THE AMERICAN METH WEST

(Something I wrote long ago -- before Fentanyl and recently found.)

Some studies suggest that the drug of choice in the Eastern US is cocaine, the trendy nose candy.  The drug of choice in the Midwest is pot, good old steady weed.  And the drug of choice in the American West is meth.  Why is this?

Meth is the power drug.  it makes the guy who is flat broke, homeless, friendless, car-less and ugly feel like a winner.  Winner, hell!  Feel like a God.  Feel like Davy Crockett and Pecos Bill and Paul Bunyan all rolled up together.  The kind of man a Western man is SUPPOSED to be, invincible, omnicompetent, irresistible.

Until he comes down again.  Then he's picking at bugs under his skin, aching with rotten stubs of teeth, so depressed he can only slump in the corner.  Only one cure for that -- more meth.

Meth is the poor man's drug.  Any high school kid can make it with coffee filters and iodine and cold meds and . . . look it up on the internet.  There are plenty of decrepit sheds where a guy could set up a lab.  If the cooking starts a fire, who cares?  Maybe a wrecked house trailer or an abandoned rusted-out old school bus.  Even one of them run-down motels that was on the highway until the Internet went through.  They don't ask no questions.  Rent by the hour.

The American West came out of the Civil War, which prepared the country for the Prairie Clearances (first the bison, then the Indians) so the government could offer free land to white people who would pay taxes and travel by railroad.  The Indians weren't using their land anyway -- where were their fields, their fences, their houses?  Their flags?  if you couldn't make it on a homestead, you could hire on as a cowboy.  If you got to drinking, so did everyone else, and so did everyone else get taken to the cleaners by the bank.  Wasn't the fault of the rancher.  It was the drought.  Times are hard.  Life is short.

The big myths took hold easily, dominating every television set and silver screen in the nation with tough guys in Stetsons.  Guys who smoked Marlboros until they found meth.  If the women nag you, hit 'em.  Why don't they get a job?  If the kids bug you, hit them, too.  Throw 'em against the wall.  Throw 'em out.  if authorities come around, just don't answer the door.  Make 'em get a warrant.  Get hold of a gun.

Make 'em shoot you and put you out of your misery.  That's the Meth West.  Not your fault.  On meth you're invisible.  You'll never feel the bullet.