Peer pressure: the building block to meth use

bad his life had been and how screwed up he was.

PERSPECTIVES EDITOR

JKS724@CABRINI EDU

I was flipping through the TV channels trying to find something mindless enough to make me fall asleep, something that wouldn’t keep me interested for very long and would soon be just a distant buzzing in my dreams. Mind you, it was 5 a.m.

So as I numbly sat in bed pushing the channel-up button every 2 seconds, a cute southern-accented boy caught my attention. I put the remote down, volumed up twice and stared at the TV waiting to see what he was talking about.

He was walking along, what seemed like a quaint little neighborhood, talking to an interviewer off camera – this was definitely a documentary – about how

As I listened more intently, wondering why this cute southern boy was so messed up, a cut in for a commercial break pops up with the title of the documentary, “A Question of Life or Meth” on A&E in the classroom written in white with a black background.

Wait. Excuse me? Life or Meth? Meth as in crystal methamphetamine, the drug?

I sat through the commercials to see exactly what my southern boy was going to say next. And just as I had suspected, the cute 20something-year-old was a recovering meth addict and was telling his story about his times using.

The documentary showed pictures of his “meth mouth” with rotted and decaying teeth and many holes from where teeth had fallen out.

Next, a medical doctor showed viewers a quick look at a common “meth lab” used to make crystal meth. They showed many of the ingredients – one being Draino, yeah, the stuff you use to unclog your drains, and crushed up common cold medicines. Not to mention that while making crystal meth there is a chance of it exploding if one of the gases used is overheated.

As I sat in bed watching this documentary, it hit me. Why on Earth would anyone want to do meth? Why would anyone inject themselves or smoke “poison” to get them high?

I continued to watch the documentary, listening to people’s meth addiction stories. Most of the people interviewed were young. The youngest being a 17year-old girl.

Most of the stories were the same – they went out with friends, noticed they were doing meth and decided to join in. They all regretted their first time.

There was my answer as to why anyone would want try meth: peer pressure. Yeah, there were some cases of depression and meth’s high made them feel great, however, it all boiled down to one simple fact – peer pressure was the building block for meth use.

Weren’t we all taught