A few years ago, we had some major renovations done on our house. It took several months, and we got to know the guys who worked on the project pretty well. They did a beautiful job. So about a year later, when we had a somewhat smaller project, we called the same contractor.
A whole new crew showed up. So we asked the boss where our buddies had gone. We assumed they were off on some bigger project. But the boss shook his head sadly and told us he had to let them all go.
"They were all into that meth," he said, explaining that some of them would only work a few days, just long enough to get enough money to score. Then they wouldn't turn up for days. He'd had tools go missing. We said we understood. But we really didn't.
Most of us--save police officers, social workers and medical first responders--live in our own bubbles. We nod at the same faces every day, we have our well-worn dog trots both in the physical world and the valleys of our brains. We don't often collide with other realities. The troubles of others are so invisible to us that we tend to discount--and maybe even disbelieve--them.
That's why you might need to watch Meth Storm, the Renaud brothers' documentary that premiered on HBO on Nov. 27. It's not an easy watch. It's sure not fun. It's not entertainment. But you should watch it.
Because if you are the sort of person who reads Sunday newspapers and has easy access to HBO you likely don't know many people like Veronica Converse and her boys, Teddy and Lil' Daniel, though you might see them from time to time, lurking on the periphery.
You might even recognize them for the meth heads they are. You might know enough to avoid them, to give them just a little extra room in Wal-Mart or E-Z Mart. You might find them distasteful. But while there's nothing in Meth Storm that makes them look even vaguely noble or romantic, it does expose them as fully human and therefore deserving of whatever empathy we can work up. These people are sad and hurting and right here--literally right outside our front doors.
Brothers Brent and Craig Renaud, the Peabody Award-winning documentarians from Little Rock, and their cohorts are strange animals; artist-journalists who work a narrow band of documentary filmmaking that some people call direct cinema or cinema verite. What they mean to do is immerse their audience in facts of others' lives, to record the proceedings without judgment or commentary, like a fly on the wall. There's no voice-over narration in their movies, and only rarely do you hear the filmmakers speak. (I think I heard two questions asked in Meth Storm.)
The film opens in spectacular fashion, with a violent car chase that ends abruptly when the cops tap the rear quarter panel of a fleeing Toyota and send it rolling through a ditch somewhere north of Greenbrier. We'd later discover that the driver is a Mexican with connections to a cartel supplying Ice, a strong form of methamphetamine that has largely displaced the home-brewed variety made from, among other things, decongestants containing pseudoephedrine.
Ice is being imported by the pound by Mexican cartels, undercutting local would-be Heisenbergs and providing the Converses with affordable avenues of escape. Teddy explains that there's no incentive to cook meth any more; all you need to do is get to know the Mexicans. They can do it better and cheaper. Someone like Teddy can retail it for them and make enough money to subsist and support his own habit.
And in economically blighted Van Buren County, it seems that nearly everyone has given up all hope of leading what most newspaper readers would consider a normal, productive life in favor of chasing their particular dragon. The Renauds capture some horrific scenes of 40-something Veronica alternately indulging and haranguing her sons, remarking on the viscosity of individual shots of dope. There are times you might suspect yourself of indulging in poverty porn.
But then you remember: These people are your neighbors.
It's reasonable to not want to be around junkies. Sometimes it seems they become so focused on the procurement and consumption of their drug of choice that they forfeit some of their humanity. Getting between them and their desires is dangerous. If you've ever been close to a junkie, you've been betrayed.
You're lucky if you don't have firsthand knowledge of this, if all you know about addiction is what you've gleaned from William S. Burroughs' work. Most of us have a little more experience than that; most of us know people who've had problems with prescription opioids or booze. Maybe we've done shameful things ourselves under the influence. There's a real drive to self-medicate; as someone who regularly writes about alcoholic beverages I'm alert to the sad possibilities of abuse.
But you can be a high-functioning alcoholic. If you're rich enough and have the right sort of support system, you can probably be a high-functioning cocaine user or heroin addict. The only argument against the recreational use of marijuana (in places where its recreational use is prohibited) that really resonates is the fact that a lot of human pain and suffering accrues to its trafficking. (Kids, don't burn that marijuana, because it makes evil people rich.)
But methamphetamine rots you.
And I don't know what to do about it. I'm not that smart. But I know not caring about it isn't helping.
pmartin@arkansasonline.com
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Editorial on 01/21/2018