Crystal Meth

Someone gets caught with crystal meth—a politician, a celebrity, someone who’s supposed to know better—and suddenly it seems less apocalyptic. If a person like that is using it, maybe it’s manageable. Maybe there’s some version of it that doesn’t destroy you, some way to use it that keeps you functional. People want to believe there’s a formula, a way to do dangerous things safely.

Crystal meth doesn’t work that way.

It turns you into a zombie, and I don’t mean that metaphorically. Your teeth turn gray and break apart. Your skin gets pale and covered in open sores from picking at phantom bugs. You don’t sleep—not for days, sometimes weeks. Your brain just won’t stop firing. You become convinced there are insects crawling under your skin and you scratch and pick until you’re bleeding. Work disappears, relationships disappear, your apartment becomes just a place to use. Everything collapses into getting the next hit.

And you watch it happening the whole time. You understand that you’re destroying yourself and you can’t stop.

That’s what it does. Not to some people. To everyone. Smart people, dumb people, people with money and connections, people with nothing. The drug doesn’t make exceptions.

So don’t. That’s it.