I started out 3 years ago, diving into the meth problem in our little illinois river town because a group of citizens came together wanting to "help" our local townsfolk get away from this terrible drug. At the time, I was watching thefts rise tenfold, and watching overdoses rise at an alarming rate. More than that, my friends, and their kids were getting hooked every time I turned around. I wanted to write a book about meth from the addicts' point of view. So, I made friends with addicts, and eventually dealer s. In our town of less than 3000, there were two or three who provided the stuff. Many thought I was addicted, myself. I will tell you, I did what I had to to get to the bottom of this. I can also tell you, each addict has their own set of reasons or problems that drove them to use. As I tried to help others, I found a myriad of catalysts from numbing out to kill the pain of rejected love to self esteem, to not being enough in their parents eyes. Physical, mental, and sexual abuse ran rampant in addicts' past. Almost every addict had a real zest for life at some point, high ambitions, sharp, intelligent minds that just couldn't deal with their dreams and goals falling apart. Let me tell you, there aren't enough good psychotherapists in this world to take each user one on one and help them dig out enough to lead a normal life. It seems to have been brought on also by my generation, the boomers. We taught our kids to rebel against authority, we were the first generation that, even in the lower financial class, could give our kids anything they desired and we did. We borrowed so deeply we ruined economic times going forward, we did not embrace the computerized world, hanging on until our dying breaths to the old traditional production line ways of building and schooling. And instead of keeping our elderly parents in our home to teach our kids about history and common knowledge, we shipped them off to nursing homes. So much was lost, and we ruined the building of proper morals of many generations before us. It will take many generations, I'm afraid, and hard times, to fix what is broken.
Thank you! I’m currently doing a Master’s in addiction counseling, but have been living and working with these issues for most of my life, since before my dad was busted for manufacturing and distributing methamphetamine and my mother and I were living in a crack infested neighborhood. My dad was actually a very involved father, up until then, and I experienced his addiction and downfall vicariously, if not willingly. I saw friends OD on crack. One died of OD. Another was murdered by a violent trick. Naturally, when I got my GED and managed to get into college, I was preoccupied with these issues. I get involved with people who are affected personally, and have had the same response you got. Eventually I was injured (unrelated to my street ties) and prescribed OxyContin and then suddenly cut off due to an insurance issue, and experienced the mess of chemical dependency myself. Though I would not recommend using yourself as primary source research, the experience has deepened my understanding. If I could go back, I would never repeat it because it ate 7 years of my life and set me back a couple lifetimes, in terms of damage that I have to fix, now. One arrogant assumption I still had before my own experience was that I was so intelligent, I would not let addiction happen to me. If it did, I would surely research what to do about it, and promptly extricate myself. I wasn’t overestimating my intelligence…I do have a Mensa IQ, if those tests mean anything. I had worked with abuse victims, homeless people, and people with addictions, and had a social science degree specializing in violence against women and inner city crime, violence, and drugs. But that does nothing to protect your from the damage daily drugs to to the frontal lobes and prefrontal cortex, where reason and judgment reside, nor the dominance of the primitive hindbrain, which evolved thousands of years before the seat of reason. The hindbrain is where the emotional message is stored, which tells us nothing is more important to our survival than that substance. I was not a book smart person with no common sense. I was the 12 year old who carried her family…even working and supporting us from that age. I had navigated the shelter system and all the programs for my ill parents and, later, myself and my kids. But what happens in addiction is something no one is equal to. I went to 5 treatment centers, looking for the information that could undo my brain’s obsession. I could not have extricated myself from that…I had to be arrested and put in a program where I met the first counselor who knew what I didn’t, and that’s that we (addicted) didn’t do this to ourselves. We weren’t selfish; we were suffering. Rather than tough love, her counterintuitive approach of unconditional love and support broke even the hardest male criminals in the group (we had some real ones). For the first time, I heard, “It makes perfect sense, why you are here.” I wondered if she was using some reverse psychology. Normally, as soon as I was released, I would use. When I left her group, I thought, “I could use, but why?” I just didn’t feel like it. Wanting to have what she had to offer others, I entered an Addiction Counseling Master’s program. There; I learned that it DOES make perfect sense that we are here, in terms of the drug problem. People are trying to ameliorate social, physical, psychological, and especially economic problems with substances because, at first, it works. But the way that predisposed brains are hijacked and the extent to which rational thinking is suspended by ongoing use is just now beginning to be understood. It’s a state of true brain damage which is, fortunately. usually reversible with abstinence, but much more profound than was previously appreciated. People say, “You’ve got to want to quit or it won’t work.” They’re not incorrect, but the addicted brain is, after a certain point, incapable of consciously wanting that. You need a period of abstinence to get that insight back. Once people are labeled and punished criminally by society for being addicted, they may not be able to hold most jobs, live most places, vote, get financial assistance or school aid, and it’s really hard to get out of the drug community, if not impossible for some. More programs where arrest for possession of personal amounts, prostitution, and petty crime leads to treatment instead of charges would really help. A lot of people say arrest saves people and it took that to save me, but the charges could prevent me from working. Without expungements (for prostitution charges), I’m ineligible to work, specifically, in any type of education, health care, or human services, things I could really make further contributions to. They’re not trafficking charges. I was the only one involved. It’s charges of being taken advantage of for drug money, at worst. A lot of women with these charges were actually being trafficked and don’t feel safe to say so in court or in public. Even if another addict forced me, my compassion for others in my situation would probably prevent me from causing them legal problems, if I knew or cared about them at all, and I care about everyone. Anyway, the fact that so many women aren’t there of their own volition is why they have ended prostitution charges in some areas. Anyway, I’m not worried about me. I think felony charges should be diverted more, also. Even society’s villains…low level drug dealers and pimps, etc. need true rehabilitation and other opportunities to not go back. Men in my probation treatment group would get the laborer jobs a felon can get, and be welcomed by the boss with a ride and a bag of meth on the first day. Whether or not people agree with me about the legal solutions, we DEFINITELY need more education like “Methland” to get closer to a solution.
@@brittaolson6550 Wow. Interesting how many sociological careers & educational curriculums could simply disappear if people would just be happy with a boring life.
Incredibly fascinating and informative, thanks for this. Some things I've noticed living on the East Coast in Pennsylvania, I went to college at Bloomsburg University in northern PA, and the surrounding area seems to have a lot of drug abuse and domestic abuse. Like Nick said, meth is everywhere nowadays. I went to visit a friend for a grad party in Mt. Carmel, a city close to Bloomsburg, and her neighbor's porch had been blown up by a meth lab explosion that had happened recently I believe (this was back in 2012). Not to mention Mt. Carmel's infrastructure had gone to shit, the sidewalks were crumbling, potholes in the streets, a lot of rubble in various places. Bars were prevalent there, and I believe that meth labs are too. Atlas PA (neighbors Mt. Carmel), where my girlfriend and her parents had lived, was absolutely destroyed and run down. It reminded me of the ghettos but somehow, worse. Again, bars were prevalent and almost certainly drugs, although I have no objective proof of this other than my own subjective experience and intuition regarding the area of Atlas PA. I graduated with a BA in Sociology back in 2012 from Bloomsburg, so I have a stable background with sociological issues and factors leading into issues like these etc, although as intellectual as I've become and as much as I admire knowledge and acquisition of information, I deeply believe this is a spiritual problem. On a spiritual level people who turn to drugs are self-deprived, through their own ego blocks i.e. pride, shame, guilt, anger, desire, fear etc, they experience a hellish life. Like Dr. David Hawkins, a world renowned teacher, says, drugs don't cause these extremely positive states, they block out all of the lower ego levels of consciousness, and then one gets to experience what's there all the time. The desire for the drug is actually the desire to return to God. To return to a state of joy, peace, serenity, equanimity, love, and happiness. This then leads to addiction to that state, which the drugs become the only means to regain it to the addict. To permanently attain such a state, one needs to surrender all ego/negative blocks which are blocking awareness of such a sublime state of being. This is a permanent solution as it completely removes the blocks, instead of just temporarily blocking them like meth does. Globalization and the fall of important industries are factors and influences of course, but they are not the core problem, which is ego and its subsequent negative and hellish state of lack and depression. If anyone wants to further discuss this feel free to respond. I find the whole phenomenon very fascinating and to experience something similar in Mt. Carmel to what Nick did in Oelwein was a very intriguing and simultaneously saddening event. Added: I should also mention that I believe the lessening of the coal industry to oil etc (I am no expert on this) to be an influential factor in Mt Carmel's decline. Here is an excerpt from its wiki page: "In the past, there were extensive anthracite mining interests here and in the vicinity. In earlier years, the borough had manufactories of miners' caps, cement blocks, cigars, shirts, stockings, etc., and large silk and planing mills, foundry and machine shops, a knitting mill, lumber yards, a packing plant, and wagon works. Currently that area supports light manufacturing in paper and plastics." I firmly believe that the downsizing of the coal industry in Mt. Carmel/Atlas PA area was an influential factor in the increase of drug use in the area, similar to the meat packing downsizing in Oelwein. I've pondered doing a qualitative study of the area and interviewing residents for the impact of meth labs and other drugs in the vicinity, but I'm pretty sure I'd need a Doctorate in Sociology to have my research published. I'm not sure how far my own research could go without such a qualification. Maybe just a book like Nick did, as he was a journalist with no official certification in such a relevant field of study (he has a bachelors in creative writing and English literature).
fascinating perspective, I am very interested in the subject of addiction to methamphetamine. I'm from New Zealand and we are experiencing a meth epidemic at the moment
I started out 3 years ago, diving into the meth problem in our little illinois river town because a group of citizens came together wanting to "help" our local townsfolk get away from this terrible drug. At the time, I was watching thefts rise tenfold, and watching overdoses rise at an alarming rate. More than that, my friends, and their kids were getting hooked every time I turned around. I wanted to write a book about meth from the addicts' point of view. So, I made friends with addicts, and eventually dealer s. In our town of less than 3000, there were two or three who provided the stuff.
Many thought I was addicted, myself. I will tell you, I did what I had to to get to the bottom of this. I can also tell you, each addict has their own set of reasons or problems that drove them to use. As I tried to help others, I found a myriad of catalysts from numbing out to kill the pain of rejected love to self esteem, to not being enough in their parents eyes. Physical, mental, and sexual abuse ran rampant in addicts' past. Almost every addict had a real zest for life at some point, high ambitions, sharp, intelligent minds that just couldn't deal with their dreams and goals falling apart. Let me tell you, there aren't enough good psychotherapists in this world to take each user one on one and help them dig out enough to lead a normal life. It seems to have been brought on also by my generation, the boomers. We taught our kids to rebel against authority, we were the first generation that, even in the lower financial class, could give our kids anything they desired and we did. We borrowed so deeply we ruined economic times going forward, we did not embrace the computerized world, hanging on until our dying breaths to the old traditional production line ways of building and schooling. And instead of keeping our elderly parents in our home to teach our kids about history and common knowledge, we shipped them off to nursing homes. So much was lost, and we ruined the building of proper morals of many generations before us. It will take many generations, I'm afraid, and hard times, to fix what is broken.
Thank you! I’m currently doing a Master’s in addiction counseling, but have been living and working with these issues for most of my life, since before my dad was busted for manufacturing and distributing methamphetamine and my mother and I were living in a crack infested neighborhood. My dad was actually a very involved father, up until then, and I experienced his addiction and downfall vicariously, if not willingly. I saw friends OD on crack. One died of OD. Another was murdered by a violent trick. Naturally, when I got my GED and managed to get into college, I was preoccupied with these issues. I get involved with people who are affected personally, and have had the same response you got. Eventually I was injured (unrelated to my street ties) and prescribed OxyContin and then suddenly cut off due to an insurance issue, and experienced the mess of chemical dependency myself. Though I would not recommend using yourself as primary source research, the experience has deepened my understanding. If I could go back, I would never repeat it because it ate 7 years of my life and set me back a couple lifetimes, in terms of damage that I have to fix, now. One arrogant assumption I still had before my own experience was that I was so intelligent, I would not let addiction happen to me. If it did, I would surely research what to do about it, and promptly extricate myself. I wasn’t overestimating my intelligence…I do have a Mensa IQ, if those tests mean anything. I had worked with abuse victims, homeless people, and people with addictions, and had a social science degree specializing in violence against women and inner city crime, violence, and drugs. But that does nothing to protect your from the damage daily drugs to to the frontal lobes and prefrontal cortex, where reason and judgment reside, nor the dominance of the primitive hindbrain, which evolved thousands of years before the seat of reason. The hindbrain is where the emotional message is stored, which tells us nothing is more important to our survival than that substance. I was not a book smart person with no common sense. I was the 12 year old who carried her family…even working and supporting us from that age. I had navigated the shelter system and all the programs for my ill parents and, later, myself and my kids. But what happens in addiction is something no one is equal to. I went to 5 treatment centers, looking for the information that could undo my brain’s obsession. I could not have extricated myself from that…I had to be arrested and put in a program where I met the first counselor who knew what I didn’t, and that’s that we (addicted) didn’t do this to ourselves. We weren’t selfish; we were suffering. Rather than tough love, her counterintuitive approach of unconditional love and support broke even the hardest male criminals in the group (we had some real ones). For the first time, I heard, “It makes perfect sense, why you are here.” I wondered if she was using some reverse psychology. Normally, as soon as I was released, I would use. When I left her group, I thought, “I could use, but why?” I just didn’t feel like it. Wanting to have what she had to offer others, I entered an Addiction Counseling Master’s program. There; I learned that it DOES make perfect sense that we are here, in terms of the drug problem. People are trying to ameliorate social, physical, psychological, and especially economic problems with substances because, at first, it works. But the way that predisposed brains are hijacked and the extent to which rational thinking is suspended by ongoing use is just now beginning to be understood. It’s a state of true brain damage which is, fortunately. usually reversible with abstinence, but much more profound than was previously appreciated. People say, “You’ve got to want to quit or it won’t work.” They’re not incorrect, but the addicted brain is, after a certain point, incapable of consciously wanting that. You need a period of abstinence to get that insight back. Once people are labeled and punished criminally by society for being addicted, they may not be able to hold most jobs, live most places, vote, get financial assistance or school aid, and it’s really hard to get out of the drug community, if not impossible for some. More programs where arrest for possession of personal amounts, prostitution, and petty crime leads to treatment instead of charges would really help. A lot of people say arrest saves people and it took that to save me, but the charges could prevent me from working. Without expungements (for prostitution charges), I’m ineligible to work, specifically, in any type of education, health care, or human services, things I could really make further contributions to. They’re not trafficking charges. I was the only one involved. It’s charges of being taken advantage of for drug money, at worst. A lot of women with these charges were actually being trafficked and don’t feel safe to say so in court or in public. Even if another addict forced me, my compassion for others in my situation would probably prevent me from causing them legal problems, if I knew or cared about them at all, and I care about everyone. Anyway, the fact that so many women aren’t there of their own volition is why they have ended prostitution charges in some areas. Anyway, I’m not worried about me. I think felony charges should be diverted more, also. Even society’s villains…low level drug dealers and pimps, etc. need true rehabilitation and other opportunities to not go back. Men in my probation treatment group would get the laborer jobs a felon can get, and be welcomed by the boss with a ride and a bag of meth on the first day. Whether or not people agree with me about the legal solutions, we DEFINITELY need more education like “Methland” to get closer to a solution.
@@brittaolson6550 Wow. Interesting how many sociological careers & educational curriculums could simply disappear if people would just be happy with a boring life.
Amen Mr. Redding
Iowa is in love with meth. I just moved away from oelwein and it's still tweaking pretty heavy.
I’m from the next county over from Fayette and I unfortunately agree but I must say things have gotten better
Incredibly fascinating and informative, thanks for this.
Some things I've noticed living on the East Coast in Pennsylvania, I went to college at Bloomsburg University in northern PA, and the surrounding area seems to have a lot of drug abuse and domestic abuse. Like Nick said, meth is everywhere nowadays. I went to visit a friend for a grad party in Mt. Carmel, a city close to Bloomsburg, and her neighbor's porch had been blown up by a meth lab explosion that had happened recently I believe (this was back in 2012).
Not to mention Mt. Carmel's infrastructure had gone to shit, the sidewalks were crumbling, potholes in the streets, a lot of rubble in various places. Bars were prevalent there, and I believe that meth labs are too. Atlas PA (neighbors Mt. Carmel), where my girlfriend and her parents had lived, was absolutely destroyed and run down. It reminded me of the ghettos but somehow, worse. Again, bars were prevalent and almost certainly drugs, although I have no objective proof of this other than my own subjective experience and intuition regarding the area of Atlas PA.
I graduated with a BA in Sociology back in 2012 from Bloomsburg, so I have a stable background with sociological issues and factors leading into issues like these etc, although as intellectual as I've become and as much as I admire knowledge and acquisition of information, I deeply believe this is a spiritual problem. On a spiritual level people who turn to drugs are self-deprived, through their own ego blocks i.e. pride, shame, guilt, anger, desire, fear etc, they experience a hellish life. Like Dr. David Hawkins, a world renowned teacher, says, drugs don't cause these extremely positive states, they block out all of the lower ego levels of consciousness, and then one gets to experience what's there all the time. The desire for the drug is actually the desire to return to God. To return to a state of joy, peace, serenity, equanimity, love, and happiness. This then leads to addiction to that state, which the drugs become the only means to regain it to the addict. To permanently attain such a state, one needs to surrender all ego/negative blocks which are blocking awareness of such a sublime state of being. This is a permanent solution as it completely removes the blocks, instead of just temporarily blocking them like meth does.
Globalization and the fall of important industries are factors and influences of course, but they are not the core problem, which is ego and its subsequent negative and hellish state of lack and depression.
If anyone wants to further discuss this feel free to respond. I find the whole phenomenon very fascinating and to experience something similar in Mt. Carmel to what Nick did in Oelwein was a very intriguing and simultaneously saddening event.
Added: I should also mention that I believe the lessening of the coal industry to oil etc (I am no expert on this) to be an influential factor in Mt Carmel's decline. Here is an excerpt from its wiki page: "In the past, there were extensive anthracite mining interests here and in the vicinity. In earlier years, the borough had manufactories of miners' caps, cement blocks, cigars, shirts, stockings, etc., and large silk and planing mills, foundry and machine shops, a knitting mill, lumber yards, a packing plant, and wagon works. Currently that area supports light manufacturing in paper and plastics."
I firmly believe that the downsizing of the coal industry in Mt. Carmel/Atlas PA area was an influential factor in the increase of drug use in the area, similar to the meat packing downsizing in Oelwein. I've pondered doing a qualitative study of the area and interviewing residents for the impact of meth labs and other drugs in the vicinity, but I'm pretty sure I'd need a Doctorate in Sociology to have my research published. I'm not sure how far my own research could go without such a qualification. Maybe just a book like Nick did, as he was a journalist with no official certification in such a relevant field of study (he has a bachelors in creative writing and English literature).
fascinating perspective, I am very interested in the subject of addiction to methamphetamine. I'm from New Zealand and we are experiencing a meth epidemic at the moment
Doctors and lawyers are known to be junkies...it's a diminutive term that dehumanizes people who are suffering badly.
30:00
I live in Independence 54:06
sign of the times addictions of 21st century
Interesting content but it takes this guy a long time to say anything.
Welcome to Republican America, a place that doesn't give a f*** about working people. Liberty and justice for the rich. Everyone else can burn.
Don't cry big guy😭😭😭