The Amethican State: Tracking the Crystal Meth Epidemic from the USA to Europe
Images by Sacha Maric / Words by Alan Emmins

Crystal Meth has a reputation as a one hit addiction drug: stronger than coke and heroin combined. The statistics for meth addiction have spread across the American map like a Hollywood doomsday scenario. The lucky ones will find themselves closed up in dark solitude, covered in scars, scabs and open sores. The unlucky ones find themselves burnt beyond recognition and at times missing limbs. Crystal meth is the darkest drug to hit the streets and already the first home made labs are starting to appear on the European map. Photographer Sacha Maric and writer Alan Emmins travel to America’s meth capital of Iowa to get a closer look at the drug pandemic that is coming to Europe.

Iowa is famous for its mass production of two products:

CORN: produced in mass quantity and distributed nationally.
METHANPHETAMINE: produced locally, distributed locally and used locally.

Interstate 5 twists and turns as it leads us through towns with typically American names like Pleasantville, Attica, Melrose and onto the town tha has been known as Iowa’s meth capital: Centerville. The towns we drive through are for the most part small: like Hollywood ghost towns. They're the kind of places an escaped movie convict might try to blend into a normal life, or where a chainsaw wielding local movie sheriff might remove your limbs and distribute them to his already over fed family. Each town has a small post office and half a dozen gravel roads shooting off from the main drag. The towns flash by and are replaced intermittently by fields dense with corn. Houses appear. Next to a ranch type mansion there’s a trailer home with a swing and four rusting limo’s lying dead in the tall grass.

Eventually, the road widens into two lanes and the corn fields are replaced with corporate branding. One of the bigger towns on Interstate 5, Centerville, flanked by Unionville to the east and Promise City to the west, boasts at least half a dozen motels, a smattering of fast food chains and a long history of methamphetamine abuse.

Meth’s success in Iowa is linked directly to the state's corn production. Some 80% of corn producers use anhydrous ammonia to fertilise their ground. Anhydrous ammonia is a key ingredient in meth production. Meth cooks in Iowa have a free and ready supply; they simply walk up to the big white anhydrous tanks and siphon off as much as they need. For those willing to risk the wrath of farmer Brown it’s literally on tap.

That only leaves four items on the shopping list: lithium batteries, ethanol, coffee filters and phederine.

Phederine, or pseudoephedrine, sounds a little scarce, but it is actually the main ingredient of common cold tablets available in all drug stores and supermarkets across America.

Once your shopping list is complete all you will need is 45 minutes of your time, a wooden spoon, and an internet connection to download a three step instruction manual. The easiest and most popular process for cooking meth is known as the ‘Nazi Method’. Supposedly, it is the same method used by the Germans in WWII, who produced meth and fed it to their troops. The Germans weren’t the only ones fuelling their troops with meth; the English and the Americans were at it too; as were Japan’s kamikaze pilots, and since then meth has been causing explosions all over middle America. Viewed from outer space these would look little more than dragon puffs. But for meth cooks like 21-year-old Amber McNeally the explosions that occur in highly flammable meth labs can be all consuming; especially when your exploding lab is in the back of a van and you find yourself locked inside.

Sitting in Amber’s apartment I flick through the photographs that were taken while she was recovering in hospital.

‘My addiction wasn’t just meth abuse: it was meth production,’ she tells me. ‘'Cause when you're good at it, it brings status and admiration. You’re everybody’s friend. It’s profitable. Plus you have a never ending supply.’

Meth production produces a highly flammable vapour that fills the air. The slightest spark can ignite it. The van come meth lab that Amber was cooking meth inside exploded on the forecourt of a petrol station. She was immediately engulfed in flames.

‘When I finally got out I remember thinking, shit, the meth!’

Amber passed out and spent the next month in a coma. As soon as she was able to she went straight back to using and producing meth.

Unable to look at the photo’s anymore I turn to Amber – whose entire upper body, including her face and arms, is burnt – and ask, ‘Are you angry with meth, for what it has cost you?’

‘Not a day passes when I don’t want to use. I’ve been clean ten months now, but each day is a fight. That’s the reality of meth. I’ll be fighting it for the rest of my life.’

Larry, born and raised in Centerville, is one of Iowa’s most notorious users and producers of meth.

‘I can’t be stopped when I’m on meth,’ Larry tells me as we sit in his living room. ‘If I wanna do something I’m gonna do it. If nobody’s co-operating then I’ll make it happen. If I gotta get rough or something then I’ll do it. Meth just completely takes over your mind. You’re not you anymore.’

Larry started using in ’94 and aside from when he has been in prison he hasn’t stopped.

‘I remember that first high,’ Larry says. ‘I injected that first time too, and it was just awesome. Everything was better. It just turns you into like… a superhero. It was awesome. Everything was brighter and clearer. It makes you smarter. It makes the sex better…it just makes all your sensations come alive. It gives you such a rush of pleasure that you can’t live without it. I was hooked from that first shot.’

Larry soon learnt how to produce meth and found himself with a constant supply.

‘I’d tried other drugs. I’ve done a little bit of everything,’ says Larry shaking his head.‘Nothing ever sucked me in like meth. I just wouldn’t come down off it. I used every day. I’d be clean in prison and fine, but as soon as I got out I’d be like… ok where’s the nearest anhydrous tank?’

‘How did this affect you physically?’

‘Well, you only had to look at me and you knew I was a tweaker coz I was sick. I knew I looked sick and I so knew that when the sun came up it was time to hide.’

Larry’s scars alone tells his meth story.

‘I remember I had stolen some anhydrous this one time and I had it in a bucket. I was walking back and I thought I heard a car coming so I jumped in a ditch, but I was all uncoordinated and weak from the meth abuse and I tripped and fell and this bucket just poured out on my back. I was just a big white cloud of smoke. I couldn’t breath, I was choking, and actually I was praying to God for a painless death. Then all of a sudden I could breath again. I was like, hey I’m alive, but I’m out of anhydrous. My back felt was like it was on fire. I ran to a friends house and showered. Then went back in my van. I was mangled, but I needed to make that batch, I had to have that dope. I went back and got more anhydrous, but as I was driving away these trucks came out of nowhere and started trying to run me off the road. They chased me until I came to a police road block. They all had their guns pointing at me. They got me that time; I did five years for that. This other time I got anhydrous on my hands and I flicked them to get it off and my skin slid off and slapped on the pavement. I was like, that’s my fucking hands!’

On another occasion, again trying to get away from the police, Larry ran to a nearby house and kicked the front door down, while shouting, ‘I need a ride, give me the car keys.’

Larry looks back on that moment in the doorway.

‘When I kicked that door open I saw a family sitting around having dinner. There in front of me were these happy people, and I remember thinking, "fuck, how can they possibly be that perfect?" It was like walking into a Christmas special. There were maybe ten or twelve people, and kids too, and they were so clean. That wasn’t the world I was living in. I was thinking, "What the fuck is this? Somebody better help me."’

Larry giggles.

‘There was this other time when the cops were chasing me in my van. In the back I had all the stuff for manufacturing meth and I wanted to throw it out before they caught me. So I floored my van, just kept accelerating until there was nothing left, and then I let go of the wheel, jumped in the back and gathered up all the shit. I jumped back in the front, accelerated again, and started throwing the shit out the window. Yeah, I was crazy on that stuff.’

Larry says was because today is his first morning home from a twenty-one-day rehab.

‘Is this it this time?’ I ask trying hard not to sound sceptical.

‘I hope so. I mean I want to stay clean for Vicky and the kids. But, you know, I didn’t really learn anything in there that I didn’t already know.’

The Larry before me now is actually a very charming guy. I hope he can stay clean, but the reality of meth is that only 6% of the users manage to kick the drug for good. Meth stimulates the part of the brain that produces dopamine, which allows you to sense pleasure. It multiplies dopamine production by twelve and damages that part of the brain so that without stimulants the brain can no longer produce dopamine. Without meth, the addict can no longer feel pleasure.

Mike Seay, who has worked for 16 years on the South Central Iowa Drug Task Force (SCIDTF), says his job has evolved along with the drug.

‘The lab situation isn’t what it used to be,’ says Mike as he takes us on a cruise through Centerville. ‘The state of Iowa seized 1500 meth labs in 2004, but in 2005 that dropped way down to 764. Iowa introduced a law limiting how many packets of cold pills a person can buy in a thirty day period, which amounts to 7.5 grams of pseudoephedrine. Since that law came in meth lab seizures have gone down.’

‘It sounds like you have the problem under control?’ I say.

‘Oh no – far from it. Home made meth is down, but when this law came about there was already a huge meth dependency problem in Iowa and that didn’t go away. The meth all but disappeared, but the dependency didn’t. This opened the doors to organised crime. Now the stuff is being smuggled into Iowa in large quantities by the Hispanic gangs. And that’s not me being raciest. That’s just what we’re finding.’

While meth remained for the most part in Middle America it wasn’t of much concern to the US Government. But then one day it hopped over the Mississippi River and marched straight into Washington. By the time the capitol woke up meth had already consumed most of the US drug market, and at $100 a gram it is now outselling long standing favourites coke and heroin.


Without pseudoephedrine there would be no meth, but the pharmaceutical companies will not stop producing pseudoephedrine – nor will the government make them – because cold pills are a billion dollar a year industry.
Of course, the governments and pharmaceutical companies would never openly support meth abuse, yet Mexico City has 1000 licensed drug stores more than its population can sustain and those drug stores all get their pseudoephedrine pills legally. They sell them legally too: in any quantity and to anybody who walks through their door.

Jeremy and his girlfriend Savannah sit in a small bare apartment. They are both continual meth abusers. Jeremy has been busted twice, spent 9 months in a halfway house, and served a five year prison sentence. Jeremy has not paid physically, at least not on the outside. Sure he is thin, but he has no visible scars and his teeth and gums (which on meth addicts are often in a dreaful state of decay) look normal.

‘Can you say why you use meth?’ I ask Jeremy as he sits on the sofa almost hiding behind his girlfriend.

He fidgets, ‘You know, my mom asked the same question when I got out of jail, she said, “Why are you using again?” I was like, “Jeez mom, this is Iowa, what else am I gonna do?”’

The fear of his parole officer or a police knocking on his door and performing a search – that at this very moment would give him his ‘3rd strike’ and a guaranteed fifteen-year sentence – does not make him consider stopping.

‘I’m gonna do what I want not what somebody else wants me to do. But I am gonna quit. We’re gonna quit together,’ he says giving his girlfriend a poke in the ribs. ‘I gotta see my parole officer in a eight days anyway and be tested. I can’t use between now and then. So this is the time to quit.’

Sacha and I arrive at the local jail to interview one of the inmates. Two years back Doug Fetters, Centerville’s most notorious meth cook, lost his leg and his girlfriend in a bike accident. Everybody in Centerville knows who Doug is. Not least of all because of his nine hour televised stand off with the police where he had over 40 loaded guns positioned throughout his house, but because he was the biggest meth producer for miles. Now he sits in prison in an orange jump suit awaiting trial for the attempted murder of another meth user.

‘Somebody,’ he says laughing and slapping his leg just above the artificial brace, ‘shot him in the ass!’

Although Doug has given a lot to meth he is, even after a nine-month clean streak, willing to keep giving. ‘If they let me out today the first thing I’m gonna do is cook me up a good batch and get high,’

Doug talks a lot about the life he led – hiding in ditches while on the run from the police – and he talks a lot about how he thinks he should be left alone to do his drugs. He talks about his love of meth. How great the high is. It’s like he has a little routine and has managed to convince himself with his own patter.

It’s not until Sacha sets up his camera for a portrait that Doug actually says something poignant. After sitting in silence for several minutes he says, ‘You know, meth is a really bad deal. It’s no good. It hurts everyone.’
He sits quietly reflecting while Sacha’s camera clicks away.

Mike Seay shows us pictures of Doug before he was a chronic user, and then images of him nine months later when he was first busted. Aside from the scars and scabs he looks twenty years older than he does today.

Other photos show mouths simply rotten to the gums. Some show users with open sores on their arms from where they kept scratching until their arms scabbed over, and then kept picking the scabs until they caught infections.

‘This guy with the infected arms,’ Mike tells us, ‘hadn’t turned himself in or gone to hospital. He was just going about his normal life which was using and producing. This is what he was like when we caught him.’

Meth, in one way or another, has entered every family in Centerville. The residents don’t like hearing this. When they hear why Sacha and I are in town they get protective. They tell us Centerville has been made to look worse than it is by the media – by people like us. Then they offer up their own connection with meth. If it’s not a cousin or sister-in-law that is using it’s a grandmother who had to call the police because a ‘tweaker’ was trying to kick her front door down.

As Sacha and I drive out of Centerville – depressed after a week of trying to understand something that just isn’t comprehensible – I think about two things: I think about what the independent movie producer Matt Farnsworth said while promoting his film about Centerville’s meth problem, ‘It’s [meth] everywhere. You can see it on the streets. You can hear it–‘ Like the average Centerville resident I thought this claim was ridiculous and simply not true. But as Sacha and I leave I ask him to pull into the MacDonald’s drive through. My coffee is handed to me by an arm covered in anhydrous burns and scabs. You can’t see meth on the streets, but you can see its scars.

I also think of Jeremy who told me that he has always taken meth because [for him] there is nothing else to do. As we left Jeremy’s apartment on his first day of quitting he asked his girlfriend, ‘What are we gonna do today, babe?’

With an air of panic she replied, ‘I don’t know, what are we gonna do?’

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