Meth Baby

The famous conference on methamphetamine my sister and I attended in August deserves a little more comment here. First of all there was a really great presentation by Patricia Case called "The History of Methamphetamine: An Epidemic in Context." I wish you could hear it. She took the panic being spread currently by the media and shut it all down. It was almost embarrassing because she said things I mostly knew but had forgotten about or had failed to apply to this situation. The historical facts she reminded us of included that Dexedrine was passed out in the weekly ration kits to the soldiers in World War II and it was freely prescribed to bored and overweight housewives in the 50's and 60's.

Ironically, while I was on my way home from Salt Lake I was sitting in the airport at Dallas-Ft. Worth emailing my sister when I heard this "news" report on Fox about "meth babies." Some idiot doctor somewhere was interviewed saying how babies born exposed to methamphetamine have all this horrible diarrhea which is caused by them having to excrete all the acid in the meth. I was unaware that there existed a medical school that didn't require physiology but apparently this doctor found one. Complete and utter bull-diarrhea.

It dawned on me while listening to Dr. Case that I am in fact a meth baby of sorts. In 1965 when my mother got pregnant with me she was deemed too fat and was prescribed some kind of amphetamine, probably Dexedrine. Yes, you read that correctly. She was too fat and through out the pregnancy was prescribed amphetamines. She weighed less when she was due to give birth to me then she had when I was conceived. Now this may or may not explain a few things about me but I more or less turned out okay so I guess there's hope for those poor little diarrhea-ing meth babies the world over.