What is crystal meth withdrawal like?

Faces of Meth is a great project that’s meant to target the meth epidemic by exploiting the harm it does to something our commercial culture values most – our vanity. It’s a good place to look.

Meth is an extreme upper and allows users to go without sleep or much food for days. One of the main physical symptoms of withdrawal is, therefore, unfortunately for your script not very dramatic (clearly dramatic, at least) – constant sleep.

Ah, but the need to sleep so soundly could indeed have a dramatic effect on those who need to care for him and/or have him do stuff.

I have a friend who is a recovering meth addict. I’ve sent him an email with your question—he loves talking about himself, so I think there’s a great chance you’ll get a first-hand account. ;)

Here’s what he had to say:

Hmmm.. well, when it happened to me, the biggest things I dealt with were no energy, I slept for about fifteen days… with only about two hours at a time of consciousness.. extremely upset stomach (due to the fact that food became a complete foreign object to my stomach), convulsions when trying to wake up. paranoia, I was extremely intimidated by people, mainly bosses or people in some type of authority over me.. um, complete disregard for anyone else, I was completely self-internalized and only worried about what was going on with me, had no desire or energy to speak to anyone.. that’s about all I can think of right off-hand. =) Hope it helps.

Nice job MissAnthrope.

@MissAnthrope Wow, the government should use that as their anti-drug awareness campaign. Or in highschools at least, scary stuff…

I would take all this info and also watch some movies or documentaries about meth users. If you watch the way the drug makes a person behave, you can figure out what the withdrawal would be like emotionally and mentally.

On the A&E site, you can watch episodes of Intervention online. I don’t know that they’ll show video of the withdrawal, but the following episodes are online and deal with meth abuse: Heidi/Michelle, Salina/Troy, Annie/Amy, Tammi/Daniel, Mike/James, and Cristy. (There are probably more, but that’s as far as I got.)

Seelix, you must be a fan.

@ladymia69 – I watch it once in a while. The Wikipedia page lists the episodes and the addictions featured in each.

Pretty much you start eating and sleeping again.

How do people act when they’re on it? How can you tell a meth user?

This person I know gets very paranoid coming off it. Everything he knows he all of a sudden doubts. He’s more depressed than I’ve ever seen him and talks about suicide. Other people sleep all day.