My girlfriend's brother started messing around with Meth years ago. Before starting down this path, he was a compulsive collector of music and digital media. After starting down that path, he started collecting child pornography.

He let his health go. He lost interest in things like video games. He stopped doing things with friends. When he got busted, he had this kiddie porn collection, where parts of it were in precise alphabetical order, by genre [I cringe just to think of this]. The detectives who busted him and investigated said they could tell when the Meth was doing damage, by the sloppy progression of the cataloging of his collections.

He did some time in jail. When he got out, he had a hard time understanding the most basic concepts. He couldn't even operate a salt and pepper grinder. You never would have guessed that he was once a very intelligent legal assistant.

We buried him last month. He was a year younger than me.

Meth seems to be one of those things that you don't mess with.