Why Meth Today Is More Dangerous Than Ever

While the opioid epidemic is justifiably consuming a lot of media coverage, another insidious drug is devastating communities around the country. Methamphetamine is plaguing American cities and it's now more dangerous than ever.

We stream our live show every day at 12 PM ET.








Image Credit, Psychonaught
Image has been cropped and color has been altered.

Emma: Let's talk about meth then because that was another big focus of your book. and I feel like most of the stories about meth that I heard were in 2005. And I think that I mean and then of course breaking bad was brought onto the scene nationally. but I mean and it also was maybe kind of something that set the stage for the opioid epidemic because it was hitting white communities pretty hard which caused different kinds of media attention as opposed to the crack cocaine epidemic. but what's different about meth this time around.
Quinones: Well meth this time around is very different. It's no longer the chemical I refer to earlier ephedrine which is a decongestant you find in Sudafed pills and all the rest. That's a very easy thing to turn into methamphetamine and Mexican traffickers had industrialized that and made a lot of it. they never were really able to cover much more they covered a lot of the west never got east of the Mississippi River. and then all of that changed. And this ephedrine meth was like a party drug. you know I was all euphoric big in the gay community. big in really you know the kind of you you want to be around people, a sociable kind of drug. it was not good for you. You decayed over periods and you remember those mug shot posters of people over six or seven years you know you'd see them transformed. but that's kind of what it was. This new stuff is very very different. The effects of it are very very different. Let's put it that way this began in oh eight really 09 the Mexican government outlawed ephedrine. Mexican traffickers switched to a new way of making a more messy way. One that involves lots of different industrial legal toxic chemicals. and the precursor in that way of making it is known as p2p. so phenol for phenol2 propanone. You can benefit from this method. There's only one of them and that's very important. and that is that with p2p you can make p2p many many different ways with all kinds of different chemicals you know. and so if you can find those chemicals and they're widely available, use them in all kinds of industries. you can make this stuff forever. and that's exactly what's happening. so you saw the march of this stuff really begin in 0.9 but in 2010 11. but then really as the supplies really exploded in 2013-14 it was all over the west. all over certainly the west coast. by 2016-17 it was in the midwest and by 2019 it was up into New England which never had any meth at all. and that remarkable thing as I said the coverage has been just dramatic all over the country. and at the same time, there's a stunning fact that even as they covered the entire country the price of that product dropped by 80%. so they're covering it and the price drops but this meth has another part to the story. that I only learned later as I was about to be close to finishing the least of us. and that is that it brings with it it's accompanied by very severe symptoms of schizophrenia paranoia severe paranoia florid hallucinations of all kinds and delusions and very quickly, of course, people are incapable of being around others. It's as if the ephedrine method was a social drug. This one more is more like an enclosing joke you kind of enclose into your own, your own, your own mind. which is all of a sudden developing all these bizarre ideas about what's around you. very quickly you fall into homelessness. you can't really stay in a homeless shelter because the shelters are terrifying because they're everyone's scaring the hell out of you. you're paranoid about everybody. and so this has also led to street homelessness. The tents I believe are closely connected to this kind of methamphetamine. The tents are the perfect lodging for someone who views the world as just constantly full of threats and scary monsters.

[codiestjohn]

I was a meth addict for the better part of my life it turned me into another creature
Clean for 60 days let's pray ot stays this way

[robertfenyk]

The last time I was given meth, it felt different. I wanted to do work but couldn’t. It sucked. Flushed the whole bag down the toilet and will never do any kind of meth again. It was a blessing in disguise.

[CristiandlfDeval]

Meth addiction actually destroyed my life. I started doing drugs since my teenage, got addicted to meth. I suffered severe depression and mental disorder. Not until my wife recommended me to psilocybin mushrooms treatment. Psilocybin treatment saved my life honestly. 4 years totally clean. Much respect to mother nature the great magic shrooms.

[negativejed]

Get asphalt methamphetamine off the streets. End the drug war. Legalize, tax and regulate amphetamine salts / Adderall and you've essentially made meth obsolete. Simple.

[OT_concerned_citizen]

Meth heads use to be productive. Now they weird

[HighJynx]

I was addicted to this kind of meth for about 3 years, worst time of my life.
I was terrified all the time, would see things at night and had no trust in anyone. It's horrifying.

[DerekWC]

Always love hearing "FACTS" from a couple of people thats never actually had an addiction

[DarrenReetz]

I'm almost 2 years clean, Praise Jesus!!!

[whitlocktherevanchist]

Meth and opiates destroyed the area where I live. I've battled with opiate addiction for a long time, but a lot of the people I grew up with are struggling with one or the other, or both in a lot of cases. And the people I grew up with are not the lower class poor, but more middle to upper class. You could always tell when that switch came he was talking about, a close friend of mine who had a problem with both would suddenly want everyone including his family to get out of his home because he was blown out on meth so bad that having everyone there made it too hard for him to tell which person was robbing him and what it was that was missing. No one ever actually took anything from him, you'd always find out a day or two later he had just misplaced it. It was really sad to watch him slowly hate people he cared about. These things are no joke

[AndyMorrisArt]

My personal experience with meth between '77 and '97 was not always "social." In fact what he described with this new meth is what I eventually experienced on the ephedra meth of the 90's. I had several psychotic episodes, and I'm very lucky to be alive today.

[LeftIsBest]

I'm not too proud to admit I went on a meth bender for 18 months back in 2006. I was lucky, I was able to just walk away from it before it destroyed me. Others aren't so lucky.

[taylorbaker]

Emma is right about meth setting up the opioid epidemic too. I was a meth user for a few years and never had any intention of doing heroin or fentanyl until I ended up finding out it’s the only thing that put me to sleep when I was done with being high on meth. Haven’t used meth in almost a year but I still struggle with using opioids, only been off of them for a little over a month. Getting off opioids has been way harder for me to do than getting off meth was. It’s ridiculous

[j.c.holmes]

The people he talks about represent less than 5% of the using population. And, the P2P he is talking about was restricted and outlawed way before now. It is curious how, decades later, this pops up again. So, he is claiming that there is no ephedrine used, even with P2P? Seriously? And that it makes you homeless? Who the hell is this guy? My girlfriend and I belong to the drug alliance, and besides this guy just lying for whatever reason. The Nixon admin, and his cabinet members(who did 30 years in prison)Erlichman said, " We made it all up. Of course we knew it was not true. We could not outright arrest blacks and antiwar protesters, we had to associate crack with hippies and heroin with black, then criminalize the hell out of it". And it won his election. The war on drugs is b-s. Thge people they talk about is less than 5% of the using population, and the most extreme. Nothing they do helps it, only exaserbates it. For instance, here in AZ, our taxes have paid for affordable housing to be built for the homeless for two decades now, but last year, the money went to the police to enforce urban camping and trespass laws and arrest them. This year, our idea of helping the homeless, is in 116 degree weather, remove the benches and the shades from all bus stops. Brilliant, right? People should look into how the homeless were treated leading up to, and in the beginning of ww2. There are startling similarities that should not be ignored. It shows an almost exact parallel between actions taken then, and what we are doing now. The answer to any of this, from the governments view, seems to be if they do not see it, then it is not a problem. That is what happened back then too, and the said it became cheaper asnd easier to just get rid of them permanently. When I see videos and people like this, and nothing they say means anything, but does create a sub-human population worthy of whatever happens to them, it just paves the way for them to commit atrocities against people, and no one will feel guilty. Please be aware of what is happening around you. If you see the police or anyone else violating the rights or abusing the homeless, you need to stick up for them, because if you do not, eventually, people will remember that, and who will then stick up for you? We can judge a country, and it's leaders by how they treat those who have the least there. How would you say the US ranks in that today?

[yanabahm.]

My brother passed away from a fentanyl and meth overdose on December 21, 2022. He experienced serve paranoia, delusions, and acted schizophrenic. He did have an underlining mental health issue and we just never knew it was drugs. I found out last night when they listed his cause of death through the medical examiner's office. I saw this video and realized he was addicted to meth. He probably didn't know it had fentanyl in it. May he rest in eternal peace with no more worries. My family and I miss him so very much. It just breaks my heart. I read some comments on another video and people think so low of people with addiction-may god bless their hearts anyway. Sobriety is the key to living in this world for those who suffer from addiction. I will pray for you all because spreading love is so much more powerful than spreading hate.

[michaelfrasier]

A friend just told me this, he said this isn't the same speed we did back in the 90's. This shit is evil

[GovernmentAcid]

I find it disheartening that this was relayed uncritically. the only significant difference between an ephedrine/pseudoephedrine synthesis and a phenyl-2-propanone synthesis would be isomeric composition, which, isn't exactly trivial pharmacologically, but to say that a racemic mixture of methamphetamine is significantly more harmful than dextro-methamphetamine, to me conveys that this guy doesn't fully grasp what it is that he's saying. and, to me, that is dangerous when you're dealing with a subject like substance abuse, especially as it relates to journalism.

[josiemartin]

This is scary especially when it hits close to home seeing your loved ones becoming addicted to this very dangerous drug

[morokeiboethia]

P2P was the old meth in the 70s. That was also the kind that various military's used during the 40s-50s. After it was outlawed, thats when the ephedrine-meth came into the picture and you had guys making it from cold nasal sprays in the 80s/early 90s. Those kinds of nasal sprays were outlawed so then they figured out you could extract it from cold nasal pills.

[lucindawhite]

please pray for my Son....Christopher Isaiah to be delivered from this !!🥺

[JohnDavis-qkmt]

Meth doesn't give rise those symptoms.... No sleep in combo with no food or water is what causes all that craziness.... You could do dope all day, but if you sleep and eat you will be fine mentally...