I had written about my experience with crank earlier (Attack of the Meth Monsters) this month, and now I find this article up on Salon (Salon.com Life | Speed demon). I think it is interesting that the writer came to many of the same conclusions I have. I wrote:

Meth is the all-American drug. It addresses most of the pressures we all face on a day-by-day basis. Are you working extra shifts, driving the long-haul late into the night, or staying up to cram for a test? Well, if Red Bull gives you wings, meth gives you jet engines. Are you desperate to lose those few pounds to fit into the next lower dress size or the “skinny” jeans? Slim Fast may help you lose the weight and keep it off, but meth will slim you faster and you can still eat anything you want (you just won’t want to). Are you having trouble focusing on your menial detail-oriented factory job, fast-food shift, or college studies? Meth makes the hours fly by and even the most tedious, repetitive tasks seem interesting. Are you not feeling very sexy, either because of pent-up inhibitions or lack of stamina? Meth is fuel of all-night orgies and turns the shiest wallflowers into raving nymphomaniacs. Work hard. Be thin. Go fast. Get laid. Meth promises the tantalizing world of a beer commercial.

Salon writes:

Why did I love speed? Because it made me productive! Pot sent me to the couch to ooh and ahh at stupid TV. Psychedelics taunted me with glimpses of faux profundity. Alcohol just made everything sloppy. But speed made things happen.

… I didn’t see the point of that, at first. Drugs were for fun, not for work, and my efforts, on a couple of occasions, to do some writing while under the influence of cocaine, or even more laughably, psychedelic mushrooms, had been pathetic.

… I did a couple of lines.

Two hours later, my story was done, the dishes in the kitchen sink were clean, the laundry was folded, and the house plants were watered. I had started a grocery list and a to-do list and was trying to decide what was next: reorganizing the icons on my desktop, alphabetizing my CD collection, or spending the rest of the afternoon organizing a master plan for getting healthy, wealthy and wise.

And here I thought I was the only speed-adled computer-jockey who had wasted time reorganizing desktop icons and alphabetizing CDs…

… Understanding why people do speed is more complicated than just noting that, as with any recreational drug, speed is fun, and when fun is combined with the likelihood of physical addiction, you have a problem. But speed isn’t just about fun, and addiction isn’t something that happens just because you try something once, and boom, the shackles are in place.

For some of us, speed answers deeper needs. I think one reason why it used to be situated mainly in blue-collar circles was because speed is a workingman’s drug. Gotta pull another eight-hour shift at the factory? Speed can help with that. Gotta drive another thousand miles in your big rig? Speed is great for that.

Speed, for me, was that workingman’s drug, updated for the hypertechnological age. It’s a busy time, these days, busier than it’s ever been, and it is hard to keep up. In a 24x7x365 digitally networked wireless world there’s always another e-mail, another voice mail, another item on the to-do list.

… After all, you’d better be productive if you want to flourish in the outsourced, downsized, globalized and completely deregulated 21st century economy. Just the thought of competing against a couple billion Chinese and Indians makes me want to reach for the razor blade, and I’m sure I’m not alone. Take out that second mortgage, work that second job, learn that extra skill — got to add value if you want to survive, but where are you going to find the time?

I don’t think the twin terrors of an exploding meth epidemic and the baseball steroids scandal are dissimilar. They are both performance-enhancing drugs in their own way. The baseball player shoulders enormous pressure to compete against other players willing to do anything for that nine-digit contract. The workingman shoulders enormous pressure to work smarter, not harder (that being the Dilbertarian code words for do all the work we used to have three people doing) to compete against global workforces willing to take pennies-to-dollars to do the same job.

The whole article is worth a read. I was really hit by his closing line (pardon the pun) where he mentions that if someone tapped out a line in front of him right now, even after a decade of non-use, he’d be “hard put to say no.” He’s right, it is that powerful. To this day when I see movies where a character is tapping out a line, my nose perks up and begs like my dog begs for treats. There’s a visceral reaction to the mere image, a twinge in my nose (damn, I can feel it even now, just typing this) that’s somehow a mixture of the anticipation of a sneeze and post-coital afterglow. (One movie, Spun, twisted me up for a whole 101 minutes. It’s the best, most-accurate, non-flattering look at the speed-freak’s life I’ve ever seen.)