street

The early incarnations of the methamphetamine street chemists were a far cry from the meth cooks of today. The former were not only smart, but arguably brilliant. Surely some must have learned their craft in the world of legitimate chemistry and pharmacology, only to lose their way experimenting with means and methods of brewing a wide variety of methamphetamines and what would come to be known by their eerily modern rubrics of “analogue,” or “designer” drugs, such as MDE, MDA, MDMA, MDME. What they accomplished by sheer dint of nefarious wit, scientific ingenuity, and marketing savvy is nothing short of astonishing. Indeed, their achievements were as unprecedented as they were devastating.

Their work had to take into account not only chemistry, but brain chemistry – scientific considerations that had to come in line with legal and marketplace realities. To become a true phenomenon, a process had to be developed that produced the drug in quantity with relative ease, and it had to be so good that those who took it up would never want to quit. And that’s exactly what these chemists accomplished. Their entrepreneurial spirit even took it a step or two further, attracting a far larger customer base with a variety of products.

Methamphetamine works at the most basic level of pleasure by increasing the levels of dopamine in the brain. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that acts as the currency of the brain’s own reward system. Whenever we work hard and achieve a goal, the brain releases dopamine, and we experience a high, natural satisfaction. After a relatively brief period of time the high naturally and gradually dissipates, returning us to the realm of everyday life. Methamphetamine tampers with this most basic mechanism, essentially spiking the system with dopamine without any hard work, artificially creating intense feelings of euphoria and general well-being. For good measure, it then blocks the “re-uptake” of dopamine in the cerebral cortex and limbic areas of the brain. In effect, dopamine is secreted into the system and is then made to stay there.

Unlike other stimulants, methamphetamine also blocks the metabolism of these neurotransmitters by the body. According to researchers at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), this is why the effects of the drug last so much longer than, say, cocaine. It remains in the bloodstream virtually unchanged for an enormous stretch of time, giving it a half-life of ten to twenty hours instead of perhaps an hour or two.

Nevertheless, all highs are transient, even an amphetamine high, and the drug is inevitably purged from the body. But the brain is a stern governor. Over the course of months and years the heavy user’s brain begins to produce less and less dopamine, as it wearies of the hyper-stimulation. According to drug rehabilitation specialists, this is why the methamphetamine addict feels the tremendous depression for many months after he or she stops using – hence the tremendously high rate of relapse among those trying to quit. When the ex-user can no longer stand the deprivation, the world becomes a sleepless place of incessant anxiety, paranoia, and violence. And there seems to be no way out of the nightmare. In these haunted realms, it is unfathomable that this amphetamine dream world is a mere tempest of molecules coursing through a stormy vault of consciousness.

Incredibly, the dream itself can be chemically altered. One of the most striking features of amphetamine is the ability of its molecular structure to be tailored, producing a wide variety of effects. Some are more hallucinogenic, others more stimulative, some merely producing a sense of heightened empathy, while others are a blending of all these effects. One of the reasons for this capacity is, in part, the ability of Mother Nature to produce right- and left-handed molecules, or molecules that are mirror images of themselves (bear in mind that these are not identical molecules, and indeed they have dramatically different psychoactive properties). “Ice,” or dextro isomer methamphetamine, for instance, is a right-handed molecule. It is two to four times as stimulating to the brain as the left-handed, or levo-methamphetamine molecule, the drug that is more commonly snorted, taken orally, or injected. However, this left-handed molecule is many times more stimulating to the cardiovascular system and nasal sinuses than the right-handed molecule. This is what makes an Ice high so different from the meth one typically snorts.

But all of this had first to be discovered. In the early eighties it was, and by all the wrong people. A few of these street chemists saw themselves through a kind of New Age prism, as Mother Nature’s esoteric scientists on a transcendent mission of developing mind-expanding drugs – or at least they were people with a mystical bent who believed in the aphorism, “Better living through chemistry.” But these folks were few and far between. Unlike those of marijuana and hallucinogenic drug cultures, these purveyors of altered states were overwhelmingly practical, having commercial objectives most squarely in mind. They were entrepreneurs interested in research and development of products they could sell. They knew R&D to be their lifeblood, the amphetamine molecule their clay, and they would always gather the wit to adapt to ever-changing laws, and the vagaries of the marketplace.

The supreme example of this remarkable blend of market savvy and technical ingenuity is still with us today, and has everything to do with the right-handed dextro isomer methamphetamine. In the late eighties legislation was passed that made ephedrine a controlled substance, just as P2P had become years earlier. Ephedrine could still be bought legally in Canada and Mexico, but had suddenly become difficult to come by in quantities required to fill the burgeoning demand chemists saw around them. This wouldn’t be a problem for long, as the possibilities of a new precursor chemical were gradually being revealed in tiny labs scattered about the remote volcanic hills of Hawaii. Best of all, this new precursor was still legal.

The street chemists began to experiment with what was called pseudoephedrine, which just happens to be a left-handed molecule capable of forming a mirror image of itself, making a right-handed, dextro isomer methamphetamine base. From this, Ice could be derived. It didn’t take long for both the product and the knowledge – the recipe – to make its way to the mainland, for this is where the vast market lay. Thus by way of remarkable curiosity and cunning a whole new market was opened up. A problem – this one legal in nature – was translated into an asset, and fortunes multiplied.

Over the course of the next couple of decades the street chemists would modify and simplify their techniques, making the process marginally safer – i.e., less combustible – and far more difficult to detect by developing a nearly odor-free method. The putrid smell associated with the manufacture of meth had often been the key to locating clandestine labs. In time, methods would be developed so that the drugs could be made on a stovetop. Labs would be set up in mobile homes or ferried about in cars forever roaming the countryside, making interdiction all but impossible. The most difficult ingredients to come by, of course, would be ephedrine or pseudoephedrine. In time only a tiny percentage of labs would use P2P – roughly three percent today.

In any case, it was in the early 1980s that methamphetamine in its various forms fully regained its foothold in Europe and America. The epidemic that was to come would be a far more devastating version than the one of “mother’s little helper” and the Black Beauties of the sixties, the White Crosses of the seventies. And the catastrophe didn’t have to happen. Without the craven machinations of an inept U.S. Congress, and the innovations that allowed methamphetamine to be “homemade,” the epidemic we live with today might never have been.