By Tim Robertson

I’ve never seen meth, or methamphetamine as it’s officially called.

I’ve never seen any one doing it, in fact I don’t even know how that would work. I’ve never seen anyone making it, either, and I have no idea how that would work.

I understand it’s often made in trailers with chemicals that are easy to find. And given this ease, it’s apparently quite cheap.

People that do meth certainly enjoy themselves while they do it. But the fact is, meth is an absolute nightmare. An old friend of mine was a perfect student, studied harder than anyone I know and was successful with everything he ever tried. He used to party on the weekends, sometimes to excess, but he was always there on Monday mornings ready for the next lecture.

Unfortunately, he got a bit cocky with himself and decided to try some other things, meth included apparently. Within weeks he lost all interest in school and eventually lost my friendship too.

I always chalked it up with excuses like “we grew apart” but I was perpetually curious as to what happened. This friend recently got back in touch with me and told me a story that would make a stoic cry.

Needless to say, methamphetamines controlled his life for several years and he was lucky to get out before anything terrible happened. Extremely lucky.

I was talking to a judge recently and he told me a story of a girl. When she approached his bench she was a murderer, having taken an axe to her own mother’s head for the short term cash to keep her high for another week or two. She was angry and belligerent and had no idea of the grave nature of her crime.

After the initial arraignment, she was imprisoned for a month or so only to return as the human being she once was. The evil specter of a meth-addicted criminal that landed her in court was gone. She emerged as a bright, even beautiful, woman who was entirely remorseful of her actions. Unfortunately it was too late. She owed the next twenty-five years to life of her existence because of actions she committed while she had so little control over herself.

The problems with meth are many: It’s incredibly addictive and it’s highly debilitating. But most importantly, it strips a person of his character. Everything one have ever striven to be in life is forgotten. Suddenly, ones goals in life, be they to graduate from college, get a good job, or have and support a family, disappear. The new goal in life becomes to find another fix for an ancestral, thoughtless, primate of a person.

I am extremely grateful that my estranged friend got back in touch with me, but equally distressed that his meth addiction could have gone unnoticed for so long. I respect him greatly for finding his way out of what is certainly a very dark and deep hole, and I hope that anyone who may consider “trying” this drug will reconsider.

It’s not a cute little drug that someone’s neighbor made in their bedroom. It’s a terrible, destructive drug that is ripping many of our communities apart, and everyone needs to take it seriously.

Tim Robertson is a senior majoring in political science. E-mail him at opinion@louisvillecardinal.com.