A Small Town High

by Kc M.

Four years ago, if somebody asked you about crank or meth or whatever around here, 100% of the time you'd be like, "What?" Today, you'd be like, "Got any?" While this may not seem strange to a lot of you, it has become a major concern and epidemic in small towns across Minnesota. I guess I'll tell you all some of the drug history of Minnesota first.

Five years ago, when I myself started to actually do drugs and thus be introduced into that world, almost everyone I knew just drank booze. Whether it was stealing from your parents or having an older sibling buy you a case of beer or whatever, you found your ways to get your booze.

There were a few people here and there who smoked pot, but they were looked down upon by everyone so hardly anybody did it. Even I myself would make fun of those potheads and question their stupidity, which is pretty funny now. There was no one you knew doing heroin or shrooms or anything like that, and no one even had heard of meth. So, next year swings around and now everybody turns into a pothead. It was like a pound dropped into everybodys lap cause there was just so much weed circling around all these small towns. And you think the communities and law enforcments would catch up, but they suspected nothing. In fact, a lot of towns even boasted on billboards and welcome signs that they were drug-free, with a guy smoking a joint at the park. But crime was pretty much non-existant, so obviously, no one really cared. Now it was 2001, and the communities and cops were starting to catch on, but no one did anything (especially since a lot of the cops were potheads themselves) so it was all good to us. Meth was still pretty unknown, except to a select few, including myself.

A certain friend I was getting stoned with offered me a drug called 'Crank', and I snorted a line. Unfortunately for me (at the time) no one who I asked knew what it was, so I couldn't get more. Now the year 2002 rolls around, and pot is no more a secret. People are getting busted left and right, kids are getting kicked out, and the rest of us are just really burnt out. So now, weed was dry. You hardly could find any bud, so you were either forced to go to the cities and pay $120 for a quarter that you would pay $35 in your small town or try a new drug. At first, a lot of coke and heroin was being sold by the big city dealers to us small town kids, but that died out pretty damn quick. And then before you knew it, you were buying crank. It was kinda funny almost. Everybody was going around, all fucked up on crank, bitching about how they wanted to get stoned. But that's all we had, so many people decided to let that stand in till weed came back around. But then, 2003 is here and all those upset potheads became tweekers. This is when Litchfield, MN, a of about 1000 to 2000 people became the meth capital of the country! And this was like overnight! Everywhere you looked, there were crackheads. Crime shot up, with people breaking into all types of stores and stealing money, people stabbing just about anybody, cars being stolen and tried to be sold, churches and law enforcement centers being burned down, and other stuff. Vehicles and houses for the first time now had to locked, businesses had to shut down after decades of being around, and your next door neighbors house blowing up or their kids dying or hospitalized due to their meth labs.

Cops weren't helping much to stop this epidemic due to that they were either being attacked, attacking teenagers (tweekers or not), causing major accidents due to them patrolling around outside of town twacked out of their mind and not paying attention to what they are doing or being fired by the crackhead Sheriff for turning their attention to their fellow cop. Needless to say, the small towns were turning into the big cities and it was tearing these places to pieces. Meanwhile, the state has no real idea what's going on, and dealers are coming down from the city to make big bucks. Even my friends and I are into this shit, with my best friend stealing and forging her mom's checks to pay for meth. I should say though, not all towns were going through this, but many were, essecially in my area. I mean, even in my town of 200 people, which was like 15 kids from ages 10 to 18, was being terrorized by meth. And we don't even have our grocery store, much less a cop shop, so it was defenseless against the dealers moving in and the kids being tweekers.

This may not seem like a big deal to many of you, and I may even seem like I'm exaggerating, but to thousands of people, but one little drug was, literally and figuratively, sucking the life out of them, us, everybody. And all this happened in just 5 or 6 months! At the rate things were going, meth would completely destroy many many towns. And then, towards the summer, things turned around. Nobody really can explain what happened, but it seemed crime was reduced to the occasional car theft or tweeker being busted, the dealers moved back to the city, most of the meth labs disappeared, schools were getting students back, and treatment centers were getting business again. It was safe again to not lock your house, although most people still did, and cops started to do their jobs again. Meth wasn't as easy to find anymore, so people weren't getting all twacked out and crazy, and most of the big dealers were getting busted and taking anybody they could down with them. To say the least, many of us sighed a big, uh, sigh of relief (sorry, I'm kind of retarded he he). Meth quickly changed from a plague to a that drug kids did on the weekends, if at all. Sounds like a happy ending, right? I guess it sorta was/is or whatever, seeing as so far from August '03 to now, Jan '04, crime is staying down and things are pretty peaceful and boring. But that's what seems weird seeing as a lot of people are tweeking again, which is why I said the whole "Got any?" at the beginning. No one even knows why things all the sudden got better, much less why the same things not starting over. Maybe the tweekers who either started again or are able to get more have just learned to get jobs or just chill out, or because they too hated how things were and decided to just stop all that stupid bullshit. Either way, meth still has a it's hold on our towns, it's just not squeezing anymore.

I'm pretty sure a lot of you guys reading this right now are wondering what the fuck is my point. I guess my overall purpose of this story or essay or whatever is to help do my share to spread awareness of the effects of meth. There's plenty of information circulating around on the effects of meth on the individual using, but not about the effect it has on everyone else like the communities. I mean, I won't be a hipocrite and say "Don't do meth!", cause I believe do what you want to, and lord knows I did my fair share of meth (though I've been clean for 9 months - yay!), but please, don't drag your family and friends and communities down with you! Nobody deserves to have their neighborhood or town be ruined by somebody elses addiction, you know? I'm not too good at this whole thing, so peace, love, and whatever else I'm out!