Slipping on the ice

What a game. I'm getting a late start this morning after staying up for yet another night to watch history in the making. Dare I believe that this will be the year the Red Sox actually win the world series? We're all holding our breath here in the Baystate waiting to see what happens next.

Meanwhile, I'm still in fuzzy brain mode so I leave you this morning with Pete Gorman's excellent story on the new drug ice. I guess I shouldn't say new - meth's purer cousin has been around for a long time now but its use has begun to take on a life of its own lately. Gorman tells us everything we wanted to know (and don't want to know) about the drug. It's scary stuff.

"People have short tempers when they're on it, and they're very sexually aggressive. ... And where with meth you might be high for 4-6 hours, with this you're high 10-12 hours and it's several times stronger than meth."

Even for people who are accustomed to using meth, he says, ice is often a problem. "It just seems to take people over like nothing I've ever seen. They can maintain their lives for years with meth, but with this they forget about their jobs, their families, everything. The only thing that matters is ice. I've talked with chemists and medical people and even people who make it, but no one has been able to explain why this is so much stronger. It just is."

No matter how experienced a drug user is, it takes everyone down, sooner or later. Mostly sooner.

"People burn themselves out all sorts of ways. From working too much, to drinking too much to too much nothing. But from what I am seeing, ice turns you into such a raging, focused maniac that you will burn out faster, and probably harder, than anything you can imagine."

Even if you never plan on trying this drug yourself, it's become such an epidemic that it behooves you to get informed. If nothing else it's an interesting article. Read it for yourself.