Micky The Meth Freak

Micky had not always been this way.

At one time he'd had a good, though low-paying, job. Even though it didn't pay that well he was free to work as much overtime as he wished. This was the start of the problem, but not the real beginning.

Micky had a rough start in life.

Micky was abandoned. He never knew who his parents were, that wasn't information he was privy to.

He'd been a scrawny smallish kid. He spent a lot of his time being picked on and either defending himself or trying to remain invisible.

When he was nine he was finally parceled out to foster parents. It was really too late for adoption though.

Micky's personality was now "cast in stone." He was a sneaky kid, out of necessity, and that carried over to his behavior in foster homes. Each family saw some good in him, but Micky was not trusting nor was he very trustworthy. In the end he stayed with five different foster families, but was never adopted.

When he turned fifteen he "ran away" from his last foster placement and began living on the street. This sometimes meant that he ate out of trash cans, stole to survive, and eventually ended up being a young male prostitute. Later this would shame him greatly, but at the time it was survival and he thought little about it. He did what he had to do.

He had learned how to fight at the state home and at school, but got much better at it in the street. One could say that Micky could hold his own. He also had an interesting attitude about theft. He would never steal from friends, but theft from a store was alright though not desirable.

By the time was was of age he already had a long arrest record for shop-lifting and petty theft. None of this would show up on his adult record. At one point he was returned to the state, but because he'd turned eighteen in the intervening years he was released quickly...and forgotten about.

On the street he made some friends and determined that the street life was better than foster care. Much better in fact, he was his own man, answerable to himself only.

Naturally he'd been exposed to drugs in this street life, but with a few exceptions he always avoided them. He never tried heroin, did not like pot, and found speed redundant. For all of this he was very intelligent, but without a proper education Micky came across as somewhat dull; he wasn't at all.

His Looks
We'll never know what his parents looked like, at least not until Micky decides he wants to find them, which may be never. Someone was tall though.

Micky stood a very wiry six feet one inch tall. He had chiseled Germanic features with light brown hair and blue eyes. When dressed up, and he liked nice clothes, he looked like a young business man. He didn't need tailored clothing; his build was perfect for "off the shelf" clothing. Everything fit like it was made for him.

In fact the only thing that detracted from Micky's looks was an early bout of acne. It had left his entire face lightly scarred. He was even handsome in his own way. Without the acne scars he would have been a presentable male model. He had the build. He wore good shoes, business slacks and dress shirts. He was more than presentable; he always looked like he'd just gotten off of work in a good paying office job.

Early on this was even true in a way.

His Personality
Early on Micky was fun and a joy to be around. He had a self-effacing humor laced with insight and rare intelligence. He never talked about his past, but a few minutes with him and that didn't matter. He was sharp, friendly, and always presented himself in the best possible way. He never crossed a friend, but enemies needed to be on constant guard. That was Micky.

All of this may have been the result of a street education.

He had worked for two years in an office as an expediter. He never related how he'd got the job, but he was a valued employee. He didn't steal from the company, worked as much overtime as he was offered, and did a more than competent job.

Somewhere in his past someone had imparted the values of hard work and reward. Micky embraced those values, deviating from them only out of need. The problem was Micky's definition of "need."

The company was growing, but at the stage where it could not yet afford to hire more employees. Micky's job became more demanding and he got more overtime. He was working twelve and fourteen hour days seven days a week.

Of course he couldn't do this without chemical aid. After a month in these new working conditions he contacted old friends and got his first hit of meth a drug he'd toyed with in his teens. It quickly became a necessity for his job.

It helped a lot. He was no longer tired. All he had to do was take his pipe and crystal into an ally behind the business and smoke for a few minutes. It was close enough to a good night's sleep to keep him going. More than keep him going, in his mind he was as efficient and diligent as ever.

He was the only person who did not notice his own personality change. He'd become very short tempered, but he was the only person who did not see that in himself.

Possessions
In six month's time Micky had bought a brand new Audi A6 and a BMW R1200. He had a nice apartment in the mid-Wilshire district furnished with IKEA and Crate & Barrel. He had the nicest clothes; a closet full. He was also engaged to a girl in accounting at the company he worked for. He was mad for her.

Micky had finally come into his own.

At some point the company changed hands and the new owners instituted a "zero tolerance" drug policy.

Because he had friends in the right places inside the main office he always got word about drug tests. All he had to do was abstain from meth for three days, put himself though detox, and he could pass any urine test.

Over time the original office personnel were replaced by employees from the corporate office. It became harder and harder for him to predict drug tests.

These tests had been conducted four times, about every other month. It was eight months in when the company decided to conduct a "surprise" drug test. By this time Micky's inside people had been replaced.

Micky failed the fifth test, of course, and was promptly fired. He'd been working for the company for over two years. He was also engaged.

Runner
To Micky's way of thinking this was not a big deal. He had two cars a motorcycle and a cell phone. It wasn't hard to go into business. He was known and trusted by his meth contacts. He would do this until he got a real job, maybe at the same company again.

In two months time he went from dealing to individuals to being a middle-man to local distributors. He was making a lot of money, but didn't get much sleep.

Of course all of this was necessary to support his own habit. He was addicted. He didn't know it, but everyone who knew him did. Micky eventually acknowledged that he had a problem, but it was months before he himself realized it. By then he was in too deep. He only occasionally entertained the idea that he might have a problem. In hindsight these were the rare times his brain was actually working properly.

Testing the Product
With his odd sense of honor it was necessary for Micky to test the product before reselling it. He had access to more meth than he had ever seen in his life. It wasn't long before he went from smoking it to "slamming" it. Some of his customers injected meth so this was the most efficient way to test it; on himself.

Somewhere in there he completely lost his reason. Maybe he'd already lost all if not most of it. It's hard to say when it happened. It wasn't hard to say that it had happened.

Occasionally he would realize his thinking was off, but he never seemed to take the warnings seriously. That or the meth was doing most of the thinking for him.

It's impossible to say when "too late" came around, but it was obvious that "too late" had come and gone.

Vampires and Secret Messages
Within a year he lost both cars. They were repossessed. He managed to hang on to the motorcycle, for all the good that did him. It was easy to hide and hard to repossess.

He'd always had a problem with his temper. The meth exacerbated this problem. Before addiction he would think a bit more before acting. Now he would wreck things when they didn't work properly or he made a mistake.

He went through cellular phones at an astounding rate. He always said they flew out of his hand and hit the pavement at the speed of light. Eventually his motorcycle became a victim too.

He had no transportation. His suppliers cut him off too. He was too unreliable and hard to contact to entrust with their profits.

Somewhere in there he started being attacked by vampires. Tiny ones apparently, they kept biting him on the back of the neck. What to anyone else was clearly heat rash was to Micky an vendetta by tiny evil forces he could not defend against.

He lost his apartment.

He ended up in a storage area below the building. No one knew he was there. He was now homeless.

Micky liked to scam drug-stores for extra funds. He certainly wasn't earning any money legally or even through the drug trade. He would buy then shop-lift the same moderately priced item. With the receipt he could return the stolen item and "get his money back." Then, with any luck, he could resell the bought item on the street. It kept him fed, what little he ate, and kept him in meth.

One day he'd bought a bottle of over the counter painkillers. He was having tremendous headaches. He excitedly showed the ingredient list to one of his friends. It took hours to convince him that it was just a list of contents not a secret message solely for him.

Micky had become one very frightening individual to be around.

Trying to Stop
The people who know Micky well keep telling him he needs to stop doing meth. He tells them he will as soon as he figures out what's going on. He never will of course.

They are pretty certain a long jail sentence will probably be the only way he stops, but even that is not certain. Almost anything can be had in jail. No one wants to see him dead, but that's a very real possiblity too.

One way or another that time is fast approaching. Micky has been busted for shop-lifting twice now. One more time and he is "out of circulation" for a long time. There is no guarantee that will help him though.

This is entirely a work of fiction. Though this story is not entirely a product of the author's imagination, Micky does not exist. Rather Micky is an amalgam of a collection of people with a methamphetamine problem.

The author was not compensated in any way, either monetarily, with discounts, or freebies by any of the companies mentioned.

Though the author does make a small profit for the word count of this article none of that comes directly from the manufacturers mentioned. The author also stands to make a small profit from advertising attached to this article.

The author has no control over either the advertising or the contents of those ads.