No, no, no. Normally the use never gets out of control - what gets out of control is the user's life who will turn to higher doses and more doses as time wears on. I used drugs through my 20's. Meth was my drug of choice - meaning that was the drug I wanted. Sure I tried other things but always went back to Meth. For most of that time, 8 years I had it "under control" I was a weekend warrior. For the first couple of years I would get off work Friday, cash my check, see the dealer and then tweak for the weekend go back to work Monday morning dragging my butt. My 3 week vacations I spent tweaking. Then I started having the occasional "pick me up" meaning I would slam a dime in the middle of the after noon to give me the energy to get through the rest of the day. Around the 8th year I started slamming a dime in the morning - heck I'm sure you drink coffee - for me a tenth of a gram of speed was like you drinking a cup of coffee. In my 9th year I was laid off, too much free time on my hands lead to my going all out and slamming a gram at a time. Tweaking for weeks at a time... until finally at 129 pounds (I'm 6'2" so that is pretty thin) and wild with anxiety and other things I finally realized I had a small problem. This is a common story - folk can go for years tweaking and working and being functional until something gives way in their life (usually unrelated to the drug) and they have a lot of time to party or they "give up" and go all out. The Pictures you see are really of the rarer forms of dependency to meth. The "horror stories" you hear are usually the bad ones. The majority are "functional" or "week-end warriors" who function, maintain a job, pull off being "normal" for years and years and years. To understand meth and its affects on the body you first have to understand that the dose that a person takes to get high is an over dose. Yes you purposefully are oding on a drug which does have medical uses at far lower doses. The "regular" dose for "fun" is a "quarter" 0.25 Grams. However if you do it long enough and close together you soon find that you need 0.3, then 0.5 all the way up to a full gram. For IV users the rush is the ticket. The rush is the first wave of pleasure/sensations that go through the body when you first "slam" speed. Of course once you get a "taste" of that you want a stronger rush, a bigger rush a higher high. Many who do the needle also develop an obsession with the needle where the draw (pulling back the plunger to draw blood into the hypo chamber) is part of the thing. IF the person is functional, meaning they eat, drink, bathe, brush their teeth and have a "normal" life the physical affects (long term) are minimal. Loss of teeth, poor health comes from tweaking without eating without drinking fluids, without brushing teeth, etc. The affects of a dose of speed is like having your brain bashed out sexually speaking. Imaging the best sex you ever had - when you climaxed for what seemed like hours so hard you thought you had died and gone to heaven. Now times that times about 10, and prolong it for 8 hours - you are coming close to what it feels like to be on speed. Clinically, the heart rate increases, the pupils dilate, euphoria, increased blood pressure, ironically it could also be lowered blood pressure. Ones internal thermostat redlines and you start to sweat - even if it is 40 degrees F. Mentally all things are forgotten except on that which you are tweaking on. Tweaking is a single mindedness attention to one thing to the exclusion of all else. Some fun tweaks are: Sex - imagine having sex for 8 hours straight. Cleaning - scrub, scrub, scrub that house will be spotless. Dancing/Rave scene - where all you do is dance, dance dance. It becomes sort of a hypnotic trance sort of thing... ergo the name Trance. Dumpster diving - ah the treasures in the dumpster, the things you can fix. Some not so fun tweaks: Picking - either ones self or picking lint off the carpet (usually associated with thinking that one of those tiny white spots is more drug) Paranoid window watching, were one's mind gets caught up in thinking that somebody is out there or the cops are coming or something along those lines. Chasing the Bag - where your tweaking so you can find more drugs so you can tweak some more so you can find more drugs... Long term paranioa becomes a biggy where everyone is looking at you, where you know that your place is bugged, that people are there, that shadow people (aliens ghosts, CIA, MIB, others) are watching you. For many they become more social - a great drug of choice for introverts who when clean and sober hold up the wall, but when amped up and tweaking are the life of the party. I picked speed because I am an introvert. My tweak of choice was dance - I was a raver way back in the day. I had a few days of cleaning, even had sex once or twice. The Drug scene comes with its set of people, who will find you to be fun, and brilliant and wonderful (as long as you have money or drugs or offer up your body for fun). The stories you hear, what the media tells you is nothing - nothing to what a tweaker experiences, nothing to what the tweaker knows. Again the physical and mental damage is less than what the media tells you. Yes some do become exactly like the pictures of strung out meth freaks - however the darker secret, the horrible truth is that many, many others are living and functioning and do not come out of it looking old, toothless and insane.

I just left my boyfriend after 3 yrs he lied about usage however it is apparent he was using. Hard to admit I was with him. He owned a restaurant and drank heavily. I have to assume to hide the usage. The signs: for me where. Sweat, teeth, facial break outs. Lack of showers, pack rat, no method to his madness. Out burst of anger. RANDOM STATEMENTS i MEAN RANDOM. Sex.. Ha if he could get it up... Always needed some other form of excitement to do so... I feel so blind I am and always have been a non drug user I guess you don't believe it till your in the eye of the storm. He choose drugs over me most do. Cant help those that do not want to help them selves. The final straw was when I started sleeping in the spare room to get sleep due to his lack of sleep. The day he screwed himself literally screwed the door shut so he could not get out or someone in without removing them. Thats when I knew he was on the verge of insanity. AND i was not going with him I already felt insane enough from lack of sleep and arguements.