278 Methamphetamine
Methamphetamine abusers tend to get injured more often in accidents than
nonusers. That correlation, however, does not tell us whether the cause is the
drug or a reckless lifestyle that happens to include drug abuse—one study of
methamphetamine user deaths found that over 25% were murders. Types of
accidents experienced by methamphetamine users are similar to those suffered
by alcohol abusers, with road mishaps being most common. A study of violent
emergency room patients requiring “chemical restraint” (that is, involuntary
administration of a sedating drug) found that 72% were intoxicated with
methamphetamine, and many were also drunk on alcohol. Violent patients
requiring restraint are, of course, a small minority; those figures do not mean
that 72% of all patients were using methamphetamine. The figures do, how-
ever, indicate that persons who lose control of themselves cannot handle meth-
amphetamine well, or alcohol either.
As for the drug’s popularity, a 1999 analysis found that deaths related to
methamphetamine in San Francisco had not particularly risen over a 13-year
period. In contrast, toxicology tests at a California hospital (not involving all
patients) showed 3% positive for either dextroamphetamine or methamphet-
amine or both in 1978, 10% in 1986 and 1987. Another California hospital
found that 7.4% of trauma patients had been using the drug in 1989, 13.4% in- As the drug promotes medical problems, we can expect evidence of
methamphetamine abuse to be higher in a hospital patient population (com-
posed of people seeking medical help) than in the general population. When
the twenty-first century began, about 2% of the general American population
was estimated to have used methamphetamine one or more times in their
lives, and the percentage of regular users would be lower than that. Patients
in medical cases examined in California, Taiwan, and Japan tend to be male,
perhaps indicating a gender preference in use of this drug. Evidence exists for
a gender difference in psychic reaction to the drug, with males feeling pepped
up and happy while under the influence and postmenopausal women feeling
tired and sad. The substance causes more brain changes in male mice than in
female.
Drug interactions.Methamphetamine can have serious interactions with an-
esthesia and opioid drugs given in dentistry. Animal research indicates that
smoking tobacco cigarettes can create a multiplier effect in which thenicotine
and methamphetamine interact, boosting each other’s potency. Opiate addicts
receiving oralmethadonereport that injecting themselves with methamphet-
amine produces aheroin-type high lasting a full 24 hours.
A hospital emergency room study found that persons admitted for the same
cause of injury had lower alcohol level in their blood if they had also been
taking methamphetamine. Combining the two drugs allows mice to tolerate
a higher methamphetamine dose than normal, but research on humans finds
just the opposite, that alcohol can transform a normal dose of methampheta-
mine into a fatal one. Laboratory research on humans shows that using the
two drugs together adds strain on the heart, while reducing pleasure gained
from the alcohol and maintaining mental satisfaction from the methamphet-
amine. An unusual report tells of that drug combination rupturing a bladder,
the alcohol helping to fill it up as the methamphetamine narrowed the bladder