Meth and the Modern Age

After reading the comments by Elizabeth Hand on how every age has its appropriate narcotic
(www.salon.com/books/review/2007/08/16/meth/), I wonder just how this relationship is shaped. Drugs have been a scourge of all civilizations since the beginning of the 20th century, often appearing at all levels of society. I would be hard pressed to assume that culture somehow shaped drug use, so much as how drug use has shaped culture.

For example, consider that the introduction of massive amounts of drugs from Southeast Asia and South America, beginning in the 1950s and being realized in earnest in the 1960s, fundamentally changed the way that American culture operated. With heightened drug abuse came heightened crime to support these habits. That ubiquitous local-politics issue, "tough on crime," which has shaped our political landscape for the last three decades, was essentially the result of a reaction to the products of major narcotics' introduction.

Also, I disagree that the burning pace of modern professional life is somehow responsible for meth use. Meth is taken like any other drug, as an escape from realty. The vast majority of meth users get hooked not to meet some sort of deadline, but in order to run from the same problems that crack users were running from in the 1980s and 1990s, or from those same problems that "mommy's little helpers" treated in the 1950s.

Let us also not forget that the drugs in question are almost entirely synthetic. There are herbal sources for certain ingredients, but the plants and meth labs mentioned in this article are not plantations of poppies, but major chemical operations that produce industrialized, streamlined, neurological explosives at stupefying rates. Furthermore, one of the authors of these two books commented on how he used meth as a way of helping him work, in essence, relying on this drug to shape him into a model employee. In this case, his use of meth pehaps shaped by his own needs, undoubtedly shaped his work - likely spreading the effect to his readers. Meth not only shaped the author, but his production.

Drug use is not so much a product of an age, but the producer of what we come to realize as the world we live in. Addicts fit neatly into our consciousness, providing our universal enemy. Authors that use drugs come to define and shape our culture, influencing the public through their own drug abuse. Addicted musicians, actors and artists continue this trend, and please our senses, but only through the medium of their habits. Meth, heroin, cocaine, alcohol, tobacco and every other chemical escape have played key roles in shaping our history - as they will our future.