Fed: The reality of ice not so cool for addicts

AAP General News (Australia)
02-02-2007
Fed: The reality of ice not so cool for addicts

By Sandra O'Malley

CANBERRA, Feb 2 AAP - Its name conjures images of purity and cool but the reality for
many people addicted to "ice" is a degrading spiral into paranoia, crime, violence and
sexual promiscuity.

Cheap and highly addictive, many Australians have tried ice or crystal meth, one of
the strongest forms of methamphetamines available.

Across the nation, some 10 per cent of teenagers and adults - a total of 1.5 million
people - have used these psycho-stimulants, including 500,000 people in the last year
alone.

It's a bigger problem than heroin - there are around 73,000 methamphetamine addicts
compared with 45,000 regular heroin users.

And while the death toll from ice is lower - methamphetamines claim around 50 lives
in Australia a year against heroin which took 350 lives in 2004 - it still has significant
destructive consequences, including causing stroke and heart failure in some users.

The drug's other effects can be equally dangerous.

Research shows nearly one in four addicts will experience psychosis within a year.

It may take the form of hallucinations or paranoia, such as persecutory delusions,
and episodes can last from a few hours to months.

Frontline hospital staff who are called on to deal with the problem every weekend,
when usage tends to peak, are faced with agitated, distressed individuals who may need
to be chemically or physically restrained.

Police often have to be called.

Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital has had to build special rooms for violent ice patients,
separating them from other hospital users, while its sister facility in Melbourne has
a trained team to sedate and restrain violent patients.

In a landmark report on methamphetamine use, released by the government's chief drug
adviser this week, the number of cases of users with methamphetamine psychosis turning
up Australian in hospitals has grown 50 per cent over the last five years.

"(The drug has the) potential to induce psychotic behaviour, which endangers those
who are trying to help, particularly nurses and police," said former Liberal minister
John Herron, chairman of the Australian National Council on Drugs (ANCD).

While most users spend between $50-$100 a week on the drug, the cost for addicts can
be much higher, forcing them into crime to fund their habits.

"Certainly, high levels of crime are seen among regular methamphetamine users, with
a significant proportion of people apprehended for crimes testing positive to methamphetamine,"

the ANCD report said.

Some 40 per cent of women and one in four men in police detention have the drug in their system.

Regular methamphetamine use is also believed to be linked to more violent behaviour.

"Violent behaviour is most likely to occur among chronic methamphetamine users when
they experience drug-induced paranoia,," the report said.

"Within this context, the person can believe they are in danger, and this coupled with
other personality, polydrug use (using a combination of drugs) and circumstantial factors,
can trigger seemingly irrational acts of violence, including homicide."

Peter McGeorge, the director of mental health services at St Vincent's, said methamphetamine
use was having a significant impact on a number of levels.

"The amount of rage, the threat that they pose is just phenomenal and you do actually
need very high security facilities to take people in," he told ABC radio last year.

"Not only are we requiring more resources overall than was early on predicted, but
we are requiring quite specific facilities and specially trained staff to be able manage
the problem, even to a minor extent."

Dr McGeorge described the methamphetamine phenomenon as catastrophic.

"It's an epidemic on a scale that we haven't seen for years and years, perhaps ever,"

he told the Nine Network.

There are other health impacts from risky sexual behaviour and, for those who inject
the drug, the use of unclean needles.

Methamphetamines can heighten sexual arousal and some users take it specifically to enhance sex.

However, around 50 per cent of users admit they are more likely to take part in high
risk sexual behaviour under the influence of the drug, according to the report.

But for one Sydney user, it nearly led to the end of his sex life.

One of Dr McGeorge's colleagues, Beaver Hudson, a psychiatric nurse at St Vincent's,
told a conference last year how a man nearly had to have his penis amputated because he
injected ice into his genitals.

"(A user) developed an abscess from injecting ice into his penis," he said.

"We almost had to amputate it."

AAP so/sb/it/cdh

KEYWORD: ICE (AAP BACKGROUNDER)

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