Speed demon

Steroids aren't the only drug that help you on the job. As a 28-year-old freelancer, I had a special friend that helped me crank out stories: Meth.

By James Maier

Read more: Drugs, Addiction, Life

March 21, 2005 | Ten in the morning. Sunlight, filtered by a philodendron's leaves, played across my desk. The computer hummed, a loud noise in a room where the only other sound was the squeaking of a razor blade as it chopped chunks of speed into a line on the back of a CD. I remember, clear as crystal, the way the sight of the drug made my heart beat faster and the tips of my fingers go dry.

I remember lowering my rolled-up twenty and hoovering the drug up into my right nostril -- the good nostril (for reasons unclear, the left one never worked well). I remember the sinus burn.

And I remember my headache lifting, my brain shifting gears, energy levels soaring. 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 remember bouncing out of my chair, hiding the blade and the little baggie and the CD with its tell-tale pattern of cross-hatched razor cuts.

And then I remember waking up. Lying in bed, my wife sleeping beside me, heart racing, palms sweaty, mind confused. What had just happened?

I must have been dreaming, I realized, dreaming of speed. I hadn't done a line in six months. I had quit, sworn off the demon drug, cut myself free from the people who could get it for me. But though I had pushed it away, the drug wasn't ready to let go. My subconscious knew exactly how to simulate the feeling of pumped-up dopamine levels. The craving endured. I was both frightened and sad as the memory of speed-driven glee began to fade. Frightened because I was trying to kick this drug, which was screwing with my marriage and my health. But sad because I could recall from the dream how clearly I'd been looking forward to that buzz, that boost, that charge of energy, that icy clarity.

Dawn was beginning to break. I shook off the nostalgia like a dog trying to get dry, got up and started making coffee.

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Crystal meth, plain old meth, crank, ice, glass, chalk: This particular white powder has gone by a lot of different names, but to me, the drug is always "speed," because that's what it does.

I first got turned on to it by a precision machinist, a guy who custom-made parts for antique automobiles. A working-class white guy, the classic profile for a speed user, back in the day (though less so today, now that upscale Bay Area fathers are writing about their addicted sons in the New York Times Magazine). For my friend, the drug wasn't just a jolt of social energy like, say, a toot of coke. It was part of his toolbox. Snort some speed, crank up the metal lathe, work all night.

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. But I was happy to do some lines and watch my friend explain to me the purposes of his vast armory of metal-working tools. That was cool.

Next page: When I was on speed, I was my own best editor. Transitions had to be perfect, arguments airtight