Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know from house stuff
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Speaker 1: bar and look for the picture of me. There's only
Speaker 1: a couple of ups out there. Check's wearing a red shirt.
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, um, so what is that again? That's
Speaker 1: mo bro dot CEO slash Charles Bryant. Yes, thank you
Speaker 1: in advance. Yeah, that's nice, Chuck. All right, let's get
Speaker 1: to it, Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Speaker 1: Clark with me as always, this Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
Speaker 1: What up yo? That's written down? Even sisters? What up?
Speaker 1: What up? Yo? I got my fat stacks? What is that?
Speaker 1: My breaking bad tribute? This is about Matt I've always
Speaker 1: is not what that shows about you? Do that. I
Speaker 1: saw the first couple of episodes. I was like, Hey,
Speaker 1: that's pretty good, and I don't have time in my
Speaker 1: life for this right now? Yeah I didn't either. Um,
Speaker 1: but I'm marathoning it now and I have gotten through
Speaker 1: halfway through season four and there's how many What did
Speaker 1: they just they're on real time now? Oh, they started it.
Speaker 1: It's not over. I thought there was like a finale.
Speaker 1: I think it's some in two parts. I think they
Speaker 1: did the first eight and then they're taking a break,
Speaker 1: and then the last eight of season five. Oh, that's
Speaker 1: the end. I think that if I understand that is
Speaker 1: the end of the series. Well, why don't you tell
Speaker 1: everybody what happens at the end? I don't know yet.
Speaker 1: Let's tell everybody what happens at the end of season's one, two,
Speaker 1: or three. You know, they took a lot of meth
Speaker 1: and sell a lot of meth and people get killed
Speaker 1: spoiler alert, Yes, um and you end up talking like
Speaker 1: Jesse Pinkman. If you watch the show, if you watch
Speaker 1: eighteen episodes over the course of four days, you end
Speaker 1: up saying a lot of things like fat stacks and
Speaker 1: what up? Yo? What is a fat stack? Money? Yeah? Okay?
Speaker 1: And I would call you the name for female dog
Speaker 1: because he uses that word about eight times an episode. Really. Yeah, gosh,
Speaker 1: the potty mouth on TV today. That's cable. Yeah, we're cable.
Speaker 1: We don't say things like that because we're clean. Boys.
Speaker 1: You said female song. Oh god, I feel like we're
Speaker 1: on our way to baseball practice. Uh so, yeah, we
Speaker 1: are talking meth breaking bets on the only Have you
Speaker 1: ever seen the Salt and Sea? Yeah? Boy, that was
Speaker 1: good man. Um Spun never saw that one, but I
Speaker 1: know that one's about math. That was okay, um Spun
Speaker 1: is a little tough to watch. It was one of
Speaker 1: those that's like, we want to take you inside the
Speaker 1: mind of a math user, like yeah, um American Pie
Speaker 1: two uh, porkies, Yeah, yeah, jaws too, all about math.
Speaker 1: All of them about meth um, which is surprising because
Speaker 1: a lot of those aren't. But if you um wanted
Speaker 1: to know everything there is to know about meth without
Speaker 1: using it. You have turned to the right place because
Speaker 1: this episode covers meth pretty hard. And that's my recommended
Speaker 1: version of getting to know about math. Just did not
Speaker 1: use it ever and just to listen to us talk
Speaker 1: about how awful it is. But you're still gonna feel
Speaker 1: pretty freezy by the end of this episode. You know,
Speaker 1: because my boy Tom Sheaf Yeah, the female dog. Uh.
Speaker 1: He he wrote a article on me. I asked him once.
Speaker 1: I was like, what are some of your favorite articles,
Speaker 1: because I was looking for once to to do episodes.
Speaker 1: He's like meth. He's like, it was really good, and
Speaker 1: then he launched into this discussion about the history of it,
Speaker 1: which is pretty fascinating. Awesome. So let's talk about myth.
Speaker 1: If you do a little bit of meth, how long
Speaker 1: will you be high for Chuck? Uh, Well, it depends
Speaker 1: what you call a little bit, but it could be
Speaker 1: anywhere from three to six hours to twenty four hours,
Speaker 1: or if you keep using it, you could be up
Speaker 1: for days. Yeah, which is apparently something that people like
Speaker 1: to do. Uh. They don't just take a hit of meth.
Speaker 1: I've seen hit There was this front Line there's a
Speaker 1: front Line micro site about the meth epidemic, and they
Speaker 1: kept calling it a hit, and I'm like, what is
Speaker 1: a hit? Oh yeah, they call it the little baggy
Speaker 1: that you buy on the street. That call it something
Speaker 1: I'm breaking back. I can't remember at stacks. Now that's
Speaker 1: the money you make them selling it female dog. Nope,
Speaker 1: that's everyone on the show. I don't know that. We'll
Speaker 1: probably called it a hit. But if you, if you
Speaker 1: do meth frequently, you're not going to just you know,
Speaker 1: take a hit of meth and then be like, well
Speaker 1: that's it for me. Yeah, I'm gonna go to work
Speaker 1: and I'm fine, don't ever need to do this again.
Speaker 1: You know, you'll be like, oh, half hours passed. I
Speaker 1: think I should do maybe a little more and then
Speaker 1: a little more and I'm up for eight days in
Speaker 1: a row until my body blacks out and I fall
Speaker 1: over and get some sleep. Can we talk street names
Speaker 1: real quick? Sure, because that's always fun. Meth crank, speed, chalk,
Speaker 1: ice glass, crystal, crystal, meth, tina really um tweak. I
Speaker 1: lived in Human, Arizona, as you know, lots of math
Speaker 1: users there. Um you can tell oh yeah, you tell
Speaker 1: me that one story? Was it that? Like the washing?
Speaker 1: The car. Yeah, You're like, I'd be going home from
Speaker 1: you know, a saloon at two thirty in the morning
Speaker 1: and there's people out washing their cars under the floodlights,
Speaker 1: and you're like, no, that's not really funny. You wonder
Speaker 1: what's going on there or their gardening or something with
Speaker 1: floodlights on. Um. Anyway, Yuma's got a lot of drugs.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like a mile from Mexico. UM. And
Speaker 1: they called it tweak. They called like it could be tweak,
Speaker 1: could be the noun for the drug, like get some
Speaker 1: tweak a tweaker or was someone who did it? Um
Speaker 1: tom sites a state that you eventually, yeah, is tweaking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why I took a slight issue because in Uma
Speaker 1: they were just called tweakers. It was called tweaking. It's
Speaker 1: called tweak. Um do you want to tweak? It could
Speaker 1: be a verb or we are tweaking. It's been quite
Speaker 1: some time since I've tweaked. It's been a week since
Speaker 1: I've tweaked. Yeah, So they used to tweak for basically
Speaker 1: every facet. And I don't know if that was a
Speaker 1: regional thing or not. Ghack, that's another one. Really, it's
Speaker 1: an ugly word. Crank was the old days. That was
Speaker 1: like that's when the motorcycle, yea bike or crank yeah,
Speaker 1: or rucker crank. Yeah, all those days like we were
Speaker 1: you know, in the Hell's Angels were taking greenies. Greenies
Speaker 1: for this speed, like pharmaceutical speed. Yeah, that's what. Until
Speaker 1: two thousand six, baseball players were very famous for taking greenies. Real. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and a lot of athletes actually have been known to
Speaker 1: abuse amphetamines because you know, jacksie up and you win
Speaker 1: the race. Yeah, you know, ye, all right, that's enough
Speaker 1: for the street names. Okay. Um, Meth happens to be
Speaker 1: highly addictive, and it's highly addictive following the same route
Speaker 1: that any stimulant addicts you with. I think that was correct. Ultimately, Um,
Speaker 1: it stimulates your central nervous system to produce dopamine, and
Speaker 1: your brain is flooded with dopamine. So all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you have um hyperactive movement because dopamine controls and regulates
Speaker 1: movement of your body. Yeah, um, you feel really really
Speaker 1: good because dopamines related to feelings of euphoria and a
Speaker 1: sense of well being. Um, and you your emotions may
Speaker 1: become heightened. Yeah yeah, thanks, I think so. Um. The
Speaker 1: problem is, as with all, um all drugs, really is
Speaker 1: that you cannot naturally reproduce the sensation, so you do
Speaker 1: more of the drug and then, like with all drugs,
Speaker 1: your tolerance builds up and you need more of it
Speaker 1: to reach that sensation that you're striving for. There you
Speaker 1: have it. You're addicted to meth, right and um. The
Speaker 1: downside of that, aside from spending extra money to get
Speaker 1: to the same place, it's about a million downsides, right, um,
Speaker 1: is that if you ever do decide to quit meth,
Speaker 1: your dopamine receptors have shrunk. The number of dopamine receptors
Speaker 1: in your brain of s they don't function quite as well.
Speaker 1: And um, you are dopamine deficient, which means that when
Speaker 1: you get off the meth, which is the only thing
Speaker 1: that's really increasing your dopamine levels any longer, you're going
Speaker 1: to encounter sensations of utter hopelessness and depression, and that
Speaker 1: will likely feedback into a vicious cycle where you go
Speaker 1: back onto meth so that you can not feel depressed
Speaker 1: or hopeless any longer. So it's very very tough to
Speaker 1: um quit that cycle of addiction. If you want to
Speaker 1: know more about addiction. We did a pretty cool yeah
Speaker 1: UM episode on addiction itself. But yeah, it's pretty standard stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the good news is your dopamine levels will over
Speaker 1: time UM reset to normal UM in pretty much all cases.
Speaker 1: I did see that they one of these surveys are
Speaker 1: not surveys but studies. They found that even a couple
Speaker 1: of years after ceasing it, UM, the brain did not
Speaker 1: cover in some areas after two years of abstinence, so
Speaker 1: there could be some like long lasting maybe not permanent,
Speaker 1: I don't want to say that word, but long lasting effects. Um.
Speaker 1: If you get your hands on some meth and you're like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do this. There are generally four ways that
Speaker 1: people take meth. The most common is to snort it.
Speaker 1: The second um is to smoke it, third is to
Speaker 1: shoot it. And then some people take it orally, which
Speaker 1: I can only imagine will cause stomach ulcers. Too sweet, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because this is really really toxic stuff. Yes, at the
Speaker 1: very least, Um, if you're smoking it, you will get
Speaker 1: something called meth mouth. Yes, and if you are not
Speaker 1: around your dinner right now, you can go google image
Speaker 1: pictures of meth mouth and is tough to look at. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you ever want to never ever do meth, then
Speaker 1: to look at pictures of that or google uh meth
Speaker 1: before after, Oh the mug shots. Did you see the
Speaker 1: one that? So it's a public service announcement. The sheriff
Speaker 1: in Arizona, Oregon. It was some sheriff's deputy started noticing
Speaker 1: people coming in um that we're on meth and realizing
Speaker 1: that this is like their second or third or fourth
Speaker 1: time in and he started collecting their mug shots and
Speaker 1: created this basically like before and after of mug shots
Speaker 1: of people who do meth, and like the results are
Speaker 1: staggering because it also has the length of time in
Speaker 1: between the pictures, so sometimes two months, sometimes two and
Speaker 1: a half years, and people age like ten twenty years
Speaker 1: and like a year or two just from doing a
Speaker 1: math hardcore and meth mouth in particular is really, like
Speaker 1: Chuck says, extremely disgusting and hard to look at. I've
Speaker 1: seen some pictures of some pretty horrible stuff in my lifetime,
Speaker 1: and math mouth is really tough to look at. Your
Speaker 1: teeth like fall out, crack and fall out. Yeah, first
Speaker 1: they decay, then they cracked, then they fall out, and
Speaker 1: you might have sharp, jagged little stumps with the exposed,
Speaker 1: darkened gums. And they're not quite sure exactly what causes
Speaker 1: meth mouth, but they think it's a combination of things. One,
Speaker 1: they think it's the harsh chemicals that the drug is
Speaker 1: made from. They think that um, the constriction of the
Speaker 1: capillaries and the blood vessels going to your mouth makes
Speaker 1: them wither and die, so then the tissue decays and
Speaker 1: then um, they think that it also gives you dry mouth.
Speaker 1: So your saliva, so your saliva um isn't present any
Speaker 1: longer to to keep the harsh acids that the digestive
Speaker 1: acids that are present naturally in your mouth. The saliva
Speaker 1: is out there to wash it away. So they just
Speaker 1: grind down on your teeth, and then you yourself, while
Speaker 1: you're tweaking, are grinding your teeth. So those four things
Speaker 1: in conjunction basically account from meth mouth. They think, Wow,
Speaker 1: it's nasty. Oh, it's nasty stuff. Um, your heart rate
Speaker 1: is gonna really shoot up. You were going to be
Speaker 1: more alert. You're gonna be breathing quicker, you'll be sweating
Speaker 1: a lot, you're going to be very talkative about everything,
Speaker 1: or you're going to go into a room and sit
Speaker 1: around and rock and think about yourself in your place
Speaker 1: in the world. You might feel superhuman or intelligent or empowered. Um,
Speaker 1: you are none of those, which is the ironic thing. Um.
Speaker 1: And this one is the none of It's funny. This
Speaker 1: one is unusual. Is the mundane tasks like you hear
Speaker 1: reports of like methods who take apart their television and
Speaker 1: put it back together the time. Um. But there's a
Speaker 1: breaking this won't spell anything. There's a breaking bad scene
Speaker 1: where where Jesse's trying to get some tweakers out of
Speaker 1: out of a house into the front yard and he
Speaker 1: goes and gets a shovel and the guys like, what
Speaker 1: are you doing. He's like, I know, I can't remember
Speaker 1: what he called him, I know methods and he might dogs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And he went and started digging a whole the front
Speaker 1: yard and one of him just comes out and he's like,
Speaker 1: what are you doing. He's like, what does it look like?
Speaker 1: I'm digging this hole? Man, I gotta find it. And
Speaker 1: the guy just kind of wanders out looking and then
Speaker 1: he's like, you mind taking over, And all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: it's dude he's never met before, is out there just
Speaker 1: digging this hole. To China, and that's like the mundane
Speaker 1: task you can get a meth head preoccupied with and
Speaker 1: they will put together that puzzle for two days. Tom
Speaker 1: points out that this is that makes us very alluring
Speaker 1: for somebody who's say an assembly line worker who has
Speaker 1: to do repetitive tasks for eight hours at a stretch.
Speaker 1: Once they do met, they're suddenly like, Wow, this is
Speaker 1: really fascinating work that I do here. And also the
Speaker 1: time just went by lickety split, and now I can
Speaker 1: go do more maths. Right, yeah, let's go party, because
Speaker 1: that's you know, that's your workhead stash that you keep
Speaker 1: your party and stash at home. I would guess. Um.
Speaker 1: In addition to the mush mouth um, one thing you'll
Speaker 1: see a lot on Breaking Bad and in the photos
Speaker 1: is these scabby lesions on your face. And I wasn't
Speaker 1: sure what that was. I thought it might be somewhat
Speaker 1: the chemicals or the burning. I think it's a little
Speaker 1: of that too. Well, it's also just scratching, scratching your face,
Speaker 1: scratching your face, scratching her face until I have a
Speaker 1: hole in my cheek. But I think it starts out
Speaker 1: with an actual blemish from the chemicals, like was it
Speaker 1: being excreted through your skin? Um, you're probably not going
Speaker 1: to ever get really fat if you are addicted to meth. Um,
Speaker 1: you're you're appetite just like not there. Um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of people like the I guess that effect
Speaker 1: of it. If they feel fat but they don't really
Speaker 1: care about their teeth, then meth probably seems like a
Speaker 1: logical alternative. Well, and we'll get into this, but it
Speaker 1: was speed is what diet bills were for many many years. Um.
Speaker 1: And eventually, if you stay on the meth, you will
Speaker 1: eventually freaking lose your mind basically, and you will hear
Speaker 1: things and see things and experience psychosis and hallucinations and uh.
Speaker 1: Part of that is the drug at work, and part
Speaker 1: of that is beating your body up and being yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: eventually it will get the best of you. There is
Speaker 1: no rosy outcome, yeah, if you're doing math. But what's
Speaker 1: nuts about meth is that, like it is all of
Speaker 1: Nancy Reagan's FIBs and distortions and outright lies about other
Speaker 1: drugs brought to life, like you really do murder your
Speaker 1: loved one with a claw hammer because you perceive them
Speaker 1: to be the devil, like you really do, like um,
Speaker 1: scald your your three year old niece to death with
Speaker 1: hot water because you've been up for too many days
Speaker 1: to know what you're doing, Like you do steal a
Speaker 1: tank and drive it through downtown San Diego and then
Speaker 1: are shot to death by the police. Like that stuff
Speaker 1: happens on meth. No, lie, no exagger ration. Yeah that
Speaker 1: I think I meant to look this up. It seemed
Speaker 1: like recently I read a story about this lady that
Speaker 1: broke into Walmart, or not broke in, but in Walmart
Speaker 1: through the door. Yeah, I'm I'm in Walmart, um now
Speaker 1: and started to try and cook meth in the Walmart.
Speaker 1: She was so messed up, she got all the ingredients
Speaker 1: and started the process. I might be wrong, but it's
Speaker 1: one I remember reading that l well. I think that's
Speaker 1: one of the problems. One of the big dangers with
Speaker 1: meth is there's so many, so many addicts who know
Speaker 1: how to make the drug that they're addicted to. Like you,
Speaker 1: if you're a junkie, you can't just make your own
Speaker 1: heroin like you have to harvest poppies, or if you
Speaker 1: are coke heead, you can't like where you're gonna get
Speaker 1: your coca leaves, you know, like meth is made from
Speaker 1: what used to be, at least until a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago, readily available ingredients. All right, you know, it's
Speaker 1: just sad. I looked up meth and Walmart and it's
Speaker 1: happened more than once. It was like a woman in St. Louis,
Speaker 1: a man in Ohio like cooking, trying to cook meth
Speaker 1: inside of a store. That's crazy, while it was open
Speaker 1: or closed. I think the one lady was while was
Speaker 1: open successful. Don't don't mind me, I'm just shopping for
Speaker 1: tents and uh so, okay, let's talk about the history
Speaker 1: of meth amphetamans is pretty interesting. Ah. There is a
Speaker 1: rumor that I had heard years and years ago that
Speaker 1: it was the Nazis who came up with meth, and
Speaker 1: as I grew a little older, I was like, that's
Speaker 1: not true, and it turns out it isn't true. But
Speaker 1: what is true is that the Nazis supplied their infantrymen,
Speaker 1: their airmen, their sailors, everybody in the German military during
Speaker 1: World War Two with tons of meth amphetamines. Like they
Speaker 1: were jacked up on meth and fighting, which is the
Speaker 1: most psychotic idea I've ever heard. The Nazis on meth
Speaker 1: sounds like a some sort of speed metal band or something,
Speaker 1: you know, or like a weird musical. Yeah, it says
Speaker 1: this one stat in one four four month period in
Speaker 1: German military was fed more than thirty five million speed tablets.
Speaker 1: Thirty five million speed tablets in the four month period
Speaker 1: fighting the war. Can you imagine? And it wasn't just
Speaker 1: us though, I mean, I'm sorry, it wasn't just them. No,
Speaker 1: Americans and the Brits were what was it, dexadrine, dexadrine
Speaker 1: and benza drene. And then the Japanese had their own
Speaker 1: kind of crank um military grade yeah, crazy, yeah, And
Speaker 1: so there was that was a big thing in World
Speaker 1: War two, was supplying the boys on the line with
Speaker 1: as much meth as they could possibly take and keeping
Speaker 1: them up and angry, keeping them eating less so they
Speaker 1: were consuming less food like that. Think about that, yeah, um,
Speaker 1: and just turning them into basically like literal fighting machines.
Speaker 1: Almost wow, I did see that. The apparently the Germans
Speaker 1: tested it at first and found a soldier in March
Speaker 1: fifty five miles before an hour before collapsing basically like
Speaker 1: without Yeah, and this the Germans had this thing called
Speaker 1: per viting pervitin or proviting probably pervitin, and that was
Speaker 1: their meth. And apparently towards the end of the war
Speaker 1: they were like, Okay, the providing's working pretty good, but
Speaker 1: let's see what we can do to really jack these
Speaker 1: guys up. And they the Nazi scientists cam up with
Speaker 1: d I X and it was three milligrams of providing
Speaker 1: mixed with five milligrams with cocaine and five milligrams of
Speaker 1: a pain killer all combined. And apparently this thing never
Speaker 1: got our hit the street because the Allies. The Allies
Speaker 1: invaded and probably did it all whatever they could find,
Speaker 1: and it went away. It was wiped off the face
Speaker 1: of the earth. Cocaine, meth and pain killer in a pill. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's crazy. But we should go back even further. Prior
Speaker 1: to World War two, uh, thousands of years ago in China,
Speaker 1: in India and Pakistan, there were trees, a group of
Speaker 1: shrubs known as a fedra. Yeah, they have a an
Speaker 1: active ingredient that was isolated in eighteen eighty seven by
Speaker 1: a Japanese chemist, ephedrine. It's an amphetamine and uh, shortly
Speaker 1: after that, um, somebody turned ephedrin into a methamphetamine by
Speaker 1: adding a methyl group to it, and then after that
Speaker 1: somebody turned it into crystal methamphetamine, which is meth. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's a long crystal meths has been around. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: just seems like a newer thing. Yeah, you would think,
Speaker 1: like maybe from the sixties or seventies. So after the war,
Speaker 1: after World War two, um, when everybody was on speed,
Speaker 1: people came back from the front saying, hey, we really
Speaker 1: like the speed. Uh. It became available publicly in Germany
Speaker 1: during the war. This stuff was available publicly, the pervitin. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the dexigen and benzagrine became available in the United
Speaker 1: States I think during the war as well. But it
Speaker 1: became very popular in the fifties and sixties for like
Speaker 1: you said, a number of reasons like dieting. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and before that was what's scary is is they like
Speaker 1: the early drug days, we found out we're just crazy,
Speaker 1: this crazy weird land where they were making these new
Speaker 1: things like LST and tweak And they say in the
Speaker 1: early days of crystal meth they it didn't even have
Speaker 1: a purpose yet and the people were just giving it
Speaker 1: to patients and just hey, try this out, like you
Speaker 1: need to pick me up. Like the stuff seems to
Speaker 1: work pretty well. Are you depressed? Like, try this stuff,
Speaker 1: you might not be so depressed. And uh, then it
Speaker 1: got a little more specific and they're like, all right,
Speaker 1: we can use it in any depressants and diet pills, right, legitimate, yes,
Speaker 1: you know. And so ben'za Dreen and decks of Dren
Speaker 1: came about jet Carouac wrote, um, on the road is
Speaker 1: that true? Yes, that sounds I've always heard that like
Speaker 1: a three day No, it was longer than three days.
Speaker 1: It was three weeks. I see, that was it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: But taped together a bunch of paper and that and
Speaker 1: wrote it all the way down. Um, and it turned
Speaker 1: out to be a hundred and twenty ft long. On
Speaker 1: the road was interesting. Yeah, Carowac definitely knew his way
Speaker 1: around a benny. Well he a bottle and whatever else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he mentioned something on the road. Yeah. They they're like
Speaker 1: a minor character almost. Yeah. I read that and Big
Speaker 1: Sir while I was traveling through Big Big was awesome
Speaker 1: because it had that one moment in it where he's like,
Speaker 1: you can't fall off a mountain. It was so awesome.
Speaker 1: It makes such understands like, sure, you can fall down
Speaker 1: a mountain and you're probably gonna die opinion where you fall,
Speaker 1: but you can't fall from the top to the bottom,
Speaker 1: like you can't fall off a mountain. I just thought
Speaker 1: that was so neat because it like drilled right into
Speaker 1: my head just the way he meant it to. Right then, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was. He was quite the method though. Yeah he
Speaker 1: was speeding. Yeah, speed freak, I guess. And there they
Speaker 1: friendly have made that to a movie. Yeah, is it
Speaker 1: it's coming out or did it? I think very soon?
Speaker 1: Who's in it? Um, because I remember being excited about it,
Speaker 1: but well, that's Whylight girls in it, which yeah, but
Speaker 1: who was playing? Uh, I can't remember who's playing? The
Speaker 1: two guys Cassidy yeah and Jack. Well that wasn't Jack,
Speaker 1: it was right, Yeah, that's right. I don't know, but
Speaker 1: it was Jack and Cassidy was named somebody else. There
Speaker 1: was Moriarty, I think it was. It's been a while either.
Speaker 1: It looks pretty good though, you're either thinking of On
Speaker 1: the Road or the Sherlock Home series. But yeah, so so.
Speaker 1: Carolac was part of the pretty much popular American culture
Speaker 1: from housewives, two doctors to um, anybody who were hooked
Speaker 1: on Benny's or dexadrine and UM. Eventually it became quite
Speaker 1: obvious that America was a nation of speed freaks and
Speaker 1: we need to do some thing about it. So the
Speaker 1: government stepped in and they started controlling speed. Yeah. They
Speaker 1: One of the things they tried to do is control
Speaker 1: what they call precursor chemicals, the things he used to
Speaker 1: make the math and UM. I guess we'll get into
Speaker 1: this later, but it hadn't really worked that well over
Speaker 1: the years because it just we if one thing we've
Speaker 1: learned is that there are certain amount of people that
Speaker 1: want to do their drugs, there's a certain amount of
Speaker 1: people that want to make them and sell them, and
Speaker 1: those numbers don't really change that much over the years,
Speaker 1: despite laws and any efforts by the you know, legal measures,
Speaker 1: it's gonna happen. So, UM, well, let's talk about the
Speaker 1: seventies real quick, because I think it fits with this,
Speaker 1: like it's a sterling example of that was the motorcycle
Speaker 1: gangs like the Hell's Angels. They were making what you
Speaker 1: would call today crank amphetamines. Alright, they were using a
Speaker 1: precursor chemical called phennel two propenone and P two P
Speaker 1: was a pool chemical and they were using it to
Speaker 1: make crank and it worked pretty well. I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess it made decent crank um. And the government outlawed
Speaker 1: P two P or clamped down and regulated it's uh
Speaker 1: it's sale and production, and so the outlaw bikers said, well,
Speaker 1: we'll just have to figure something else out. I guess
Speaker 1: some of them looked into the annals of history and
Speaker 1: realized that if fedron was out there easily available, you
Speaker 1: could buy it from the manufacturer illegally, and they started
Speaker 1: using that. But there's a big surprise when they successfully
Speaker 1: made um crank using if fedron wasn't there chuck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they found out this junk is twice as strong as
Speaker 1: the last junk, which I guess was great news if
Speaker 1: you were a Hell's Angel cooking speed. Yeah, I'm sure.
Speaker 1: They added a methyl group and it became meth amphedamine. Basically,
Speaker 1: that UM nineteen nineteen recipe was lost to the ages
Speaker 1: and accidentally discovered by Hell's Angels. That's right, and as
Speaker 1: Tom points out, that would bring the trade and illegal
Speaker 1: speed to its jittery knees. Right. Good stuff. He's got
Speaker 1: some this This article is definitely worth reading. Yeah. Actually
Speaker 1: that was when P two P was under control. But
Speaker 1: you know, I had to delight everyone with his pros. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: should we get to the brothers then, and then jump
Speaker 1: back to how you make it? Uh? Jeseus and Luis
Speaker 1: Emma Emma's kua. I think so. They are pretty much
Speaker 1: one of the big reasons why meth is such a
Speaker 1: big deal right now. On the nineteen eighties, they were
Speaker 1: some small time coke runners and they said, this is
Speaker 1: pretty good, makeing a little bit of dough. But um,
Speaker 1: this meths meth thing is pretty interesting, so let me
Speaker 1: go uh import some adrin from overseas make some money.
Speaker 1: A short time later, MIDnet nines, they are responsible for
Speaker 1: eight of the meth in the United States of America.
Speaker 1: They took over the whole scene basically, yes, well they
Speaker 1: created the scene almost. They basically said, we are going to, um,
Speaker 1: just start importing pure ephedrine from manufacturers in like India,
Speaker 1: and they did, and they were doing this for years
Speaker 1: and years and years. And they very very wisely would
Speaker 1: order it from the factory and then routed through like
Speaker 1: Europe to Mexico or South America to Mexico or it
Speaker 1: never went through the US, so they kept the U
Speaker 1: S customs officials out of it. Well, the U S
Speaker 1: still got their hands on it. One time, Uh, they
Speaker 1: seize three point four metric tons of ephedrin and we're like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: now we know where this high grade speed came from.
Speaker 1: Out of nowhere, um, and white people are killing their
Speaker 1: friends with claw hammers. All of a sudden, it's because
Speaker 1: of these guys who are importing this. And now all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, this this UM thought to outlaw precursor
Speaker 1: chemicals kicks back in and they started clamping down on
Speaker 1: a fedron true and that made a bit of a
Speaker 1: dent for a little while. But like we said, where
Speaker 1: there is a will, there is a way, and Um,
Speaker 1: despite the d e a's efforts in the American government,
Speaker 1: you had temporary licenses granted to people selling it. Uh,
Speaker 1: and the pseudo effordrin basically was like still readily available
Speaker 1: because there were so many They basically said, you got
Speaker 1: a register with us if you want to sell this stuff.
Speaker 1: They were so overloaded that they couldn't even process all
Speaker 1: these applications. But they were overloaded, like the people who
Speaker 1: were illegally selling and producing a federan and selling them
Speaker 1: to drug cartels. Applied for licenses and the d A
Speaker 1: was so swampy, said, everybody just kids a temporary license.
Speaker 1: So people were for a brief period legally selling a
Speaker 1: fedron to these cartels in bulk. And imagine they were
Speaker 1: making pretty good money doing it, which is why they
Speaker 1: kept doing it, you know. Yeah. Um, eventually that dried
Speaker 1: up a little bit, and um, most of the stuff
Speaker 1: moved to Mexico. Um in Earnest Canada, the super Labs Canada. Um,
Speaker 1: did you say it was at Iraq or Iran? Well,
Speaker 1: Iran's the rising star right now. They had um In
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight there were two meth labs busted
Speaker 1: in Iran, and in two thousand and ten they busted
Speaker 1: a hundred and sixty six Wait from what to what
Speaker 1: to two hundred and sixty six and two years? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Iran's like crazy for meth right now, jeez. And apparently
Speaker 1: in Japan, a graham goes for a thousand dollars, so
Speaker 1: I bet that's where a lot of it's going to. Really,
Speaker 1: Pakistan's big on meth. Apparently Southeast South and East Asia
Speaker 1: are really fond of meth right now. Yeah, boy, that's scary. Um.
Speaker 1: So jumping back though, Um, they tried to control the
Speaker 1: sale of pseudoeprogrin more and more, and then they just
Speaker 1: realized that these meth books, like the superlabs, they're not
Speaker 1: going into grocery stores and buying pseudo weaprogroen. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I think some of them are, Oh I don't think
Speaker 1: in that quantity. Well, they're buying like cold pills in bulk,
Speaker 1: they're still using that as the precursor. Yeah, but in bulk,
Speaker 1: like they're not walking into right age and buying, you know,
Speaker 1: three hundred boxes of cold They would probably raise some
Speaker 1: red fly exactly. But um, home cooks and people that
Speaker 1: are into making their own math for you know themselves,
Speaker 1: are their friends. Um break into stores sometimes or sometimes
Speaker 1: just buy um what they call blister packs. They're the
Speaker 1: little pill packages with the little single pills you gotta
Speaker 1: pop out one at a time. Uh. But they actually
Speaker 1: have deep blistering machines to do that for you if
Speaker 1: you're a larger operation, which I didn't had never heard
Speaker 1: of that. So this whole suit of federan thing, you know,
Speaker 1: how you used to just be able to walk down
Speaker 1: the aisles and you could buy a suit of FED
Speaker 1: and it was right there on the shelf. Well, now
Speaker 1: you have to buy it from behind the counter because
Speaker 1: it's federal regulation. Like you can't just sell it out,
Speaker 1: it's too easy to steal. You have to you have
Speaker 1: to interact with the human being who can call the
Speaker 1: d e A or the cops. You're allowed in a
Speaker 1: lot of states, like no more than one pack. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you have to show your driver's license. There's always regulations.
Speaker 1: It's still not making much of a dent. But and
Speaker 1: apparently the reason the big rub to meth home cooked
Speaker 1: meth is the pharmaceutical lobby because they they're like, well,
Speaker 1: we don't want our cold medicine and to only be
Speaker 1: available by prescription. We're moving on this product. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: in states where they they did, they did make sudo
Speaker 1: FED and other like um cold medicines that have pseudo
Speaker 1: federate in it h prescription only. They've seen a sharp
Speaker 1: decrease in meth related crime. So that does work. Behind
Speaker 1: the counter doesn't work. Prescription only apparently does work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but those are for home cooks. Um, what's the stat
Speaker 1: about the superlabs if you are buying methan United States,
Speaker 1: most of that is made by the super labs. Um,
Speaker 1: like you see on Breaking Bad. So now I've heard that,
Speaker 1: I think this might be out of date. Apparently in
Speaker 1: two nine, Mexico finally came to American pressure and said, okay,
Speaker 1: we're just outlawing pseudo federan imports all together. And so
Speaker 1: the Mexican cartel said, okay, well, we're just gonna move
Speaker 1: all our huge operations than into smaller operations in California.
Speaker 1: And now California makes more meth than the next five
Speaker 1: top producing states in the country combined. Yeah, but it's
Speaker 1: all smaller labs. So fun gets busted. Who cares? Which
Speaker 1: makes more sense? You know? Interesting? Yeah? Yeah, because what
Speaker 1: was the stat he gave that what percentage was made
Speaker 1: by There are only four super labs, but they were
Speaker 1: making of the methods four percent of labs or super labs,
Speaker 1: but they're making And apparently that was true until two
Speaker 1: thousand nine. Alright, Um, you want to talk about making it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess we need to talk about making it. This
Speaker 1: is sort of like the how to grow marijuana. Well,
Speaker 1: there's some key you can tell there's key stuff left
Speaker 1: out here. Yeah, I think one of But I guess
Speaker 1: this means that Tom knows how to make method from
Speaker 1: researching this all right, So here's how to do it, josh. Um.
Speaker 1: What you want to do is, if you don't have
Speaker 1: your meth or you're I'm sorry, you're efidrin or pseudo
Speaker 1: efrogron and its powder form. You need to separate that
Speaker 1: from the tablets in the cold medicine. And when you
Speaker 1: do that by mixing it with a solvent, and the
Speaker 1: solution is unfiltered, exposed to low temperatures, and then you
Speaker 1: can remove the innert material and you're left with um,
Speaker 1: your pure pseudo efrogron or efigrin step one, step two.
Speaker 1: Do you want me to handle this? You're gonna make
Speaker 1: me culpable. No no, Um. You you want to take
Speaker 1: your your pseudo effrogen um, whether you've removed your dirt
Speaker 1: materials or you have the your stuff. Um. You want
Speaker 1: to mix it with red phosphorus and hydriotic acid, which
Speaker 1: I don't know what that is, but red phosphorus is
Speaker 1: like match sticks. You can get that from like the
Speaker 1: tip of a match contains red phosphorus. That's why if
Speaker 1: you see people buying lots of book matches. Then they
Speaker 1: might be tweaking or making specially their teeth are correct cooking. Yes,
Speaker 1: Then you filter out that stuff, the red phosphorus. You're
Speaker 1: gonna reuse it later. UM. And then you neutralize the
Speaker 1: remaining acid by adding a lie solution and you add
Speaker 1: it just says a substance which I like. This is
Speaker 1: where he gets a little vague. Um is added to
Speaker 1: bind the meth um and then you the liquid meth
Speaker 1: is drained out at that point and you're left with
Speaker 1: the crystalline. Is that is that the point? Now you
Speaker 1: have to you have to bubble hydrogen chloride gas, which
Speaker 1: is through the toxic through the liquid math, and that
Speaker 1: turns it into a crystal hydrochloride salt. Right, you're gonna
Speaker 1: filter that UM. What is left is then dried out
Speaker 1: and then UM and breaking bad. At least it's on
Speaker 1: these sheets like cookie sheets, and they break the ice
Speaker 1: as they call it, and UM or step step on it,
Speaker 1: which means you add other nasty inert filler to basically
Speaker 1: cut the drug and make it go go further. Two
Speaker 1: unwitting purchasers and snorters, and you weigh it, package it,
Speaker 1: chip it out so in Japan for a thousand dollars
Speaker 1: of Graham. That's right. Um, it sounds very easy, and
Speaker 1: apparently it kind of is if people walk into Walmart
Speaker 1: and try to do it themselves. UM, the problem is
Speaker 1: it's extremely dangerous, especially if you're separating um I federan
Speaker 1: or suit of federan from like an inert material in
Speaker 1: a cold medicine. You're adding an extra step. You're also
Speaker 1: adding a solvent, which is that they tend to be explosive,
Speaker 1: so you have an explosion danger. Um. You're also inhaling
Speaker 1: some really toxic toxic chemicals. UM, up to you. I
Speaker 1: think thirty two different chemicals used in making meth, and
Speaker 1: the byproduct itself produces six times of the actual product
Speaker 1: that you're looking for. So if you produce one pound
Speaker 1: of meth amphidamine, you've produced six pounds of toxic materials
Speaker 1: as a result. Do you want me to go over
Speaker 1: some of these chemicals? This is what you're snorting or
Speaker 1: smoking if you're doing math. Um, potentially gasoline ether paint,
Speaker 1: dinner free on chloroform, camp stove fuel, uh EPs, and
Speaker 1: salt red devil Lie drain cleaner, battery acid. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: pretty bad. That's fun to snort. Myriadic acid, lithium from battery,
Speaker 1: sodium metal, um epidrin, iodine. Uh did I say paint there?
Speaker 1: It's worth saying again. Yeah, So those are some of
Speaker 1: the chemicals that and you know, breaking bad. They don't
Speaker 1: use any of this stuff. That's kind of one of
Speaker 1: the things is the guy's a chemistry he's very proud
Speaker 1: of his drugs. And they don't even use cold pills.
Speaker 1: They make they start from the beginning in a chemistry sense,
Speaker 1: to make their own. Yeah. And um, it's all very
Speaker 1: pure and you know, it's not full of all this gunk.
Speaker 1: And it's blue, which is interesting because that is not
Speaker 1: that it is a signal that it is impure. It's
Speaker 1: a hallmark of the show, this blue meth. But um,
Speaker 1: these days there are enterprising meth cooks that are dying
Speaker 1: their meth blue. And the article I read said they're
Speaker 1: not quite they call it smurf dope. And uh, he said,
Speaker 1: it's not clear why they're doing this. It could be
Speaker 1: just to standout to market their product, or it could
Speaker 1: be to throw off test like um on site UM
Speaker 1: test to see if it's man. They'll drop it in
Speaker 1: it turns blue, said, and some think it might be
Speaker 1: influenced by breaking bad. I wonder, Yeah, I bet you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure it is. Um. However you make it, whether
Speaker 1: it's blue, ye're adding you are creating a toxic site.
Speaker 1: Very like we talked about in UM what what what
Speaker 1: episode was it? I can't remember about. It was basically like, oh,
Speaker 1: crime scene remediation or crime scene something. Yeah. Um. And
Speaker 1: one of the things, one of the big I guess
Speaker 1: um jobs in the industry is cleaning up meth labs. Uh.
Speaker 1: Once you do this, you have pretty much rendered a
Speaker 1: house useless. Like Tom points out that sometimes when the
Speaker 1: cops sees a meth lab and it's a house, they
Speaker 1: just won't even they'll disabandon it because they can't resell it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean it gets in the curtains and the carpet
Speaker 1: and the tiles in the wood. Um. And that's if
Speaker 1: the house doesn't explode all together. The house, the camp site,
Speaker 1: the camper, the car, the trunk of the car to
Speaker 1: the back of the van, the motel room, the Walmart
Speaker 1: had the aisle I'll seven at Walmart. Uh. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: pretty scary stuff. And you know, I'm breaking bad their
Speaker 1: scientists and chemist and they're wearing all the equipment and
Speaker 1: they have or they're wearing all the gear and they
Speaker 1: have all the nice equipment. But that's not like these
Speaker 1: these homegrown cooks are not super smart because they're doing
Speaker 1: this to begin with, and then they might be severely
Speaker 1: tweaking up for days, not thinking straight. And that's why
Speaker 1: they will have explosions and try and eat dirt as
Speaker 1: they're dying because the taste in their mouth is so bitter,
Speaker 1: and uh, someone's left to clean up the mess. And
Speaker 1: that's what makes it the number one abused hard drug
Speaker 1: in the world, more than cocaine and heroin combine. Yea,
Speaker 1: I saw that, and that's meth. I got a couple
Speaker 1: of scary stats. I guess we can finish off with
Speaker 1: some some depressing news. Um uh, I'll just summarize here.
Speaker 1: The overall picture is that are that there are less
Speaker 1: new users, which is good, but the stable level of
Speaker 1: myth and fhetamine abuse is kept. It's basically there's still
Speaker 1: just as much meth, just fewer new users. The people
Speaker 1: that are using it are really using it more and
Speaker 1: more like they're really into it. So if it's not
Speaker 1: going anywhere, and you know the d e A has
Speaker 1: it's sort of dipped in years, but risen back. It's
Speaker 1: just one of those things. It's like any drug, like
Speaker 1: cocaine has been in and out of fashion for a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty years. It'll it'll dip down and they'll
Speaker 1: tout some numbers, but then I'll shoot right back up
Speaker 1: in another country. Maybe, Um, one of eighth graders, one
Speaker 1: point six of tenth graders, and one percent of high
Speaker 1: school seniors the lifetime have abused at least once in
Speaker 1: the prior year to the survey, which those are pretty
Speaker 1: low numbers, but I was hoping it would be like
Speaker 1: point oh one or something like that. Well America, I mean,
Speaker 1: if there's like twenty three million users worldwide, America's got
Speaker 1: about two million of them. I'm mean that's pretty significant.
Speaker 1: I thought it'd be more than that. I would think
Speaker 1: so too. That's what I heard. Don't do it. Don't
Speaker 1: do math. It's just a bad idea. I think that's
Speaker 1: a great win and get high on life. Go for
Speaker 1: a natural Hi hi hi b in yours. So that's nice, Chuck, Um.
Speaker 1: If you want to learn more about meth and all
Speaker 1: of the myriad reason why you should not do it.
Speaker 1: You can type in meth in the search bartow stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com and this one goes to our drug suite.
Speaker 1: We've done M D M A L s now we have? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we did, we did. Uh. We talked about M D
Speaker 1: M A and them, but not a dedicated show. It
Speaker 1: was pretty much a dedicated show on M D M A. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We talked about LSD A bunch of times, how to
Speaker 1: grow pot Uh. Yeah, a bunch of stuff. I've that
Speaker 1: a few more in the Kittie Yeah, we gotta hit crack,
Speaker 1: we gotta hit creck, and we gotta hit to Oh man,
Speaker 1: I didn't get to use my favorite line. At the
Speaker 1: beginning of this podcast, they talked about how ancient Chinese
Speaker 1: used to use my huiang to get their speed fixed,
Speaker 1: and well that was it these Mahoian. Yeah. I talked
Speaker 1: about that somewhere else, and I can't remember where because
Speaker 1: when I read it, I was like, I don't remember
Speaker 1: we joked about this before we did. Ma huang is
Speaker 1: a stimulant. I wonder what did we did we do
Speaker 1: like traditional Chinese medicine. At one point, I think my
Speaker 1: wine might have made it that's right, Okay, I remember now,
Speaker 1: um wow, So I guess at some point in the
Speaker 1: recent past I said search bar, right, so I guess
Speaker 1: since time for listening? That right? Yes, um, quick plug
Speaker 1: before we start. For my buddy Cameron Esposito, very funny comedian.
Speaker 1: She is a Chicago native in is in l A now,
Speaker 1: but she has started a podcast called Stand Up Mixtape.
Speaker 1: And it is cool because each podcast is like a
Speaker 1: little comedy lp in that she has moved a comedy
Speaker 1: show into a studio. So instead of it some clubs,
Speaker 1: some crappy club with people clinking glasses and you know,
Speaker 1: well that's nice, but this is like pristine, like excellent sound.
Speaker 1: She host um and host one of her comedian friends,
Speaker 1: and uh, it's just good stuff. It's very funny, small,
Speaker 1: intimate little field. You can like feel it even though
Speaker 1: you're hearing it. So that's stand Up Mixtape. Is it
Speaker 1: available in the normal places? Yeah? iTunes? Yep. Cameron Esposito,
Speaker 1: go see her. She's very funny. She sports at the
Speaker 1: side mullet All right, um, listener, mail from Asher about
Speaker 1: just sort of clearing up the want just read it. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I was a prosecutor in the Midwest into prior life,
Speaker 1: so I was excited to hear your take on criminal records.
Speaker 1: Your information was great all around. I wanted to clarify
Speaker 1: one thing, though, because I used to run into it
Speaker 1: all the dawn time. You did Yeoman's work by mentioning
Speaker 1: that expunged is inaccurate. The records remain and are freely
Speaker 1: available to law enforcement prosecutors and government agencies, but merely
Speaker 1: can't easily be referenced in a subsequent court proceeding and
Speaker 1: aren't publicly disclosed. However, you also mentioned that records of
Speaker 1: traffic crimes are not kept as part as a person's
Speaker 1: criminal record un once the crimeo serious, like vehicular homicide. UM,
Speaker 1: it does depend on your state, but this is a
Speaker 1: common misconception. As prosecutor, I saw everything you've ever done
Speaker 1: from a piddally, from as pittally as a note, seatbelt
Speaker 1: ticket too, as major as murder. This often became relevant
Speaker 1: because my office had some discretion to give you a
Speaker 1: deferred sentence. Basically, you don't screw up for six months
Speaker 1: and the charge goes away, but only if you had
Speaker 1: a clean record. I would on a daily basis have
Speaker 1: people failed to disclose a speeding ticket elsewhere in the
Speaker 1: state that had been expunged some years back. Then be
Speaker 1: shocked that I knew about it. I love the show,
Speaker 1: I just want to make sure. Ah, I just wanted
Speaker 1: to make sure to mention this little tidbit for you
Speaker 1: in case we revisit the topic. Also, I emailed you
Speaker 1: before about your pronunciation of Nevada. Oh yeah, it still
Speaker 1: makes me puppy cry every time you must pronounce it.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately your podcast is great enough that I can
Speaker 1: continue to overlook it, or at least until my puppies
Speaker 1: head explodes. I don't know what that means. Down Math Asher, Asher,
Speaker 1: clean up buddy. Thank you for writing into UM. If
Speaker 1: you have a correction, especially if it's nuanced, we love that,
Speaker 1: you can tweet it to us at s y SK podcast,
Speaker 1: join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know,
Speaker 1: or you can send us a good old fashioned email
Speaker 1: to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com for more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com