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Promoting anti-meth work
POCATELLO -- Overall methamphetamine use has dropped by about 10 percent nationwide since 2000, but educators at the second annual Idaho Conference on Health Care said more public education about the drug is still needed.
Speakers at Idaho State University's Wood River Room in the Pond Student Union Building, addressing both the mental and physical effects of the drug, showed state by state statistics about meth's abuse and explained the damaging relationship that addicts create with their peers and family. Glen Hanson, the director of the Utah Addiction Center and an affiliate of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, expounded on the drug's appearance in the 1970s and explained how meth increases the brain's dopamine levels. Hanson said the drug first attracted a number of self-conscious women who were lured by its ability to cause weight loss. He added that persons with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder also quickly became addicts.
"(It was first heavily) used by people with very poor self image," he said, adding that persons with ADHD usually exhibited low self-esteem and often struggled to make friendships. But while individuals with low self-esteem were prone to become addicts, Hansen said the child-like euphoria and relaxation felt from the drug concealed the physical and mental damages that can often take years to correct.
Using a computer image, Hansen pointed to the brain's bottom and center portion, which contain the nucleus accumben. He said dopamine is a naturally occurring chemical that increases in quantity around the nucleus accumben when a person's emotions rise. "Anything you do in your life that you like will inject dopamine into your brain," he said. "It's a very reactive molecule."
Hansen further explained that meth damages the brain's pre-frontal cortex, thereby limiting a person's ability to control his or her dopamine levels. He made an example with road rage. "What happens when you're driving and someone pulls out right in front of you?" he asked his audience. "You want to ram them. ...Or give them the bird. You get angry, but you control yourself."
Hansen said meth addicts can often go sleepless for days and can exhibit some symptoms of paranoia and schizophrenia. "You think you'll be looking at a paranoid schizophrenic," he said.
But those symptoms have become a problem for addicts who attend drug court. Hansen said he has received frequent complaints from judges about finding it challenging to speak to meth addicts and had previously told courts about the "Peter Pan" effect. "Judges tell me 'They're not taking what I'm saying seriously,' but I tell them 'Well, they think like a teenager,'" Hansen said.
Jay Wurscher, an alcohol and drug services coordinator with the Oregon Department of Human Services and Office of Safety and Permanency for Children, showed some drug use statistics. Wurscher, who lauded law enforcement's efforts to reduce meth labs in Oregon, said 98 percent of the reason behind the American market's abuse of meth has to do with the "brain disease" of addiction.
"If I was the guy on Star Trek and used a transporter to get rid of all the meth in Idaho, are all the meth heads going to go 'Oh, no meth, guess I'll just go to church?'" Wurscher said jokingly. "No, they'd just go to another drug." Wurscher said alcohol is a primary precursor behind meth use.
By Yann Ranaivo
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