METHAMPHETAMINE - "the poor man's cocaine" - is a powerful and highly noxious form of speed which, when abused, wreaks havoc on the central nervous system, impairing the functioning of the brain and spinal cord. It was created in Japan in 1893 and distributed as a central nervous system stimulant for mass consumption in 1919.

During World War II methamphetamine was administered by Nazi chemists to enable their troops to stay awake, alert and compulsively focused, ultimately rendering them emotionally detached and quasi-psychotically aggressive. Medical records show that Hitler himself was injected five times a day with methamphetamine from 1942, corrupting his judgment, undermining his health, steering his insanity and, possibly, the course of World War II.

Today, methamphetamine is manufactured legally under the brand names Ritalin and Desoxyn and prescribed in small dosages to people - mostly children - with, respectively, acute attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms and narcolepsy. However, most of the methamphetamine available in America is mass-manufactured in illegal labs from an array of cheap, noxious substances (including drain cleaner, lithium from camera batteries, antifreeze, ephedrine, red phosphorous and hydrochloric acid) under various street names such as crystal meth, Tina, ice, shabu, base, yaba, glass, crank and crazy medicine.

Produced in concentrated crystal form and liquid, the drug is chemically concocted to artificially stimulate the brain's pleasure neurotransmitter (reward center) to induce elated feelings of well-being and alertness, giving the user a false sense of power and control. It does this by triggering the release of high levels of the feel-good chemical, dopamine, into the prefrontal cortex of the brain, effectively erasing inhibitions and feelings of guilt and low self-esteem built up by years of social shame, insecurity, loneliness and alienation.

The first crystal hit's almost instantaneous, euphoric high locks seductively into the user's subconscious. Grounded people who can control their drug intake are generally able to use crystal once and not be lured back, or sparingly at most. It is those who use drugs to escape their reality on a regular basis - the "addictive personality" - whom crystal preys upon. Snorted, smoked, ingested or injected, the effect is stronger than amphetamines like speed or cocaine, and the comedown - "crash" - significantly more intense.

The user's newfound ability to overcome his social anxiety entices him to repeat the experience, but the more he consumes chasing the high while delaying the onset of the crash, the less pleasurable the effect due to crystal's cumulative erosion of the brain's natural production of dopamine. All positive feelings - such as job satisfaction, enjoyable social interactions, feelings of contentment, that life is meaningful and counts for something... - rely on dopamine transmission. Driven by his craving for the high, crystal effectively sucks him into a downward spiral of abuse and dependency.

The user crashes when his dopamine levels are zapped and while his system is manufacturing a fresh supply, which can take several days. Over time crystal significantly erodes the brain's ability to restore the depleted dopamine, and can then take up to a week, sometimes two, to renew. During this period the user, having gone from feeling powerful to powerless, effectively surrenders control of his life to crystal. Detached from his internal energy source, he is unable to experience or express positive feelings like love, happiness, joy or pleasure.

Now an abuser, his mind feeds on his fears and insecurities, tormenting him and causing him to turn inward and to project his negative feelings and self-hatred at his environment. Unresolved painful issues from the past locked away in his mind - and which unconsciously prompted his use of crystal in the first place - can resurface to torment him and significantly intensify his growing psychological turmoil.

Numerous unpleasant symptoms (dry skin, sores, sweating, poor hygiene, numbness, dilating pupils, dizziness, tooth grinding, impaired speech, ulcers, sleeplessness, nausea, exhaustion, vomiting, diarrhea, hypothermia, convulsions) manifest, and interest in the normal rewards of life fade as people, places and activities associated with using crystal take precedence in his life.

Crystal also induces chronic loss of appetite and weight loss, which may appeal to the abuser in the early stages of his addiction as fat is stripped away. But over time his starved body will feed on muscle tissue resulting in a wasted, pallid appearance and ravaged facial features typified by blotchy, jaundiced skin and large black rings around the eyes.

In the shorter and shorter periods between crashes the abuser must struggle to cope with the everyday chores he has neglected and allowed to build up, thus exacerbating his depressive state and his already overwhelming feelings of helplessness.

Inevitably he will come to depend on crystal constantly, running down his brain's already depleted store of dopamine. Swirling in a perpetual vicious circle of dependency and negativity, he can't look others in the eye or face his own gaunt reflection, and will resent anyone and anything that does not fit in with his addiction.

Crystal's toll is, ultimately, a dehumanizing one as the abuser descends into a zombie-like, empty 'shell' of his former self. To people around him his deterioration is akin to an internal light being snuffed out. He no longer seems to even be the same person, appearing wired (paranoid, depressed, irritable, fearful, anxious, compulsive, agitated, unpredictable, nervous) and exhibiting signs of schizophrenia (panic, anger, repetitive behavior patterns and auditory and visual hallucinations).

Lifetime friends no longer seem important or relevant and he starts to cut them off, while his constant flow of anti-social behavior puts his career and financial security at risk. Abusers in the States have gone from earning six-figure salaries to being on welfare in just 18 months, while countless others have lost their apartments due to their addiction to crystal.

Love-based relationships are destroyed by the abuser's need to plug into, and drain, any external sources of positive energy still available to him, while those that persist become unhealthily co-dependent, needy, fraught and abusive. As his dependence on crystal deepens, the world around him contracts as those around him are driven away by his irrational, draining behaviour. Eventually crystal will have succeeded in isolating the abuser, separating him from the rest of humanity.

Alone and isolated, the abuser nevertheless remains unaware or defiant in his denial of his erratic actions, typically adamant that he is still focused and in control and that it is the rest of the world that is going crazy. His paranoia can reach extreme, often absurd levels, from being convinced that certain people "are out to get me" to imagining insects or parasites crawling beneath his skin. If circumstances allow he will isolate himself at home with the lights low and the curtains drawn, too paranoid even to answer the phone or switch on the television or computer.

Persistent denial and continued use will lead to constant thoughts of suicide: recorded suicide rates of gay male crystal abusers in America now threaten to outstrip the rate of AIDS deaths, while murders triggered by acute paranoia have been directly attributed to crystal.

In October, a psychotically-aggressive crystal abuser was shot dead by police in the Castro, San Francisco's gay district. He had allegedly lunged at them with two large butcher's knives grabbed from a nearby restaurant, yet his friends remembered him as "a very bright young man full of life, joy and love," and, "a beautiful, brilliant and very promising young man - unlike any other gay man I've ever known." The young man in question had only recently turned to crystal during a period of low self-esteem.

Although the long-term consequences are not yet known, in brain-imaging studies of addicts using two grams of crystal a day there were changes in the brain consistent with a pre-Parkinson's disease syndrome, symptoms of which include loss of concentration, tremors and impaired movement. In extreme cases, Parkinson's leads to dementia. Smoking crystal for a more instantaneous, enduring high can induce fatal kidney, lung and liver disorders leading to strokes, heart failure and death.

The message is crystal clear: be seduced by crystal meth and be damaged, enslaved and, ultimately, killed.

Hopefully, the abuser's situation will force him to awaken to his problem and seek help medically or via the 12-Step self-empowerment and recovery support program at Crystal Meth Anonymous (CMA), which has a network of regular meetings across North America and boasts the greatest rehabilitation success rate of any support group (see link on Front Page). London and other major European cities are not yet equipped to deal with an epidemic of crystal abuse (see London Calling).

Meth abusers are among the hardest to treat of all drug takers and often extremely resistant to any form of intervention, but acknowledging that they have a problem is a major first step toward recovery.

The path to recovery varies from person to person. The severe effects of withdrawal (drug craving, suicidal depression, irritability, diarrhea, loss of energy, depression, fearfulness, insomnia, palpitations, sweating, hyperventilation) can last several weeks, but the wall (craving) period continues for around six-eight months for casual users and two-three years for addicts. The temptation to relapse is always strong, and there is growing concern in the medical field that some former abusers may never recover from irreversible brain damage, remaining forever dissatisfied with life and its rewards.

In mainstream American society methamphetamine has been widely used in California for decades, but use has spiralled across the States in recent years and it is now the third most abused drug. Due to the combustibility and toxicity of the raw ingredients, production is most prevalent in arid and unpopulated areas of America such as desert territory in the Midwest and around Palm Springs, where seizures of clandestine labs have soared in recent years.

Methamphetamine is, not surprisingly, favored by groups that exist on the dark fringes of society such as the Hell's Angels, Satanists and Ku Klux Klan, but, unlike past drug epidemics like heroin and crack cocaine which emerged from the urban ghettos, new research suggests that demand is also being driven by respectable sectors of society. School and college age students, for example, are increasingly using crystal to boost alertness while studying for exams, and consumption is even escalating among middle-class "supermoms" as they struggle to cope with the demands of work and home (use among career women in their 30s and 40s in 'corn-belt' states such as Iowa now rivals alcohol).

The drug is also finding favor with white and blue-collar workers - cross country drivers, for example, are turning to meth to stay awake, effectively halving their journey time - and unemployed people in their 20s and 30s, with use equally divided between males and females. In San Francisco, where crystal meth use is endemic in the gay community, crystal is becoming disturbingly prevalent on the mainstream dance scene, and is approaching epidemic levels among the youth of the city's vast Chinese population.

Three million hyperactive American children are estimated to be on the commonly prescribed ADHD drug, Ritalin - which is chemically similar to methamphetamine - to help them overcome learning difficulties and behavioral problems by boosting their focus. ADHD kids, however, are also unusually sensitive, intuitive and creatively gifted, and tests have shown that these qualities are repressed while dosed up on meth. Although the companies behind Ritalin and pharmaceutical grade methamphetamine, Desoxyn, insist they are safe, there is mounting pressure for both to be banned amid claims that America is spawning a nation of "zombie" kids.

US Congress took measures in federal legislature to prevent the illegal spread of crystal with the 1996 Methamphetamine Control Act, passing mandatory minimum sentences for trafficking of five years for ten grams and ten years for 100 grams, but drug experts at the American Psychological Associations annual convention in Chicago earlier this year reported an alarming rise in the numbers of first-time users turning to meth in the past 12 months.

Currently, Congress is proposing a Senate bill (S2633) that will make club owners and party promoters directly responsible for consumption of all drugs, including methamphetamine, on their premises, with fines of up to $500,000. Many face closure if the bill is passed.

Outside of North America, Thailand is suffering an epidemic of methamphetamine abuse where it is produced in huge quantities by a rebel militia group living in the jungles of neighboring Burma, beyond the control of the military regime. The United Wa State Army were one of the world's top heroin producers until switching to the less well-policed and more profitable methamphetamine, which sells in pill form for around £1.50 a hit. Portentously demonstrating the speed at which crystal spreads among mainstream society if readily and cheaply available, it has fast become the drug of choice for all classes and age groups in Thailand: 2.7 million admit to taking methamphetamine and an estimated 300,000 are addicts, while one in four Thai army recruits are abusers. Even Bangkok's working elephants are doped on meth.

The physical effects on societies plagued by methamphetamine addiction are shattering - deaths, car crashes, crime and fires caused by explosions at illegal labs and hazardous waste (each pound of meth produced leaves behind five to six pounds of toxic waste) - but the psychological toll on users and their friends is catastrophic.

In spite of the hard evidence, there are currently no Government or charity-funded methamphetamine awareness programs or preventative campaigns underway in London, methamphetamine's next port of call as it continues its relentless, ruthless journey eastward from New York; one that started in Los Angeles and now has Europe in its sight...