I googled.... Meth Addiction.....This is just one of the articles it came up with.
Meth Users Undergo Devastating Physical Damage
WMAQ-TV
10:33 p.m. CDT September 18, 2006
CHICAGO - Even after getting help, methamphetamine users' bodies will have paid the costs of use.
Methamphetamine is one drug that causes marked amount of symptoms and adverse effects to a variety of organs.
As meth mug shots from the Oregon Police Department show, the longterm health risks are great.
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"It physically deteriorates your body unlike anything you've ever seen," said Garrison Courtney of the DEA. "You're putting toxins in your body. People have sunken in faces, losing hundreds of pounds, and sores and lesions. It starts to shutdown motor skills and shuts down your brain." Signs of meth use are face sores, premature aging, feeling so desperately anxious you grind your teeth into powder and devastate the mouth.
Then there's a toll on a mind that will never work like it did. Ed Negron used meth for nine years, and now, after kicking the habit, his body is recovering but he is still struggling.
"I want to learn and have a job but I can't remember s**t," Negron said. "People have to tell me at the end of a movie what happened at the beginning."
"The brain changes when you use chemicals. There is a rewiring that goes on," said addiction specialist Laura Parise.
Electrical impulses in the brain are so damaged, a person's thinking is dramatically slowed, and severe depression is another after-effect.
"Teenagers think of themselves as immune," said Toxicologist Dr. Jerrold Leiken, but he adds, they are not.
In fact, he said teen abusers are the most affected because the impact on their still growing minds and bodies can be especially potent.
"It can cause the serotonin depletion of the brain and electrolyte abnormalities," he said. Leiken has seen livers so overworked they break down, and heart rates raised so drastically that even kids have heart attacks.
In some cases, it's full body failure.
"(Meth) can cause just a complete breakdown of your skeletal muscles, legs arms and there is just literally total muscle breakdown," he said.
As for Negron, whose life has broken down, picking up the pieces is an agonizing process.
"Sometimes I feel just awful, but I just have to keep going. Crystal meth once -- it gets your claws in you, it's not letting you go. If you haven't tried it yet, you're not losing out on anything. Don't even try it."
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