The Meth Epidemic--An Insider's View [View All]

I spent more than 13 years as the chief regional psychologist for Community Corrections in a sparsely-populated, mostly rural 16-county region of northwest WI, the area of the state with the highest number of meth arrests in the state--not the highest number per capita, but the highest number.

I did psychological evaluations of many of these meth users. In general, they tend to have histories of incredible abuse, neglect, and trauma, and seek meth because it is a cheap way to commit slow suicide while keeping themselves in a state in which they don't feel the pain of their miserable lives. Unfortunately, they often destroy other lives while in the process of destroying their own.

I am now in private psychological practice, largely as a forensic expert. Yesterday I got called in on another meth case. A young woman, the product of abusive, alcoholic, and drug-addicted parents, killed somebody with her car. She will go to prison, and I have no quarrel with that. But neither in prison nor later in the community will she get anything like effective treatment. There are no programs, there is no funding now, and there will still be no funding when she gets out of prison, barring some miracle, like, for instance, the creation in America of a universal health care program.

The way to treat meth abuse is to detox them for about 6 months and start them into a program of PTSD treatment to start alleviating the daily agony they feel in the course of merely existing. The way to prevent meth addiction is to treat, or preferably prevent, the abuse of children in dysfunctional families. In other words, the only thing that will end the meth problem is a humane program of health care and family intervention, both of which are unavailable in our harsh, brutal, social-Darwinian culture of callousness.