used more amphetamines than the entire world did during the previous global conflict.
There are numerous misguided reasons why an individual would begin using this poison. At first, taking the drug is about the pleasure obtained from it. Then, as time goes on, the person begins to feel the need to take meth to feel normal. As with any drug addiction, people who struggle with the necessity to use meth do not intentionally set out to destroy themselves. However, disastrous consequences become the result of a vicious cycle and for many lost souls, meth use seems to be a temporary escape from life's painful realities.
Chronic users often have scars or open sores on their bodies from trying to scratch off the
"crank bugs" they believe are constantly crawling on their skin. Also, the meth-induced paranoia often generates visual hallucinations that devoted abusers describe as
"the shadow people." While unable to partake, incarcerated addicts are known to eat their scabs to satisfy their insuppressible taste for the drug. Consequently, death from a meth overdose is not only possible, it is inevitable.
Use of this heinous narcotic causes irreversible damage to blood vessels in the brain, ultimately resulting in a stroke. Cardiovascular side effects will include chest pain, hypertension and eventually cardiac arrest.Not long ago, the White House drug policy office established a goal to reduce methamphetamine use in the US at least 15 % by the end of the decade. The objective is to limit the stream of the noxious drug from mammoth labs in Mexico that now supply almost 80 % of the meth in the states. That said, Tennessee officials estimate that there is at least one methamphetamine lab either located or seized somewhere in the state every day.
Henry Piarrot is a hotel manager in Sevier County. Please send all story recommendations to hpiarrot@yahoo.com