Let's Talk About Meth

Meth—a stimulant drug kind of like amphetamines that makes you feel good, gives you energy, keeps you awake and then sky rockets your blood pressure and heart rate, gives you skin sores, meth mouth, causes cognitive decline, and makes you look old and often sickly. According to the 2012 Monitoring the Future study, a NIDA funded survey of teens in grades 8, 10, and 12, 1% of 8^th and 10^th graders, and 1.1% of 12^th graders had abused meth at least once in the past year. That doesn’t sound like a lot but after working for 5 months at the Juvenile Delinquency Center, specifically in a residential drug and alcohol treatment unit, I can tell you that 1% is enough to morph the lives of too many youth.

Typically the unit had about 15 kids ranging from 12 to 17 years old at any given time. Many of the children had been through the program once before, or twice. Nearly all of the children reported having seen meth growing up in their homes, a history of chronic homelessness, domestic violence, poverty, and poor attendance at school. In a conversation with one exceptionally intelligent youth (he taught himself calculus on the computer in his free time), I was told it was better to have a roof to sleep under and friends to take care of you at the cost of using meth then to be all by yourself and homeless.  With all the scientific evidence we have that points to the importance of peer groups and social acceptance, it was difficult to suggest this young man was in the wrong.

To add further complexity, what we know about the teenage brain suggests that it develops unevenly starting in the back and moving towards the front. Because the prefrontal cortex (the very front of your cortex and in charge of judgment) has yet to be fully developed, impulses are nearly impossible to control and risky behaviors are ultimately the consequence. Meanwhile, the amygdala (in charge of emotions) and the nucleus acumbens (motivation) are developing more quickly than the prefrontal cortex. Therefore, while the teenage brain begins to reel with emotion and be highly motivated to work towards whatever they deem important, there is no regulator to find what is appropriate or safe.

So what does this all mean for the kids I got to know? For starters, it means that just as a result of normal development, teenagers are at a deficit which is often compounded for children by poverty, violence, poor parenting, limited mentors, and lack of education. It means that to understand how to bring the 1% of teenagers using meth to 0%, we need to educate ourselves more on how the brain works and understand that children at risk often times play a smaller role in their addiction that the judicial system would like to admit. We label these children as delinquents, force them to live in isolation for 6 months, and expect them to be done with drugs forever. How does this line up with what we know scientifically?

Even more so, decreasing teenage drug use is not limited to stronger rehabilitation research. We need to reverse cycles of poverty and violence that plague our most marginalized citizens. In this way, issues of homelessness, adult drug addiction, food insecurity, the social isolation of homosexual youth, poor education requirements, and the expensive cost of living are exceptionally related to the children that are using at such a young age. So to the reader that finds their actions are unrelated to youth sitting in a concrete room at the delinquency center, your actions today can influence them greatly. In the words of Margaret Mead, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” Today is the day for you to become a member of that group of thoughtful committed citizens.