Cooking Class

Thursday night was cooking class down at the citizen’s police academy, and by the end of the night I’d learned how to make the poor man’s cocaine: methamphetamine, known in drug circles as tweak, crank, ice, zip, gack, or my personal favorite - geek. Meth is officially the new drug of choice, and it’s easy to see why. It’s cheap– about $20 a hit; and if you’re a Martha Stewart do-it-yourself type, you can take a quick trip to Walmart and have all that you need:

• A precusor, such as pseudoephedrine, which you already stashed under your bathroom sink for last summer’s cold. There’s a two pack limit in the town where I work, so you may have to shop around.

• A solvent, such as camp fuel, which we always keep on store, for camping.

• A catalyst, like red phosporous. Just buy an economy pack of matches and use the strike pads.

• A reagent, like epson, iodine tincture. Only be careful, because if you jumble the wrong ingredients, you’ll likely create phosphine gas and blow your face off.

• A pea sized brain and a wicked death wish. Crank is one of the most addictive drugs in the world, and the success rate for rehab is low, far lower than that of coke or alcoholism or caffeine free diet coke.

If you’ve been on meth for several days in a row they call you a tweaker, and tweakers do strange things, exhibiting behavior similar to paranoid schizophrenics. After my cooking class ended, I drove home and watched for the signs, and began to see them everywhere. Meth, after all, is a problem, even in this Mayberry-like town. My neighbors consistently park three cars in front of our house and they come and go like pirate ships in the Strait of Malacca. Guilty. (Not really).

I keep my eye out for meth mouth (black gum lines), sunken face, and crank bugs (scabs) while scouring the grocery store aisles. Users obsessively take items apart when they’re tweaking – computers, for instance, so as you probably guessed I’ve been vigilant around Casey, given his penchant for deconstructing items of all kinds.

Environmnetal toxins from meth labs can create a community Love Canal, given the cocktail of chemicals used in the process. And some meth users run labs right out of their kids rooms in the hopes that the cops won’t search the full premises. I’m maddened by it all, but also saddened. I mean, who becomes the meth mouth in our society? Well, based on the statistics, you probably have to be poor and rural and most likely white, so if you’re white trash – an elitist term used to label poor, white, less educated people in a derogatory, imflammatory, and classist manner (sorry, can’t resist) - then the chances are good that you, too, can become a tweaker.

I know, I know, I’m a bleeding heart liberal, and that we all have choices when confronted with our gateway drug. I believe that. But I believe that some of us have been given more choices.

PS - I do not encourage anyone to make their own meth, nor to rely on the accuracy of the ingredients listed above.