The Effects of Methamphetamine Use 1 Running Head: THE EFFECTS OF METHAMPHETAMINE USE

The Effects of Methamphetamine Use Realize what you are doing to yourself! Cameron J. Gilbert University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Spring 2014

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Introduction/Background When is it going to be enough? When am I finally going to quit? When/How can I get more? The thought pattern of most drug addicts are in short, wild, random and focused on just one thing. Here comes your best friend knocking on the door, Methamphetamine. The life as a Meth addicted is a double-edged sword. The amazing effects of being on the drug but the side effects normally outweigh the benefits. Teeth rot, hair loss, skin picking, and those are just a few beginning a long list of side effects. Methamphetamine is just a death trap waiting to happen, a ticking time bomb. Would you really want to be there when the timer hits the end? The AMC series Breaking Bad shows the glamorous side of drug abuse and addiction. From making it to using it, making money, it goes through the life of being invincible to the world and the authorities. Although it is not always a bad monster; Methamphetamine has been approved by the USFDA for ADHD patients. Patients get the benefits of a tablet form that they can take orally versus the illicit black market Methamphetamine that you have to gasp in. You also get the benefits from being an ADHD patient; you finally have focus and determination. Unfortunately the same benefits are followed by the same side effects and no one really wins. In this paper I aim to truly allow you to make a choice in your life if you do drugs and want to really know that it is not what it is made out to be on TV. Literacy Review Terms: Methamphetamine: Methamphetamine also known as Meth is a psycho-stimulant. Meth is classified as a schedule II substance and is only accessible by prescription only. Meth gives the
Comment [C2]: What does it mean by schedule II substance? Comment [C1]: Whats gasp in? Snorting? Injection?

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user heighten awareness, concentration, energy and euphoria. Meth has a high degree of abuse in its user and is often hard to quit use. Meth Use: PBSs frontline launched an investigation about the Meth epidemic and Meth use. It was described as something that spiraled out of control and became the fastest-growing drug abuse problem. They then go onto describe how Meth use is far from an epidemic. In fact, the amount of regular users has just dropped to around 350,000. Deputy Brian King started to collect mug shots of Meth uses that came through the county jail. These mug shots show powerful visual evidence of Meths effects. The Meth Project takes fear to the end with graphic ads showing pimps and prostitutes on Meth. An ad shows warnings like 15 bucks for sex is not normal. But on Meth it is. The billboard uses a program called Face2Face shows what you could look like on Meth. The question is why would someone do that to themselves? Meth has been linked to increase a persons risk of Parkinson disease. This study was brought up by animals that were given the drug. It showed that the drug damaged the dopaminergic neurons. This is the same damage that happens to humans when the drug is used for an extended time. To test this researchers took death records and data from hospitals and compared the disease to Meth use. The researchers found that Methamphetamine was predominant when compared to cocaine use. It showed a 75 percent higher risk with Meth. The cocaine group had 12 cases per 10,000 patients VS Meth having 21 cases for every 10,000 patients. The result showed that Parkinson disease was linked more to Meth than lifestyle choices relating to drug users. Although they did find that with Meth users who had the Parkinson disease had a lower dosage than those who developed the disease with no drug use. Methamphetamine is a very dominant drug that is illegally used in many ways. Those ways include smoking, snorting, injection, or an oral dosage.
Comment [C3]: Give short definition

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Meth gives the user feelings of energy, confidence, and euphoria, improved attention, and cognitive function. Meth is used as a treatment in ADHD, narcolepsy, and obesity. A Swiss study found that Meth was present in 9 percent of samples in DUID suspects due to minor traffic violations. 4 percent was found in traffic accidents where they killed someone. Although these studies show that Meth can hurt your reaction time, it can also improve your perceptual speed, vigilance, and psychomotor performance. Small amounts of Meth, less than .42 mg/kg, have little to no effect on the user. However, with heavy users, they have been associated with negative personality attributes. These attributes include impulsivity, aggressiveness, and antisocial behavior. To further explore these issues, there was a study conducted deriving the driving ability of current Meth users. This was an independent vs. dependant study. The scientific and medical communities now agree that drug dependence is a chrome disorder that requires a lot of care. However most of this is from literature that is mainly associated with the use of heroin. Although most of these studies are in reality short-term studies, they do not show the whole picture. Comparing cocaine and Meth to heroin, heroin has longer periods of addiction. Quitting heroin will result in more drug use later down the road. Cocaine use has a shorter lifespan than any other drug discussed in this article. Meth users are more likely to be white women while heroin users are more likely to be Hispanic males. From this article it was concluded that within the first 10 years quitting was possible but extremely difficult to achieve. Drug use patterns can fluctuate rapidly as well. These results show that there is a major need to stop drug use before it turns into a life decision.
Comment [C4]: Add how many people out of 10,000 are addicted to heroin. Similar to what you did earlier with cocaine and Meth.

Comment [C5]: Are there any specific reasons/facts why these individuals are the ones addicted to those drugs?

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Meth Abuse: The abuse of Methamphetamine is helped by prevention, treatment, and understanding of the drug. The drug causes changes in behavior, for instance: drug finding and taking behavior. When the drug was given to mice they reacted the same way as humans would on the drug. Mice when given a high dosage of Meth showed no sign of spatial memory retention versus mice that had a lower dosage. Mice with a high dosage were also considerably heavy then its counterparts. Although 2 weeks later the other mice developed the same weight. Some research suggests the link between drug abuse and obesity to be connected since drug use alters the way of the mine to not eat at ones hearts content. It was stated in the report that this theory requires future research. Thankfully for the researchers there were no conflicts of issue that would skew the data results. A 26 year old man is rushed to the ER after not seeing him for two days. They found him in his room with four empty syringes. His friends said that he had been a huge drug abuser since he had broken up with his girlfriend. The past few days he was a little irritated seeing her with another man. His friends said that he had used heroin, cocaine, Marijuana, and Methamphetamine. He did not have any previous illnesses or have been taking medication. The man is unconscious but he is able to be wakened. His skin looks well even with needle tracks. The rest of his body seems to be normal; thyroid, lymph nodes, neck veins. The lungs have scattered dry rales. This is also known as the crackles. All of this stemmed from being left by his girlfriend. The man turns out to be ok and is only a false alarm to his friends who deeply care about him. Meth Pipe: This kind of pipe unlike ones that you smoke tobacco in is glass in nature. It normally looks like a rose holder turned on its side. Meth produces an odorless smoke and is nearly undetectable. Other pipes known for Meth use are bongs, bubblers and homemade variants.
Comment [C7]: Is necessary to the story/ Comment [C6]: than

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Cartel: The rises of DTOS, Drug-Trafficking OrganizationS, in Mexico have developed massive crime rates on both sides on the border. These DTOS are detrimental to the United States economy. Although members of U.S. law enforcement attempting to stop these organizations have resulted in colossal casualties, they have not received the attention that other conflicts do. During the presidential debate this topic was not brought up once. The sale of cocaine, heroin, Marijuana, and Meth has resulted in amazing profits, totally around $39 billion annually. The cartels have built a multibillion-dollar business including the shipment of immigrants and sex slaves, and many other illegal activities. Legalization has become very popular. The controversial topic that the war on drugs is helpless, while in reality, removing one money stream will not ruin the cartels as they can run completely without their drug stream. Not only that, but the U.S. would never allow drugs like heroin and ecstasy to be legal anyways. Thus this keeps these money streams intact. Lung Cancer: A study of 76,000 women confirmed an association between smoking and lung cancer. Although from this study there was no link between the disease and secondhand smoke. The incidence of lung cancer was 13 times higher in regular smokers and only four times higher in retired smokers than in non-smokers. It is very reassuring that passive smoke in the childhood home does not increase the risk of lung cancer, said Patel. There a non a lot of nonsmokers in a smoker family. To avoid passive cigarette smoke it is better to change your social behavior so that you are not in a society where smoking is normal and happens daily. The only flaw is that measuring passive smoke inhalation is very hard to measure in a study. The articles goes on to state, We do not want people to conclude that passive smoking has no effect on lung cancer. The study just shows that there is no correlation between the two.
Comment [C8]: How does this fit in with meth? Are they smoking the meth or cigarettes

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Drug Trafficking: Recently the Turkish-Iranian border has seen drastic improvements in economic relations they have seen a 118 percent increase in the number of Iranians visiting Turkey and 66 percent increase in Iranian vehicles crossing the border. This also comes with a huge drug trafficking problem. From 2005-2007 and 2008-2010, 361 operations contained at least one Iranian suspect. Heroin was the highest drug that was seized. The second most seized drug was opium then cannabis and Methamphetamine. Only 23 percent was actually linked to an organized crime group while the other 76 percent was from individual drug trafficking attempts. There were seizures as low as 250 grams and from that ranging up to 5000 grams. This is nothing compared to the amount of drugs that is captured at the border from 2010 to 202. According to KOM, a total of 2.2 tons of heroin, 570 kg of Meth and over 10 tons of cannabis was seized at the border. Breaking Bad: The purpose of the show was to not only show the difficulties of making money for a disease but to show how the main character starts off as this very likable renowned person and slowly moves into the position of this dark ruthless creature. The character goes behind his wifes and brothers-in-laws back, who is a DEA agent, and makes Meth for money to help cure and get rid of his cancer. Walter is also making sure his family is well off after he dies. The story is full of drug users and the 2nd main character Jessie Pinkman, who was Walterss exstudent, helps create this massive drug empire, they go as far as using other houses to make and sell the Meth. As for appropriate behavior there is none, the story goes from secretive to close to being caught to running for his life and all back to secretive again. The main form of communication to Walterss secret life is through a pre-paid phone which he hides in the ceiling of his class. Any behavior that would endanger Walterss life or his family would be inappropriate at the least and in one episode the house that was bugged by his employer saved

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his life. I expect to find many discourse communities in Breaking Bad, the drug community, the second life community, the family community, workplace community, friend community and more. Breaking Bad not only excels in telling a great story it keeps you on edge and you cannot help but watch the next episode. Entering the Conversation You might want to consider how I am credible at all versus being a doctor, well because I am a fan of Breaking Bad and I see how Meth use and distribution is glamorized. I have never used Methamphetamine in my life. Not including over the counter medicines but that doesnt count. We are talking about the black market drug that you have to know The Right Guy for. In the past year Marijuana was allowed for recreational use in two states; Colorado and Washington. According to the NORML who supports the legalization of the drug; taxpayers spent around 90% of the $10 billion dollar budget was spent on prosecuting citizens for simple Marijuana possession. While Methamphetamine enforcement is only a mere $4.2 billion, it shows what concerns the government the most. But why is Marijuana such a focus when Methamphetamine has worse side effects? Maybe because of lying media, paid government officials, or big named pharmaceutical companies that relies on huge profits from over the counter medicines. All of these are just speculation and may in fact be wrong or all right. The truth is that Methamphetamine is worse for you than Marijuana. An article I read stated that the War on Drugs was a lost cause, even if you do make a drug or all of them legal, the cartels will still thrive in the black market economy. Cartels are not solely run by drugs they are often into pirating, smuggling, and stealing which will continuously keep them afloat. Conclusion
Comment [C16]: If you are adding how marijuana is different from methmake it clear. I am unaware on what you are adding. What are you entering into the conversation? Comment [C14]: How???? Comment [C15]: What article. Cite the source! Comment [C13]: What does it stand for? Comment [C11]: Such as what? Comment [C12]: The right guy Comment [C9]: Lit Review wrong. Gotta group your sources into common themes then explain what they add new to the conversation

Comment [C10]: Versus being a doctor? Or versus a doctor? I am unclear.

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If this paper made you realize that you might have an addiction or might need help. Talk to somebody. Do not let drug abuse dictate how you want to live your life. If you do not want to tell someone close there are counselors and people willing to help. In Breaking Bad; Jesse, Badger, and Skinny P, all go to a sort of AAA group that focuses more on drugs like Methamphetamine than actually alcohol. It was a way to just talk. The original idea was to sell to the group members and make money off of them because of the lack of customers, and Jesse just wanting to make a profit. Badger and Skinny P actually start to go through the steps of rehab. Only after that they get dragged down again at a party with Jesse. There goes all the time they resisted the temptation but just a friend who knocks down doors just to party. More times better than not peer pressure creates a huge role in drugs and most do it as a social thing, To experience it together. Do not learn it the hard way, do you really want to live in a life where your body does not work, or you experience things that are not there. You decide.
Comment [C20]: Dont forget to add works cited Comment [C19]: SO WHAT??? Why do I care? Why a plot summary of an episode? Comment [C17]: ??Maybe you entering the conversation should be how people with a drug problem should ask for help? Because if not, this doesnt make sense. Comment [C18]: nonononononono