Fucking Meth...

Pardon the language in this post’s title, but I’m not a very happy person right now. I woke up this morning to the news that a cousin of mine had hung himself last night and was found by his niece early today. He had finally reached the end of a long battle with Methamphetamine use on top of a host of other narcotic abuse throughout his 37 years of life. Over the course of the past three years, his parents have had him in and out of rehab facilities and doctor’s offices (both physical and psychological), when they weren’t having to try to keep him from being arrested for his recent out of control behavior. At a time when parents should be watching their children nurture their own families, his parents’ lives had been thrown into utter chaos with sleepless nights, just as when their child was a newborn, again becoming the norm.

In his teen and adult years, my cousin always had a proclivity to lean towards substances that made him feel good. I guess to some degree he was the ultimate self-fulfillment of the narcissistic hedonism our ‘civilized’ society instills in us from youth. But I still can’t help but remember him in the days before he became consumed in this self-imposed nightmare…back to a time when he and I were kids and the best of friends. There’s no way to avoid getting choked when thinking of our hundreds of ‘trades’ that little boys always do or the adventures we would go on in the vast wooded acres of his parent’s ranch. Or when we agreed how when we grew up I was going to be a superhero, fighting evil and wrongdoers, and he would remain my ever-faithful sidekick. He was undoubtedly one of the happiest and best-natured people I had ever known. Unfortunately, as he became older, he fell in with some bad influences and was easily impressed by the immediate gratification narcotics can seem to bring.

The older we got, the further we drifted away from the bond we once had together. I wanted to live a life full of real adventures and he, well, he kept his priority on feeling good. Even with the distance widening between us, I still served as the best man on his wedding day about a decade ago. I also watched as that marriage crumbled away in the years to follow under the pressures of him having to choose between growing up and having a family or staying a kid who felt good all the time. As fate would have it, he took the latter path and eventually fell off the deep end.

Once he started using Meth, it didn’t take long for the demons inside to rear their heads and make him pay for that decision. He suffered from severe bouts of Manic-Depression, Paranoia, Schizophrenia and OCD along with having frightening delusions that, at times, had almost caused serious injuries to innocent people who had become involved in his fantasies. To further explain the damage this damned drug had done to him, one of the brain scans he had taken during the past year had shown one hemisphere of his brain had shrunk approximately 50% in size due to habitual Meth use. 50%...

Anyway, within the past six months, the constant attempts by his parents to pull him out of the pit seemed to actually be bearing some fruits. He was off of Meth and other narcotics (as far as I know), was attending regular counseling sessions, had expressed remorse for his past actions and was staying on medications to keep the psychological damage he had caused himself at bay. But I guess it was still too much for him…you know, guilt is one helluva powerful force to reckon with. And it apparently won the battle.

We hadn’t spoken in about 3 years as a result of a falling out between us. I was around him once while he was heavily under the influence of Meth and after we exchanged some cross words, he attacked me. Since he was impaired by the drugs, the situation was easily abated, but it acted as the proverbial ‘last straw’ on the back of our already strained relationship. The very last exchange we had was when he tried to mouth off to me later that same day after the confrontation and I informed him that he “was dead to me”. Boy, if that should serve as a lesson to anyone it would be that sometimes it’s better to just hold some thoughts inside. Those are words I’ll definitely never forget saying for the rest of my years.

I did some undercover narcotics work near the end of my law enforcement career 15 years ago and couldn’t even tell you how many Meth-related arrests I made. Even back then, Meth was spreading like a wildfire among the lower income population but very few paid attention to it. Now, its proliferation is making the ‘crack epidemic’ of the ‘80s look like a fad. And it’s no longer relegated to the poor - our state newspaper constantly runs articles about this doctor or that lawyer who had been running a meth lab in their nice suburban home. But what can you say, as far back as the ‘50s there were bumper stickers that said ‘Speed Kills’…and even then it wasn’t talking about driving too fast.

Of course, the administration in charge of the federal funding flow for state and local police departments have, in their infinite wisdom, recently cut over 50% of the amounts granted to programs specifically battling Methamphetamines. Instead, they roar and beat their chest, ‘Get the pot smokers first!’…as always. And don’t for a second think that their stance comes from any moral high-ground. I’ve been there and I’ve seen why the Marijuana drums beat so loudly. Sadly, it’s a centuries old reason…pure greed. If you don’t believe me, go spend a full day in a municipal court for a moderate to large city and see how much money gets raked in from possession and paraphernalia fines related to Marijuana. I use to sit in amazement, waiting to testify for one case or another, as the increasing total would hit $10,000 then $15,000 and at times higher yet. And that was just one municipal courtroom in one medium-sized town. On a nationwide scale, there are millions of dollars being poured into the system each and every day from these sorts of fines. During my law enforcement days, I vividly recall planning sessions where the raid of a Meth manufacturer would be shelved and a simple Marijuana user targeted simply for the reason that the pot-smoker had more assets to be seized. Of course, isn't that how things are handled with today's government? Let's identify a real problem and then focus our efforts to solve it elsewhere. Yeah, right. That's how we handle terrorism, so why not address Meth the same way? Too bad that people have to suffer and die in the interim. Needless to say, I didn’t last long in an industry with that brand of mentality.

So, now I wait for a time and a place for the funeral of another human being cut down by this addictive insanity, wondering whether I’ll be asked to help carry his coffin to its final resting place. And I’m angry because I still remember my old best friend in a time when life was simpler and seemingly limitless…but that door of possibility is closed now. And Meth has just added another notch to its belt of murdered lives. Sorry I gave up on you old friend…maybe if I hadn’t you wouldn’t have ended it all by giving up on yourself. As the author John Irving would say, 'you either keep passing the open windows or you don't'. No need for any consolatory comments, just had to vent some convoluted emotions… Jage