Powerful People Have Been Users of Dangerous Drug

Adolf Hitler was a “speed freak,” a methamphetamine addict. Methamphetamine also was dispensed to troops and pilots during World War II to help them fight fatigue and improve night vision.

President John F. Kennedy was given injections by his personal physician before important summit meetings, according to Ronald K. Siegel, a UCLA psychopharmacologist who has studied methamphetamine.

Methamphetamine usually is prescribed by doctors for treatment of narcolepsy, obesity and attention deficit disorder.

The drug targets the brain’s limbic system, which controls the emotions of fear, fight, flight and fornication--”the four F words of survival,” Siegel said.

Initially, methamphetamine creates feelings of euphoria, energy and confidence. Continued use leads to depression, sleepiness and tolerance to the drug, sparking even greater use and leading to a third stage, he explained.

“The user becomes paranoid, suspicious, distrustful of people,” he said. “Noises become startling. There is agitation, nervousness, a pervasive anxiety about the world, or, alternately, grandiose paranoia.”

Extended use of meth leads to rage responses to minimal stimuli--”a twisted smile, a wink of an eye, that can trigger enormous reaction or violence,” Siegel said. “The user loses any sense of codes of conduct.”

Meth also creates hypersexuality, Siegel said. But in time, the user may prefer meth to sex altogether. And the most violent sexual assaults are typically associated with meth use, he said.

Emergency room physicians and drug counselors say there is no doubt that methamphetamine use is California’s newest epidemic.

In San Diego, 20% of all emergency room drug abuse episodes in the second half of 1993 were blamed on methamphetamine. Cocaine episodes ranked second, at 16.4%. Two years earlier, meth accounted for 9.2% of emergency room drug-related episodes, and cocaine accounted for 17.6%.

Dr. Eugene Kwong, an emergency physician at the San Bernardino County Medical Center, sees the telltale signs of meth use: scabs caused by people who pick their skin raw, convinced there are worms crawling beneath. He calls the injuries “speed bumps.”

Meth users are also flooding drug counseling centers.

“Ten years ago, 80% of our patients were cocaine users,” said Paul Brethen, director of the Matrix Institute on Addictions in Rancho Cucamonga. “Today, 90% of them are meth users.”