Truth about meth: It's here, it kills

 Darren drove his black Jaguar sports car over a bridge in the city after midnight as a policeman followed close behind. Beside him was an attractive young prostitute. Darren drove, sweating, he later told me, his eyes darting back and forth from the bridge passage to the rear view mirror and the policeman. The prostitute sat low in her seat fiddling with a fix of crack cocaine.

The police lights came on and Darren came expectantly to a halt.

He was terrified, he later explained, at the prospect of being arrested and having his secret life revealed. But he was also relieved because he thought if finally he was revealed, the embarrassment could lead him to decide to quit. It was his choice to do the drug after all, he said. It wasn't like it was physically addictive, so with the right motivation he could decide to quit.

This night Darren sat in his car, stopped in mid-passage across a bridge while he awaited the inevitable: to be arrested for possession. But the girl had thought quickly enough to dispense the drugs out the window and over the side of the bridge without the officer seeing them.

His opportunity passed, he said.

Darren got away that night and many nights following. By the time he was arrested for the first time he was so accustomed to his new lifestyle that he didn't sweat any longer. The lifestyle was hard and was taking its toll on him, but it was his choice, he said, because crack cocaine was not physically addictive.

If he really wanted to stop he should be able to.

Darren entered rehab following his first arrest only to return to his abuse the day of his release.

Darren was rich, charming, a dedicated Christian, conscious of the poor to the point of self-sacrifice, single, handsome and young. He was engaged to a beautiful and charming woman. Not the last person many would imagine could become addicted to drugs, but a person whose life seemed full and pure, a life not driven by cheap thrills.

But he did become addicted. He experimented one time with a dangerous drug and became hooked immediately to a drug not known to be physically addictive, only mentally addictive.

Darren tried to explain the science and chemistry of his drug of choice, wanting to believe cocaine was not addictive. What Darren did not know was that his mind had become addicted, an addiction that is in fact more difficult to treat and far more dangerous to the overall life than any physically addictive drug may ever be. By the time Darren did learn this, the mental addiction was so complete he was unable to act on reason. Essentially his will was usurped.

Most people are familiar with the idea of addiction and withdrawal on the physical level. A couple of episodes of COPS or ER is enough to dramatize it. There is the image of the drug addict with holes in his arm from needles, convulsing and choking from tremors when the body fails to "fix" its craving. This is the image of a person physically addicted. The body craves what it needs to keep from going into shock and possibly death, cramping as if with starvation.

With most physical addictions comes an accompanying mental addiction. It is an addiction of the will. In a mental addiction a person who has experienced a feeling of great euphoria becomes obsessed with achieving a certain "high" again and again. It is not the body that needs something to stay alive, but the mind that desires a feeling.

The mental addiction is rooted in a physical element in cases such as cocaine and methamphetamine use, however.

The mental addiction in coke and methamphetamine is the result of a person never being able to physically achieve the same height of euphoria as that of the initial use. The sensors in the brain affected by the drug are slowly deadened by the drug use, resulting in an ever-lessening of the high, which in turn leads to an obsessive desire to achieve an unachievable goal.

This week's focus page addresses the elements of methamphetamine abuse, perhaps the most prevalent illicit substance abused in the United States today. Easily manufactured and concealed, the drug is also cheap and is popular with young people. What may be most devastating about the drug is its ability to so easily enslave the mind.

Popular British Journalist Malcolm Muggeridge, the man credited with first bringing Mother Teresa to public notice, once said "Our free will is shaped by our passions into an inescapable destiny." His insight explains what happens with a person who abuses psychical drugs. It is a person's free will that allows him to choose to try the drug.

But it is desperate passion for the drug's ever-lessening high which drives their will after they become addicted.

Think of the myth of Tantalus, ever starved, ever thirsty, with food and drink forever just beyond his reach.

Darren thought he was in control of his destiny. He was a man accustomed to training the drive of his ambitions to achieve the goals of his choice. Then he experienced mental addiction. Within one year of experimenting with a psychically addictive drug his will had been turned over to pursue one goal and one goal only: The fix.