Methamphetamine (Ice)

WHAT IS ICE?

Ice, or crystal methamphetamine, is an illegal stimulant. It is purer and more potent than speed and other amphetamines. Check out how Ice works here.

OTHER NAMES:

Meth, Ice, crystal, crystal meth, shabu, tina, glass, crank, yaba, P, shard, puff, Tina and Christine.

EFFECTS:

• Ice can be smoked, swallowed, snorted, injected or inserted anally (known as ‘shafting’ or ‘shelving’) It can also be heated on aluminium foil to inhale the vapours.
• Using Ice can give feelings of exhilaration and alertness as well as agitation and paranoia
• Ice causes a big release of dopamine which is a chemical in your brain that gives feelings of motivation, pleasure and satisfaction.
• It can take 2- 10 days to replace these dopamine stores and this is what causes a “comedown”
• When coming down you might feel irritable, exhausted and need to sleep a lot, experience low mood and you may find it difficult to concentrate
  DURATION and COMING DOWN
• You will feel the effects from 0-10 minutes
• The effects will peak from 2-4 hours
• Ice stays in your body for 12 hours
• After the effects wear off you might experience quite a severe comedown

SOME COMMON HARM REDUCTION STRATEGIES

Encourage a young person to: –

• Take breaks from using
• Try and maintain a healthy diet and get plenty of rest when not using
• If injecting use safe injecting practices
• Drink water
• Plan for the comedown
• Have ‘safe’ people to call in case of feelings of paranoia or panic
• If you’ve had too much ice (overdose), you might feel pretty panicky, have difficulty breathing, or have a very high body temperature. You may even experience methamphetamine psychosis.
• Call an ambulance if an overdose is suspected

This is only a little bit of information check out Harm Reduction Victoria’s fact sheet.

Dovetail has this great video helping explain methamphetamine.
Or there’s this article from ADF in collaboration with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander service providers that has more information about ice.