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I know better than anyone that Methamphetamine is a big problem in this country. My family lives in North Carolina, so small the Drugstore on Main Street still has a soda fountain in it.Yet the Meth is still here, I had two brothers get hooked on Meth. And it still amazes me the way this drug works. Most drugs you have to go find, this one seems to hunt you. One of my brothers (we'll call Dave) was really on it bad. He lost weight like you couldn't believe, before Meth got it's claws in him, he was six foot two and pushed two-twenty, only to see him four months later weighting less than one sixty. He was like a zombie, rail thin, gray skin, and the sores were awful. He would literally wear his clothes so long that they became rags, held on by pieces of rope and safety pins. He as a person changed as well. Once he was my closest sibling, always there to give you the shirt of his back if you needed it. But once the meth took control he almost lost everything,his family, home, job, automobile, and his self respect. He got so sucked into the drug, that he was stealing from everyone, and it wasn't just thing's for money. He would break in to his families houses just to steal ice cream, candy bars, even the stash of star crunches. It took us almost five months of sitting on top of him to get him clean enough to realize what this drug was costing him. He has been clean for almost two years now, but Dave will never be the Dave he was before the drug. It changed something in him, that he can't get back.

Then six months later my brother Mike was arrested for Manufacturing Meth, but was he really. Mike never stoled, lied,or put anyone in danger with this drug, yet he was arrested for "cooking" it. They never found the product made, or even the waste from where it had been, just the empty containers for the ingredients to make it. Mike was a good person who tried to do the right thing, he helped the police in every way they asked him too. He done everything he was told to do. But he is now serving five years for the manufacture of Meth. But what is so sad, and so heart wrenching to think about is the day they cuffed my brother in the courtroom, in front of his whole family, there was a man there for three counts of molesting a child, his punishment you ask. He got probation, and had to register on line as a sex offender. But there was poor Mike first time he was in trouble with the law, had been completely honest about everything, and even had tried to better his life while he was out on bond, getting put through the wringer.
My problem isn't that I have to sing my name in a log when I need cold medicine, my problem is they can't use those names for anything unless they have probable cause. The only thing that will help the Meth problem is drug rehab, counseling, and job training. Because eighty percent of them are lost souls, who get sucked in too the black hole called Meth.

Learn more about this author, Grace Austin.
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