Read Online Nick Reding by Methland: The Death, Life of an American Small Town - Free Book Online Page B
Tags: General, Social Science, Psychology, Sociology, Criminology, Psychopathology, Drug traffic, Addiction, Rural, Methamphetamine, Methamphetamine - Iowa - Oelwein, Methamphetamine Abuse, Drug Abuse and Crime, Methamphetamine Abuse - Iowa - Oelwein
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they are the embodienent
of late-stage meth addiction, the political expression of the existential scourge and the bane of the work-based American
dream.
Meth works on the limbic system of the brain, which is the brain’s reward center, as well as on the prefrontal cortex, where
decision making takes place. A meth user’s feelings are reflected in what are called his executive actions, or what Freese
calls “his ability to choose between what we all know to be good and bad.” Freese says that what feels good is tied directly
to survival. The ability to make decisions, therefore, is in some ways controlled not by what people want, but by what they
need. Meth, says Freese, “hijacks the relationship” between what is necessary and what is desired. “The result is that when
you take away meth, nothing natural—sex, a glass of water, a good meal, anything for which we are supposed to be rewarded—feels good. The only thing that does feel good is more meth.” Moreover, he continues, “there’s a basic and
lasting change in the brain’s chemistry, which is a direct result of the drug’s introduction.” The ultimate effects are psychopathology
such as intolerable depression, profound sleep and memory loss, debilitating anxiety, severe hallucinations, and acute, schizophrenic
bouts of paranoia: the very things that meth, just eighty years ago, was supposed to cure.
Sleep loss alone, Freese posits, can cause enough emotional and biochemical stress to result in long-term functional deficits.
Once the effects of days of sleeplessness are compounded by the panic of memory loss and one of the more common hallucinations
from which meth addicts suffer (for instance, that insects are crawling out of their skin), it’s no wonder that addicts do
things non-addicts wouldn’t dream of. As Dr. Clay Hallberg, the Oelwein general practitioner, says, “I’d much rather be in
the emergency room with a paranoid schizophrenic—and I’ve been in the ER with plenty—than a meth-head. They’re literally out
of their minds.”
Roland Jarvis used to have a good job at Iowa Ham in Oelwein. It was a hard job, “throwing” hundred-pound pans full of hog
hocks into a scalding roaster and pulling them out again, a process he likens to playing hot potato with bags of sand. But
he made eighteen dollars an hour, with full union membership and benefits. That would be a lot of money today in Fayette County.
In 1990, it was the kind of money about which a high school dropout like Jarvis could only dream. Jarvis had a girlfriend
he wanted to marry, so he took double eight-hour shifts at Iowa Ham, trying to put away as much money as possible. On days
that he worked back-to-back shifts, Jarvis had a trick up his sleeve: high on crank, with his central nervous system on overdrive
and major systems like his digestive tract all but shut down, Jarvis could easily go for sixteen hours without having to eat,
drink, use the bathroom, or sleep.
According to Jarvis and Clay Hallberg, it was common in the 1970s and 1980s to get meth from Doc Maynard, a general practitioner
in nearby Winthrop, Iowa. Into his seventies, Jarvis and Clay say, Maynard wrote thousands of illegal prescriptions for Methedrine,
mostly for young girls who wanted to lose weight, but also for farmworkers and industrial laborers. A more powerful kind of
dope occasionally came to northern Iowa from California in those days, too. A local from Oelwein, Jeffrey William Hayes, who
insists on being called by his full name, had gone to Long Beach to look for work among the small community of northeast Iowans
living there. Hayes had come back to Oelwein with the dope, which was called P2P, for the ingredient phenyl-2-propanone. Every
now and again, Jeffrey William Hayes would load his wife and his young daughter, Hanna, into an eighteen-wheeler cab, drive
to Long Beach, pack the wheel wells with P2P crank, and drive home to sell
of late-stage meth addiction, the political expression of the existential scourge and the bane of the work-based American
dream.
Meth works on the limbic system of the brain, which is the brain’s reward center, as well as on the prefrontal cortex, where
decision making takes place. A meth user’s feelings are reflected in what are called his executive actions, or what Freese
calls “his ability to choose between what we all know to be good and bad.” Freese says that what feels good is tied directly
to survival. The ability to make decisions, therefore, is in some ways controlled not by what people want, but by what they
need. Meth, says Freese, “hijacks the relationship” between what is necessary and what is desired. “The result is that when
you take away meth, nothing natural—sex, a glass of water, a good meal, anything for which we are supposed to be rewarded—feels good. The only thing that does feel good is more meth.” Moreover, he continues, “there’s a basic and
lasting change in the brain’s chemistry, which is a direct result of the drug’s introduction.” The ultimate effects are psychopathology
such as intolerable depression, profound sleep and memory loss, debilitating anxiety, severe hallucinations, and acute, schizophrenic
bouts of paranoia: the very things that meth, just eighty years ago, was supposed to cure.
Sleep loss alone, Freese posits, can cause enough emotional and biochemical stress to result in long-term functional deficits.
Once the effects of days of sleeplessness are compounded by the panic of memory loss and one of the more common hallucinations
from which meth addicts suffer (for instance, that insects are crawling out of their skin), it’s no wonder that addicts do
things non-addicts wouldn’t dream of. As Dr. Clay Hallberg, the Oelwein general practitioner, says, “I’d much rather be in
the emergency room with a paranoid schizophrenic—and I’ve been in the ER with plenty—than a meth-head. They’re literally out
of their minds.”
Roland Jarvis used to have a good job at Iowa Ham in Oelwein. It was a hard job, “throwing” hundred-pound pans full of hog
hocks into a scalding roaster and pulling them out again, a process he likens to playing hot potato with bags of sand. But
he made eighteen dollars an hour, with full union membership and benefits. That would be a lot of money today in Fayette County.
In 1990, it was the kind of money about which a high school dropout like Jarvis could only dream. Jarvis had a girlfriend
he wanted to marry, so he took double eight-hour shifts at Iowa Ham, trying to put away as much money as possible. On days
that he worked back-to-back shifts, Jarvis had a trick up his sleeve: high on crank, with his central nervous system on overdrive
and major systems like his digestive tract all but shut down, Jarvis could easily go for sixteen hours without having to eat,
drink, use the bathroom, or sleep.
According to Jarvis and Clay Hallberg, it was common in the 1970s and 1980s to get meth from Doc Maynard, a general practitioner
in nearby Winthrop, Iowa. Into his seventies, Jarvis and Clay say, Maynard wrote thousands of illegal prescriptions for Methedrine,
mostly for young girls who wanted to lose weight, but also for farmworkers and industrial laborers. A more powerful kind of
dope occasionally came to northern Iowa from California in those days, too. A local from Oelwein, Jeffrey William Hayes, who
insists on being called by his full name, had gone to Long Beach to look for work among the small community of northeast Iowans
living there. Hayes had come back to Oelwein with the dope, which was called P2P, for the ingredient phenyl-2-propanone. Every
now and again, Jeffrey William Hayes would load his wife and his young daughter, Hanna, into an eighteen-wheeler cab, drive
to Long Beach, pack the wheel wells with P2P crank, and drive home to sell
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