Speed Freak Seminoles

God, I hate meth as much as anyone, but this is just sheer idiocy (via b0ingb0ing):

The White County sheriff says the time-consuming and methodical task of searching for arrowheads on farmland and in river beds seems to appeal to methamphetamine addicts. Sheriff Pat Garrett says that after more than 100 search warrants, he has come to expect arrowheads, many thousands of years old, when he storms the homes of suspected meth makers.

Tony Young of Velvet Ridge says the sheriff is on to something.  Young is in jail awaiting trial on a meth charge.  He says looking for arrowheads gives people wired on meth something to do.  To pay for his legal defense, Young sold his arrowhead collection to a local dealer.

Young says that many nights he found himself in fields full of fellow   arrowhead hunters and many of them were high on meth.

Arkansas State archeologist Ann Early says she's seen meth users collecting arrowheads in the Ozarks.  She says it is troubling that they have taken to collecting Indian artifacts.

Dude. Rednecks like to search for interesting historical artefacts. Sometimes they have metal detectors and are on the hunt for Civil War artefacts. Other times they are just relentlessly scanning newly turned earth for Clovis points. This doesn't have anything to do with being meth freaks. This is just something people who live in the South like to do because it's fun and interesting. I myself have spent many hours of my life searching for Indian arrowheads. The moment when I found a striated, coral-and-cream, palm-long spear-point in the sands bordering the May river was one of the high points of my life so far. I was also totally fucking stoned. Objection--relevance?!

     

Comments

[Keith]

I read an article someplace lately that also said that bike thefts are meth related because taking the bikes apart and putting them together again gives the methheads something to do. Apparently, everything is meth related.

[Phil]

I knew this guy who took some sort of meth-equivalent in order to get all his schoolwork done. He got his work done, but still had many, many hours of wakefullness left. So, he built a tool rack, cleaned and organized all his tools, painted an elaborate watercolor of his roommate represented as a Norse storm god, constructed a time bomb, sealed it in a waterproof container, floated in out into Lake Michigan, climbed on top of a lakefront building, waited for a detonation that never came, climbed back down, and attempted to swim out into the lake (it was November) to defuse the "bomb". Fortunately, at this point, he was restrained by his (storm god) roommate.

The point is, I guess, that people on meth (or meth-like substances) do need something to do. Arrowhead collection may provide such an activity. But here's the thing, just because you collect arrowheads doesn't mean you're on meth. If you are on meth though, you may see collecting arrowheads as an excellent use of your (now abundant) time.

[belle waring]

yeah, OK, I know that people on meth need to have somthing to do. I used to know this guy who was like the Martha Stewart of meth and had incised a striking interlocking vines design in the plaster of his wall, over a period of 8 months. but that's no reason to hate on the arrowhead-hunting.

[Phil]

Certainly. If you're on meth you can just devote more time to your preferred leisure activity, which will vary with the person not with the drug (some do watercolor and make bombs, while others hunt for arrowheads; if I were on meth I'd probably do something like bake a million cookies.)

I mean, didn't you know that people who smoke pot also do an inordinate amount of cross-stitch?

[Matt Weiner]

If you're on meth you can just devote more time to your preferred leisure activity

BLOGGING

[Matt Weiner]

Also, "Sheriff Pat Garrett"? WTF?

[Kip Manley]

Far worse than meth heads with time on their hands:

PORTLAND, Ore. - Gov. Ted Kulongoski on Tuesday signed legislation that will make Oregon the first state to require prescriptions for cold and allergy medications that can be converted into methamphetamine.

It's enough to make you go libertarian, I swear to effin' God.

[Gary Farber]

It does remind me of the recent claims that all pedophiles are Star Trek fans.

[Gary Farber]

Oh, and I think I can guess what blogs done on meth might be like, and you'd pretty much have to take meth to get through reading them, I suspect. (Note: I do hate meth, and have never found any speed-type drugs, save caffeine, even remotely, faintly, vaguely, attractive.) Based, that is, on my sole experience with speed about three decades ago, and my smattering experiences in the same time frame with acid cut with something speedy. Bleh.

[Tom T.]

Jack Shafer of Slate was similarly derisive of such claims about meth-inspired behavior, but an e-mail conversation with a neurologist has caused him to reconsider (sorry, his links aren't active in this quote):

"In my last column, I ridiculed as "stupid" this news story in a Canadian paper about "meth heads" who, according to a police officer, steal bicycles and "sit in the bush with hundreds of parts just fiddling with them all day." Proving that I, too, should search the medical literature before cracking jokes about meth coverage, I received a polite e-mail from Joshua Kershen of the Tufts-New England Medical Center. He informed me of the neurological concept of "punding," the restless and repetitive assembling and disassembling of mechanical devices (watches, carburetors, radios), the obsessive lining-up of small objects, or the picking at one's own skin. The phrase was coined to describe the "prolonged, purposeless, and stereotyped behaviour in chronic amphetamine users," according to this scientific paper (additional punding papers can be found on PubMed). Punding is also observed in people experiencing dopamine excess states, such as when patients are overtreated with Parkinson's disease medication. Because meth, like amphetamine, causes a flood of dopamine, it stands to reason that a meth user would pund."

http://www.slate.com/id/2124885/

[Matt Weiner]

Kip--Mark A.R. Kleiman, who does this for a living--um, I mean, who thinks about drug policy for a living--thinks that's the one semi-promising idea for reducing meth use. So I won't dismiss it out of hand.

[Carlos]

As a dedicated non-user of non-alcohol, I've seen a lot of weird drug and subculture correlations. I gotta think some of them have deeper neurological connections.

Also, after long years spent tracking Usenet trolls, I have no problem believing the pedo->Trek correlation. None at all.

[John Emerson]

"Punding" is apparently a Danish term. The Swedish term for "what hippies do" is "flumming". Perhaps they've developed a whole glossary.