DOCUMENTARY MISSED OUT ON THE SHOCK VALUE OF METH VICTIMS

Can you hear that? It's my applause for Carson City's most recent
installment in its dogged battle against methamphetamine use and
addiction - a TV special titled, "Crystal Darkness," which aired Jan.
9. My applause is mainly for Carson City's aggressive support of
coalitions against this deadly drug - the kind of support that
continues to give our city a seat in front of the class of so many
other cities.

Mayor Teixeira's strong belief that this once-underground subculture
of slow-motion suicide is now uprooted and above ground, and has been
sprouting blossoms as ugly as those on the faces of the addicted and
afflicted, is one of our city's boldest underscores of war against
this fatality flirtation.

I also believe Kenny Furlong and his daughter Kendra should be
cheered for their soul-baring testimony. If what they said looked
easy, it was only because of their undaunted willingness to share the
nightmare of the addiction's waking hours with those who are about
to have their dreams marred and broken. Darrell, the imprisoned
ex-addict, was compellingly articulate as well.

I do, however, think the show fell short of its prescribed objective.
Bear with me on this, because it's harder than you think to be
critical of something when its intentions were so honorable.

Did the makers of the documentary really identify their targeted
audience? Was it for the parents? Or was it for the youth? I think
the intention of the message was for the youth, but the language was
delivered to the parents.

If a child's eyes are not pasted to the TV screen, then something is
not sticking. We have to think like children and teens when trying to
talk to them. Did "Crystal Darkness" really talk to them? Or did it
talk at them?

I still maintain that unrelenting and unmerciful shock is the most
jarring and terrifying cause and affect of trying to reach the youth
who are lost in or at the entrance of the meth maze.

In the documentary, we didn't see the unforgiving images of
hell-dwelling lives during their addiction.

It's OK to listen to students offering academically correct
denouncements of meth, but seeing grisly street scenes of
drug-induced activity, or listening to the tortured disgorge of words
spilling from a lifeless mouth that craters the deteriorated terrain
of a once-beautiful face, are oppressive images that belie the
nightingale to the fallen angel. We need less talk and much more
uninhibited visual repulsion.

When a child or a teen looks at pictures of themselves with something
as common as dental braces, they are usually repelled by the thought
of cosmetic imperfection.

What would happen if they saw a real person - not a picture - but a
real person in motion and sound, whose droned voice whistles through
a forest of rotted tree-stump teeth, with eyes that are lit only by a
broken bulb vacancy sign, and facial flesh that reeks of irreparable
degeneration?

Some cynics would claim that such shock would only cause
uncontrollable laughter from the youth whose faces have already
fallen into the toolbox and come out with enough piercing to make
complexion impurity seem like improvement. But again, if we for a
moment think like them, even they wouldn't want their questionable
beautification by metallic punctures upstaged by the indisputable
ugliness of meth's decomposition properties. Again, the impetus of
shock.

If the senses of our youth are not shaken by the bruised numbness of
the brain and its failure of structured thought that can no longer
put a sentence together, or even an expression of pure and
decipherable emotion, or trace its own path toward life's treasure
trove of memories, then feeding their eyes with the dead skin of a
person who is not well as consequence to the necrotic powers of meth
may jar their deathwatch with sudden life.

Maybe we can then look at them and ask, "Is it all clear to you now?"
And we can hear the answer we all long to believe, "Yes. Crystal."