Reddit reviews Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town

There is a pretty good book about this called Methland that I read and really enjoyed some time ago.

The two big factors from the authors research was the terrible economy, and the fact that meth is crazy easy to make and gets you insanely high for days.

Yes, lets. Because I hadn't noticed the Greek austerity defense piece (until you pointed it out) but I certainly did notice that the overall slant of the SSDI piece was to portray SSDI as welfare.

Here's something else I noticed. The week after Planet Money's SSDI piece, the NYT did their own SSDI piece, also going to a town with a disproportionate number of people on SSDI. And found something entirely different. They didn't find under-educated people using SSDI as a way to make up for the loss of manufacturing jobs in America, they found a non-union workplace thumbing its nose at OSHA and ignoring its suppliers' own MSDS warnings, and resultingly crippling every single assembly line worker in as little as a year on the line.

This didn't surprise me, because I also read Nick Reding's Methland, and one of its primary findings was that every major meth epidemic in America can be traced back to a non-union workforce with poor ergonomics or other safety risks, no paid sick leave, and little or no health care; that the first people to bring huge amounts of meth to a town are injured workers who have to find some way to work through the pain if they want to keep their jobs. Earlier reporting found the same thing about opiate pill mills.

I see no evidence that Alternet's columnist is right in suggesting that Planet Money gets this wrong on purpose, no evidence that this is some kind of conspiracy to suck up to rich potential sponsors. Given Planet Money's willingness to go after various sacred cows (I should say, by the way, that I am a huge fan of the show) I assume that it's not. But it does say something about the biases of the show that, to Planet Money, given a choice between looking for evidence that American employers are crippling unusually high percentages of their workers through neglected safety measures combined with over-work or looking for evidence that somebody, however well meaning, is organizing mass welfare fraud, Planet Money's reporters went looking for the latter.

Let me preface this by saying that people should be held accountable for their actions.

I can't help but have a little bit of sympathy for people who are caught up by meth. Something that causes so many people to do such crazy shit, like spending every penny they have, prostitute themselves or even their children, utterly destroy their appearance and ultimately lose the ability to feel pleasure/happiness. It's one hell of a gripping, messed up drug.

I read a book a few years ago called Methland (http://www.amazon.com/Methland-Death-Life-American-Small/dp/B00BV2N28S) about the drug and it's chilling how prevalent it is in rural America. There are even stories about the majority of a population in some small towns being addicted.

There's a book you might want to check out called METHLAND. The entire book is about how meth destroys a small town. In it is a story about a guy who cooked meth. The lab exploded and he ran outside while on fire. The police arrived and couldn't do anything. He was begging them to shoot him as his skin was just falling off.

The sad thing? He survived. He's permanently disfigured over almost his entire body, and the ends of his arms are nothing but stubs now.

The horrifying thing? He still uses meth. The author wrote about how when they interviewed he intravenously inject meth somehow while using his two burned stub limbs.

It seemed like literal Hell.

edit: Here's what the guy looks like after the accident.

I don't know of any books that follow the plot of that show, but one of the best non-fiction books I read that's somewhat related is Methland - it follows the development of meth through American society, the empire that was built around it in the midwest and the destruction (and in some cases reconstruction) of the lives of the users through a tiny town in Iowa. It's written in that narrative history/journalism style that I love so much (see: The Hot Zone, etc). Great read. Highly recommended - especially if you live somewhere that hasn't felt the full destructive properties of meth (like the Northeast US).

Here you go : Methland

Try Oelwein in Fayette Co. They wrote a book about it called Methland. [Source http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00BV2N28S?pc_redir=1407356635&robot_redir=1#productDescription_secondary_view_pageState_1407640216000]