No Speed Limit: The Highs and Lows of Meth [Hardcover]

Frank Owen (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0312356161 | ISBN-13: 978-0312356163 | Publication Date: July 24, 2007 | Edition: 1st

            Hells Angels and fallen televangelist Ted Haggard. Cross-country truckers and suburban mothers. Trailer parks, gay sex clubs, college campuses, and military battlefields. In this fascinating book, Frank Owen traces the spread of methamphetamine—meth—from its origins as a cold and asthma remedy to the stimulant wiring every corner of American culture.

            Meth is the latest “epidemic” to attract the attention of law enforcement and the media, but like cocaine and heroin its roots are medicinal. It was first synthesized in the late nineteenth century and applied in treatment of a wide range of ailments; by the 1940s meth had become a wonder drug, used to treat depression, hyperactivity, obesity, epilepsy, and addictions to other drugs and alcohol. Allied, Nazi, and Japanese soldiers used it throughout World War II, and the returning waves of veterans drove demand for meth into the burgeoning postwar suburbs, where it became the “mother’s helper” for a bored and lonely generation.

            But meth truly exploded in the 1960s and ’70s, when biker gang cooks using burners, beakers, and plastic tubes brought their expertise from California to the Ozarks, the Southwest, and other remote rural areas where the drug could be manufactured in kitchen labs. Since then, meth has been the target of billions of dollars in federal, state, and local anti-drug wars. Murders, violent assaults, thefts, fires, premature births, and AIDS—rises in all of these have been blamed on the drug that crosses classes and subcultures like no other.

            Acclaimed journalist Frank Owen follows the users, cooks, dealers, and law enforcers to uncover a dramatic story being played out in cities, small towns, and farm communities across America. No Speed Limit is a panoramic, high-octane investigation by a journalist who knows firsthand the powerful highs and frightening lows of meth.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In this intensely researched, fascinating account of methamphetamine, Owen takes readers through the late–19th-century synthesis of ephedrine from ephedra (a medicinal plant) to meth's current status as public enemy #1. Along the way, we learn that the Nazis ate meth tablets like Now and Laters (millions of doses sustained the Wehrmacht in its rampages); meet fascinating characters like Uncle Fester, a Green Bay industrial chemist, whose books like Secrets of Methamphetamine Manufacture have made him a cult icon; and encounter dozens of people whose lives have been disfigured by the drug. Owen also relates how meth helped him meet deadlines as a freelance writer in the 1980s and includes the details of his own charming, four-day meth binge—for research purposes—in present-day New York City. He covers a lot of ground, literally, as he speeds through history and around the country doing interviews (longer exposure to some of the addicts and former addicts might have shed more light on exactly what makes the drug so attractive). Still, Owen's account is refreshingly clearheaded and free of hysteria. As he points out in telling detail, the current demonization of meth follows that of any number of other drug epidemics that have hit America over the years, with media and law enforcement learning little from one to the next.
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From Booklist

As Owen notes early and often, methamphetamine is merely the latest drug to threaten the very fabric of American society. "The odd thing about methamphetamine," he opines, "is that it doesn't get you that stoned." Indeed, it gave him the energy and the illusion of mental acuity to take on monster research and writing sessions unfueled by sleep and food, which couldn't be healthy. And coming off the stuff was hell. He chronicles the rise of meth and concludes that its popularity has peaked, despite the news media continuing to flog it as today's foremost assassin of youth. Owen finds that meth use became widespread after an amateur pharmacist, Bob Paillet, perfected a greatly simplified way of cooking the drug and passed the technique on to friends and customers. Carefully detailing the disjunction between media scare stories and actual statistics suggesting that methamphetamine use is not nearly as widespread as the minions of decency would have us believe, Owen still offers a sobering look at a very addictive drug and the paranoid hoopla it has generated. Tribby, Mike

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (July 24, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312356161
• ISBN-13: 978-0312356163
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #850,003 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Speed School, September 8, 2007

By 

Huff Daddy (Blairsville, GA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: No Speed Limit: The Highs and Lows of Meth (Hardcover)

I found this book so fascinating I could barely put it down. It is very easy to read and basically tells you everything you could ever want to know about the history and use of meth.

I give it four stars for two reasons. One, I found the outline of the book somewhat chaotic. The book is not laid out chronologically or otherwise but more like a series of individual stand alone essays. I had a feeling of a lack of continuity but it really doesn't take away from the book. I guess I would just be more comfortable with a standard chronological history.

Two, there is an extensive bibliography but I would have preferred end notes or foot notes. I have no reason to doubt the quality of the author's research, but I do like to follow up on claims and statistics myself and it is a little more difficult when all the references are just listed in a bibliography.

The book broke down many presumptions that I had about meth. I was utterly amazed at how old the drug is and that meth abuse is nothing new. The impact of politics and media I guess. Never did I feel the author glamorized the drug.

This should be a must read before you make any intelligent comments regarding meth in conversation.

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Glamorization, thinly veiled, October 31, 2009

By 

Violaine "Believer in magic" (Wash., DC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: No Speed Limit: The Highs and Lows of Meth (Paperback)

Jesus Christ. Anyone who actually believes Owen's assertion that meth is "just another drug" has clearly not had much exposure to it, or is a current user himself (as Owen clearly is) and is in denial. A former meth (and heroin and cocaine, as well as alcohol, K, etc.) addict myself, I can tell you that meth is the ULTIMATE EVIL. Meth IS evil, and it literally brings out evil in every single person who uses it. The evil can be blatant (as it usually is), resulting in complete mental and physical destruction of the user and most everyone close to the user; or it can sometimes be more subtle, resulting in the publication of books like this. I can't tell you how many relatively normal children and adults I have seen transformed into, literally, the living dead. How does this differ from a drug like, oh, heroin? Christ, how does it NOT differ?? On heroin, you're sitting around, nodding out. Sure, you become emaciated and neglect everything else in your life. Sure, you lie, steal, and sell yourself to get the dope. Sure, you care about nothing else. But on meth, that's just the beginning. While heroin destroys you by DE-activating the good in you, meth destroys you (and those around you) by ACTIVATING the evil in you. Here's a fun fact, kids: More than half of the meth addicts I have known have either committed, or been an accessory in some way, to murder. Meth drives you insane. Meth addicts lose all contact with reality, and they don't just get useless, like on heroin, or stand behind their doors all paranoid that the DEA is coming (sure, they might very well be, but anyway-) as with crack. No, meth addicts get up, get out, and literally spread the virus of evil in as prolific a manner as Satan himself.
So screw you, Frank Owen; in your quest for fame you are undoubtedly influencing (at least) hundreds of children who were on the borderline to start using meth- and they, in turn, will influence others. And thus, the evil is spread. Meth wins again... but hey; Frank Owen eeks out another marginal book, profiting from the misdeeds of others once again, and is now slightly better known! Way to go, Frank.

14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Downer For Those High On Hype, August 2, 2007

By 

Ray O'Keefe Cruitt (Baltimore) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: No Speed Limit: The Highs and Lows of Meth (Hardcover)

There never seems to be a shortage of books about drugs; and you could say that Frank Owen's, No Speed Limit, is merely one among the many. And, yes, this is true. It is one among many books written by authors who attempt to bring a rational voice to the oft irrational and unquestionably historic tendency of the media, politician's--and following suit--the public's susceptibility to react with panic concerning the issue of drug abuse (in this case, the latest drug crisis revolving around methamphetamine, or "meth")

Do you remember the Crack epidemic? The Ecstasy epidemic? The Heroin epidemic? And, for all those old enough, the Alcohol crisis, which culminated in Prohibition? Owen's book is not only about the history of methamphetamine and the modern phenomenon of meth abuse in America, which is fascinating in and of itself, it's also about the nature of that ever-present hysterical phenomenon: the "drug epidemic," or what some sociologists have referred to as the "moral panic."

This book has a fair mix of anecdotes, an interesting personal account of the drug's effects, statistics, and enough dispassionate reporting to please anyone interested in the topic at hand; in other words, it's wholly readable and reasonable. One of the principal strengths of the book is that Owen is not committing the same fallacies others have made and are still making concerning drug abuse; he is not giving into reasoning based on hyperbole, fear, and allegiance to an agenda at all costs.

On the other hand, the author understands the fact of a kernel of truth inherent in every hype, but he makes a valiant effort to put it in its proper context. In fact, Owen himself has experienced firsthand just how bad methamphetamine can be and knows its potential for abuse and also understands the broader scope of problems that abuse of the drug can cause society. However, these points are tempered with the well-founded realization that not everyone who has used the drug is or will necessarily become a victim of it--there is too much proof otherwise.

Drug abuse is a problem and the author is not denying it. That said, what Owen seems to be arguing, instead, is that since drug abuse is a problem, why make it worse with superfluous, fictional complexities. What is needed, he argues, is a levelheaded approach based on a broad understanding of the issue in its entirety, not one based on the end-of-civilization-as-we-know-it reaction we hear so often in the media (especially the media) and from our elected officials.