The technical term is formication and is a tactile hallucination common to alcohol addiction, psychosis and many types of drug addiction, especially cocaine, amphetamines and methamphetamine.
It’s usually known as “Cocaine bugs”, “Crank bugs” or “Beer bugs”- it is not a fun thing to have, or for medical personnel to have to treat. It can lead to big open( often infected) sores, lots of blood and people with old blood and skin under their nails, it’s pretty yucky.
The fact that all of the before pictures are mug shots has always set off my BS detector. Clearly these folks weren’t living clean and sober before they got into meth.
Also, I second AskNott’s thanks to everyone for providing such honest information.
Not really, IMO. That can definitely be the case on strong opiates like heroin, OxyContin, Dilaudid, etc. Either you or someone else is mixing up their drug knowledge or (also entirely possible) it’s a real phenomenon I just haven’t ever seen.
Meth really isn’t one of those drugs that makes anything in particular feel better. It doesn’t enhance your experience of things the way weed in particular, psychedelics in general and opiates to a much lesser extent do. It just makes you feel better (or worse, if you’re an addict).
I don’t think it’s “common” to stimulant addiction. I believe that it’s highly represented among those extreme addicts who you see in a hospital, but I’ve never seen or experienced crank bugs or beer bugs and I’ve been around, seen, and taken copious amounts of all the drugs you mentioned in my lifetime.
Now, I wouldn’t be very surprised if it’s very common in psychosis, including amphetamine psychosis. I find that very easy to believe. I’ve also heard of bad psychedelic trips involving skin bugs.
Who says they’ve ever even done meth? They could’ve sustained injuries in prison. If they did do meth, and the “before” pictures are mugshots, they very well may have been doing nasty prison drugs, and done all kinds of demeaning and injurious things to get it.
Just to throw in some personal anecdotes, out of four very heavy methamphetamine abusers (smoked crystal, all four of them) I know personally, three have recovered completely and lead productive lives with practically no long-term effects. The fourth kind of disappeared but that might’ve been compounded with his severe alcoholism and heroin problems.
Meth is not a death sentence. Meth is a very strong CNS stimulant. Rat park results apply. I guess the theory I’m throwing out there is that people who sink in society or die on meth, would do so without meth with something else.
Absolutely true. When I was experimental I always kept all the dangers in mind and told myself not to get caught up in the adventure and it wasn’t that tough.
Bad drugs catch people at low times, sure, but you’re absolutely right that it’s not a death sentence and anyone can beat it. Frankly, as someone who’s done all of the drugs, I don’t blame the drugs because I know it would just be cigarettes, alcohol, cutting, sex, videogames, TV, or something else otherwise.
Don’t forget shopping and food. A guy I used to know related the story a gal in a 12 step program told him about switching addictions- “Bend me over the counter at Neiman Marcus with a cigarette in one hand and a bag of cookies in the other while you’re screwing my brains out, and I’m a happy camper!”
I can’t speak to the experiences of fetus and EJs Girl, but I can speak to my own.
A long time ago I spent a few years working with many heavy meth users and “speed bugs” are a common side effect of heavy use. That was in fact the source of most of the scabs on arms and faces. The bugs are a visual hallucination more than anything else, and I have witnessed heavy users comparing one another’s “bugs.”
One crazy aspect of this is that these folks knew they were hallucinations, but they picked at them anyway.
Methamphetamine in high dosages over a long period is a powerful aural and visual hallucinogenic, although you don’t hear much about that aspect in the news.
If you’re inclined to think that speed bugs are some boogey-man conjured up by the straight-laced folks at the White House to scare you away from methamphetamine, just google speed bugs and meth. It’s a well documented side effect.
About the “Reefer Madness” thing and about making blanket statements using words like “all”, “always”, and “everyone”. Everyone is different.
These drugs are psychologically addicting. Some people are moderate users and not much happens. And some go from zero to heavy addiction in a short time. We see the heavy hitters.
And the sores. I’m sure there are multiple reasons but many users just get fascinated (obsessed) with some spot or another and worry it to death until it develops into a sore. Then (because they’re hunting for these things you know) they find another area of concern.
I believe you, but keep in mind that you were probably dealing with the worst-addicted of the meth users.
Eh…kind of. Lack of sleep and food (probably two of the most guaranteed side effects of meth addiction and binging, although not of casual use) are powerful hallucinogens, and under the influence of stimulants the experience of them often becomes incredibly intense.
Nobody–not me, at least–is saying that so-called speed bugs are imaginary. But the overwhelming contention of anti-drug pamphlets and thusly the people who believe in them is that it’s a foregone conclusion that if you smoke meth you’ll end up living in a gutter with scars all over your face and rotted-out teeth and sleeping with a basketball rec league and three horses for your daily fix. That’s bullshit.
That’s a canard commonly employed in the face of reason. “Well, some people (a minuscule minority is implied) are lucky enough to have some crazy gene or something that gives them a Magical +5 Drug Addiction Shield.” No, some people have willpower and others don’t. Most people do. I’m not saying addicts are always to blame for their addictions–and I’m not saying there aren’t nasty, nasty drugs out there, meth included as one of the all-time nastiest–because sometimes people get in life situations which strip them of their dignity and their self-esteem and feeling of self-worth, and well, we won’t go into that here as there are entire fields of study which chew over the reasons people become vulnerable to addiction. Suffice it to say it’s not a crap shoot.
I should clarify that I’m not saying amphetamines, meth especially, aren’t hallucinogenic in and of themselves. They certainly can be. I realize after looking over my post that I may have come off as dismissing meth’s ability to cause its abusers to see things etc.
I scratch myself into scabs and sores all the time. In fact, as I type this I have two scabs in my left ankle, one on my right, and one on the back of my left hand, all from scratching. I haven’t done recreational drugs since I was a teenager, and even then it was seldom and never anything as heavy as meth. I hope I don’t have some sort of condition . . .
I can attest to this. The times I’ve been prescribed pain killers (dental work, injuries, etc.), I’ve scratched my shins into bloody ribbons.
Can’t speak for you, but when I had “heroin itch” (a little bit on heroin, more so on Dilaudid) i kind of sat around gently scratching a random part of my body and then the itch would be somewhere else and I’d scratch there. It was extremely pleasant, nearly orgasmic even, and no sores or redness afterwards. Again, that may just be me, but I’ve been with large numbers of people taking the same mixture of drugs when I was into the opiates (and meth, at a different time in a different place) and never saw anyone really even scratching themselves at all more than you would normally expect.
I’m not defending meth use in any way, shape, or form, but the woman in the center of the second row. Check out the noses on those two pics. I don’t think it’s the same person. I have no doubt about the devastating effects of this drug, but this shot looks doctored to me.
And by the way…I spoke to two drug counselor guys, and both of them said that in their opinion, meth is a waaaaaaaay more dangerous drug than heroin. It ruins your life and your health faster than just about anything else. I think these pictures attest to that.
Meth manufacture produces amazingly toxic wastes, that can wreck your health, if they get into your groundwater supply.
And the gases given off in it’s production are toxic, & can cause brain damage, even in low doses. If Meth is made in the basement of an apartment building, kids upstairs can have their health ruined even if they never get nearer the stuff than 25 feet away.
In addition, those gases are
explosive!
One spark can take out the Lab, the house its in, & the neighbors to boot!
Nasty stuff, & Tennessee has a major problem with it.
I’ve also heard that “housewife” types have gotten caught up in it because they used it as a means to get through their harried days of PTA meetings, dropping kids at after-school stuff, volunteering, etc…they used it for the extra “energy” and ended up addicted.
Yeah, among my patients (inmates all), meth has taken a toll at least as great as alcohol on their bodies and minds. And it does it a hell of a lot faster than alcohol, too.
Destroyed teeth, terrible skin, and definite cognitive impairment are what I see among my meth-using population.
Yeah, but if you look, in the first picture, her head is straight, looking at the camera. In the second one, she’s got her head tilted down slightly. Slightly different angles, that.
