Santa Maria Times: meth·am·phet·a·mine: a drug that destroys bodies and lives

From the award winning Santa Maria Times series on Methamphetamine: meth·am·phet·a·mine: a drug that destroys bodies and lives:

Dr. Chuck Merrill sees the medical wreckage of methamphetamine on almost a daily basis.

“I’ve seen so many that they are all kind of alike after a while,” said Merrill, an emergency room physician at Marian Medical Center.

Truthfully they are a pain in the neck for us to deal with because they spit at us and hit us,” Merill said. “They are sort of a management problem for us up front.

“If somebody’s really crazy and fighting and trying to grab stethoscopes and choke you, or tries to grab a pen out of your pocket and stab you, there’s a net, like a fish net, that you put over them. But that’s only rarely.”

Merrill said he is mostly unphased by the constant barrage of meth-induced problems.

“We look at cases in terms of managing them,” he said. “And we tend to not be emotional about it. We don’t tend to see someone come in and say, ‘Oh, that’s really sad, they have drug problems.’

“I’m worried about whether they are going to have a stroke or have a heart attack. Or whether some 22-year-old kid is going to come in and wind up brain dead.”

“We have these paranoia-like fears that we know that something might happen and we want to do everything we can to prevent it.”

On the days he works, Merrill typically sees at least one meth-related patient coming through the ER doors.

“The fact that we see one a day means there’s a lot more of it going on,” Merrill said. He guesses there are about 35 cases each month. Michael Parsa, an emergency room doctor at Lompoc Health Care District, estimates there are 10 to 20 per month at Lompoc’s hospital.

The majority of the cases are young people, from adolescence to their mid-30s, Merrill said.

“One of the reasons young people do these things, they don’t think they’re vulnerable to the effects,” he said. “Most people start because a friend of theirs says, ‘Hey, try this.’ It’s like a party thing.”

Users say the high makes them feel on top of the world, fast, and capable.

That was the case with former addict Chris Reynoso, 24, who started using meth so he could drink more alcohol and not feel drunk. Eventually meth took over, and he used it steadily for a year and eight months.

“You can be so depressed, (like) someone just died. You smoke it and you get this, like, adrenaline rush to where you’re ahhh, it’s all right,” Reynoso said of meth’s appeal. “You just get like, happy. Real positive.”

Medically, a minor dose of meth triggers a physiological response similar to the body’s reaction when it faces stress.

“If you were imagining that you had six cups of coffee, went on a jog, and were faced with an angry Rottweiler, what you would get in your body is the flight-or-fight response,” Merrill said. “When someone takes an amphetamine, those things occur.”

But the drug has a darker side. A large dose of meth can cause hallucinations, paranoia, anxiety, combativeness and delirium.

“I would be at my place and I’d hear voices,” Reynoso said. “A shadow would sit down right next to me, and I’d look over and boom, it’s not there.”

The comedown causes depression, irritability and a craving for more meth.

“You don’t want no one to talk to, you just want to stay in bed all day, you just want to be left alone,” Reynoso said. “It’s awful, you just feel like the (worst) person in the world.”

Doctors such as Merrill who work in the ER see a host of meth-related problems, from battery of a spouse to extreme paranoia and suicide attempts. Users come to Marian’s ER with elevated blood pressure, rapid heart rate, increased metabolic rate and psychological and emotional disturbances.

“Most of the time it’s a minor complication. They’re paranoid, or freaking out, anxious, feeling out of control, they might be hyperventilating,” Merrill said.

Users sometimes attempt suicide while high, he said.

Symptoms of meth use frequently parallel symptoms of mental illness, Merrill said. Existing psychological problems can be exacerbated, and dormant problems may be triggered by meth. Some patients develop lasting mental illness because of the drug, he said.

“They don’t come in with a stamp on their head that says I’m a meth overdose. They come in as a crazy patient. We have to sort all that out. It’s not easy all the time,” Merrill said.

Short-term, the physical effects of meth use range from hypertension to risk of heart attack or death. Long-term, meth users can waste away and become malnourished because the drug suppresses appetite.

Chronic users sometimes scratch themselves raw because they think bugs are crawling on them, according to Resident & Staff Physician, a medical journal. They suffer constipation due to dehydration or lack of fiber, their muscles cramp from low magnesium and potassium levels, their teeth fall out and their gums bleed, the journal states. Their urine smells stale from the ammonia used to make the drug.

They are irritable, and tend not to sleep. The majority of people treated for meth at Marian are on another drug, such as alcohol or Soma, a popular sedative that helps take the edge off meth’s euphoric high, Merrill said. Users often take prescription pills to help them sleep.

Delusions and side-effects from the drug affect not only those who use it, but their families and friends. Reynoso heard voices saying his girlfriend was cheating on him and telling him to “get her,” though he fought the urge to do so.

“Alcohol and amphetamines are both drugs that cause people to do things to other people,” Merrill said.

“You take a drug like marijuana, for example. We never see marijuana-related complications. Because people that take marijuana know that they’re impaired. So they just stay there and eat cookies, or whatever they do.

“But they don’t start thinking they’re stronger than the next guy, or get angry, or delusional, or paranoid.”

“It’s a bad drug, just no doubt about it. Bad drugs are the ones where people don’t recognize that they’re bad. They get on there, and they feel good, they feel kind of euphoric, they feel like they can conquer the world, and yet they’re not rational. That’s the worst possible thing.”

Local meth stories are so common that they have become a repeated blur of individual lives destroyed by the drug.

“It’s almost too common to have one stand out,” Merrill said.

Additonal Links of Interest on the Unnecessary Epidemic: Methamphetamine:

Methamphetamine: Meth Mouth ReDux

Mexico: Primary Source of United States Methamphetamine Crisis

And the Oregonian Investigative Series: Unnecessary Epidemic