I sampled many of the drugs available during my misspent youth: pot, mescaline, acid, heroin, coke, MDMA, downers such as Darvon, not to mention mushrooms and cigarettes and alcohol. I never injected anything and never became addicted. Back in those days, we never heard of crack, meth or fentanyl. The Devil’s Drug, by Dutch anthropologist and photojournalist Teun Voeten, caught my attention for several reasons.
First, because I wondered how these later drugs compared to those from my day in terms of the different types and durations of highs. Another reason is that I don’t understand the mechanisms for addiction. The evidence for an “addiction” gene, which I often wondered about, isn’t conclusive. Yet, according to Voeten, a few experiences with the crystal meth pipe are enough to cause a desire severe enough to lead to addiction. Finally, we used a variety of drugs, including fentanyl, in the cardiac cath lab, and their backstory interests me.
This book is a comprehensive, thoroughly researched, entertaining and somewhat depressing history of crystal methamphetamine, but covers other synthetic drugs as well. We learn about the Nazi employment of meth in what could rightly be described as a “drug war” because it allowed front-line soldiers to fight for days at a time with no sleep and little appetite. It turns out, according to the author, that American athletes used Benzedrine as performance-enhancers (legally, at the time) during the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. This, apparently, is where Hitler got the idea. “We live in an energy intense time that demands higher performance and greater obligation from us,” wrote one German doctor. We read about cooking operations varying in size from two-liter soda bottles (for small, personal consumption batches) to 1000-gallon tanks for industrial production and mass distribution.
Voeten describes the discovery of meth. Ephedrine was isolated in Japan in 1885, from a shrub called ephedra Sinica. Ephedrine in turn was used to synthesize methamphetamine in 1893, and this was first crystallized by another Japanese guy in 1919. We arrive at the “glass” crystals made famous on Breaking Bad. The author describes the monster labs in Mexico, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands, as well as the ingredients, the precursor ingredients and the pre-precursor items necessary for manufacture. The precursor ephedra is found growing almost everywhere in the world, (except Australia for some reason) and is or was the basis for ephedrine and drugs such as Sudafed. The role of these drugs as precursors explains why you can’t buy decongestants in bulk anymore. Still, there are many methods of cooking meth, and cookbooks and instructions are available online. But cooking meth isn’t the point here. Voeten tells how crystal is found all over the world, why certain populations favor it, the cost-per-high benefits and so forth. I’m a science nerd, but found the book slightly depressing because of how many people come to need or want to vaporize themselves on a daily basis.
On the other hand, how could one resist chapter titles such as “Trends In Worldwide Production And Trafficking” or “Chemsex in Amsterdam: Lust Unlimited”? Chemsex: crystal meth injections can induce an eight-hour high and an outlandish craving for sex, while inhibiting erections, and thus introducing sex toys and Viagra into play. Fifty or 60 hours, with frequent injections, is popular among gay men, and is known as gay slamming. This knowledge was sad to read.
Voeten’s lived a life that’s fascinating, but one which I wouldn’t have liked. His PhD thesis concerned the drug violence among the cartels in Mexico (The Mexican Drug Violence, 2010); he documented wars in Afghanistan, Sierra Leon, Columbia, Congo (where he was felled by a mosquito and contracted cerebral malaria, but lived to tell about it), Rwanda and Haiti. He lived among the homeless in the Amtrak train tunnels under the west side in NYC (Tunnel People, 1996). The Devil’s Drug has extensive notes, a bibliography and index. It’s not a textbook and doesn’t read like one. Rather, it’s a series of misadventures about crazy people all over the world.