How do people die from using crystal meth?

woman 2
#1. September 22nd, 2009, at 12:53 AM.

it slowly kills over time…damaging the body organs…eating away your brain. you can also die from using one time. it raises your blood pressue and heart rate so high, that sometimes your body just can’t regulate this. i’ve had a few friends die from meth…and the others still using…their brain and teeth are gone.

Charles M
#2. September 23rd, 2009, at 8:57 AM.

Crystal methamphetamine use is associated with numerous serious physical problems. The drug can cause rapid heart rate, increased blood pressure, and damage to the small blood vessels in the brain–which can lead to stroke. Chronic use of the drug can result in inflammation of the heart lining. Overdoses can cause hyperthermia (elevated body temperature), convulsions, and death.

Individuals who use crystal methamphetamine also may have episodes of violent behavior, paranoia, anxiety, confusion, and insomnia. The drug can produce psychotic symptoms that persist for months or years after an individual has stopped using the drug.

Crystal methamphetamine users who inject the drug expose themselves to additional risks, including contracting HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), hepatitis B and C, and other blood-borne viruses. Chronic users who inject methamphetamine also risk scarred or collapsed veins, infections of the heart lining and valves, abscesses, pneumonia, tuberculosis, and liver or kidney disease.

evo741hpr3
#3. September 23rd, 2009, at 4:15 PM.

It eats holes in your brain and destroys your body>no kidding.

The stuff is made out of acidic products like drano. It’s so full of chemicals that it dissolves your teeth in a very short time.

Maldavi
#4. September 24th, 2009, at 12:14 PM.

No such thing.

SexxyMomma317
#5. September 27th, 2009, at 9:08 PM.

it could kill you from lack of nutrients in your body from going without eating for long periods of time, (because you stay up for days at a time usually), and lack of sleep let alone can kill you….but you will not immediately die from using it…it actually would take ALOT to kill you. It’ll just make you go crazy, be paranoid, become bi-polar, and become a nutcase! LOL And there is no such thing as a non-addicted user, unless you tried it ONE time and then never did it again. If you like it, it means you’ll keep doing it, and eventually doing it every few months turns to every month, then every month turns to every week, then every week turns into EVERY day…
THATS how you die.

waterman
#6. September 28th, 2009, at 7:43 AM.

just look at them teeth knashing, making all kinds of weird faces, you can just imagine the death that will take them., I am sure they all have suicidal thought as they slowly dwindle away. The crack made from coke is even worse as far as addiction

Very Trying
#7. September 29th, 2009, at 8:15 PM.

According to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), crystal methamphetamine (meth) is the number one drug in rural America. And now, the crystal meth epidemic is spreading like wildfire in cities and suburbs across America. Crystal meth has become the new drug of choice for everyone from soccer moms to working moms. Even grade school students are being caught in its deadly grip.

Meth is cheap and easy to make. The recipe includes over-the-counter cold medicine, household cleaners and toxic chemicals like battery acid. This drug crisis has forced many store owners to put cold remedies under lock and key. Thousands of homemade meth labs are popping up in kitchens, garages, even inside cars. In one Iowa town officials were forced to ban children from bringing baked goods to school because so many parents are cooking meth with the same utensils.

It’s cheap, instantly addictive, often deadly—and it’s probably already in your neighbourhood-

Sara is a young suburban Minnesota mother who got hooked on this highly addictive and deadly drug. “I was raised with morals and values,” Sara says. “I couldn’t have asked for better parents. I’ve always wanted to go to school for law enforcement. I was first runner-up in the Miss Minneapolis beauty pageant. I had a fairy-tale wedding. I had a beautiful little girl…I look in the mirror and [say], ‘Who is this person?’”

Sara is broke and living with her parents. In three years, Sara has lost her car, her job, her house and her marriage because of her addiction to crystal meth. Sara is also in trouble with the law and rarely passes her mandatory drug tests, which is how she lost custody of her daughter, Madison.
Losing her little girl wasn’t enough to make Sara hit rock bottom. “I thought when I lost my daughter over two years ago it would be enough for me to stop using and I’m going on almost three years now and I’m still using.”

Sara’s parents fear for her life. They attempt to control her drug use, failing time and time again. “I know they’re trying to help,” Sara says. “And I know they want the best for me but all’s they’re doing is making me go out and just want to get high more.”

Her family was finally ready to confront Sara in a secretly planned intervention. Her father gave her the ultimatum—”If you’re not willing to take place in this recovery process today, you need to know you will need to find a new place to live”—and Sara stormed out of the house to get high.
Sara did agree to go to treatment after her intervention. She’s been clean for four months.

“My addiction is always sitting right here on my shoulder and it’s always calling my name,” Sara says. “It’s waiting for me to slip up so it can grab me again. And that’s why I talk to all my friends back out in California [where she went for counseling], all the counselors, I go to my meetings, I go to church, I’m talking to my parents instead of isolating. I’m letting them know what’s making me upset, what’s making me angry so we can work through it because I remember a lot of things that I would go get high over.”
Now that she’s clean, Sara realizes what she put her family through. Sara’s father, John, painfully admits that there were times while Sara was addicted that he wished Sara would die. “I wished that she would have died to stop her pain,” John says. “Then at least I would have known that she was safe and where she was at.”

Sara was so consumed by her addiction, she thought that by agreeing to have that part of her life documented by A&E’s Intervention, she would gain sympathy for her addiction. “I was wanting my parents to see just what it was like,” Sara says. “The ad in the paper said, ‘A week in the life of an addict,’ so I thought, ‘Okay, they can come out, they can film me, everybody in the world can see how painful it is and what I have to go through every day.’ I was trying to be a functioning addict. I thought if I got a job, that I could still use and everything would go back to normal.”

Sara’s parents, Vicki and John, say it was hard for them to be part of A&E’s documentary because they had hidden Sara’s addiction for so long from friends. “We knew that she was on something, but maybe it was just denial that it was that drug or what drug it was,” John says. “It’s like having an ugly monster chasing you around in your house,” Vicki says.
The toxic chemicals in crystal methamphetamine literally eat away brain tissue. The brain on the left is normal and the brain on the right is of a 28-year-old meth user.

“[Crystal meth] literally puts holes in your brain,” Debra Jay explains. “Remember how Chantel was talking about her drug addiction? Just like it was nothing. You absolutely lose the ability to learn from past mistakes or to care about anything. And it’s not because she’s being bad. It’s because her brain no longer works. And this can be permanent. That’s why it was so important to get her into treatment.”

Methamphetamine addicts go days without sleeping or eating and get what Debra Jay calls “a drug-induced anorexia.” Malnourished, the body starts eating itself. First fat, then it starts eating muscle…
the tragic toll that crystal meth can take on a person’s physical appearance. Bret King, a jail deputy in Oregon, took these photos of a woman on crystal meth three and a half years apart. (www.co.multnomah.or.us/sheriff/faces_of_meth.htm)

Debra Jay explains the change in the woman’s appearance. “First of all, you see all the sores on her face? When you’re using crystal meth, they start thinking bugs are under their skin and they start itching all the time. They call it ‘crank bugs.’ They get obsessive about it and then they started digging holes. They try to dig the bugs out of their skin. You see the holes on her face, if you could see the rest of her body… And then what happens, these sores become infected because typically where they’re using these drugs, you cannot believe the filth.”

Learn more about crystal meth, interventions and treatment options.