Nathan Lein is the assistant prosecutor of Fayette County. He is 6’9” and weighs 280 pounds. Reding accompanies him to visit Nathan’s family. They are farmers living in poverty, and Nick likens their lifestyle, dependent on their crops, to a constant act of faith.

Farming is the core of Fayette County. Even though the Leins struggle to make ends meet, their farm is more successful than most. Between 1960 and 1990, the population of Oelwein fell by 25 percent as farms collapsed. Unemployment in Oelwein and much of rural America averages one and a half times that of the urban United States.

Nathan returned to the farm after finishing law school in 2001. He tells Reding about Larry Murphy, who became the Mayor of Oelwein in 2002.

During and after the farming collapse, meth production and distribution became integral to the town’s economy. To avoid foreclosures, many farmers either sold fertilizer used to manufacture meth or began manufacturing meth themselves. Nathan says, “Farming and agriculture began vying with a drug to be Oelwein’s lifeblood” (29).

In March of 2002, Murphy offered Nathan the job of assistant county attorney with a mandate to clean up the meth situation.

In 2005, meth is considered a small lab problem in Oelwein. When Reding meets him, 95 percent of Nathan’s legal cases are related to meth. Oelwein loses tax revenue so steadily that even keeping the streetlights on is a challenge. The jail grows so full that overcrowding makes it impossible to incarcerate most inmates for the full length of their sentences.

Murphy tells Reding that he worries there is no solution to Oelwein’s long-term problems, so he must focus on short-term goals. He hopes that solving the town’s economic problems will eventually help with the meth situation. According to Reding, Murphy holds one of the preconceptions shared by many people unfamiliar with the meth epidemic: meth is usually associated with people who are at or en route to the nadir of their lives. It disturbs and confuses Murphy that so many people he considers good turn to the drug.

The meth cooks in Oelwein mythologize their exploits. They tell themselves they are analogous to the moonshiners who created bootleg liquor during Prohibition. They believe they have a way to make people feel good— sometimes the only way. One of the Oelwein’s specialties is a recipe called “Nazi cold” (32) that is popular with biker gangs. Bicycles are used to make single batches by putting bottles on the wheels and then riding around, using them as mixers and avoiding police attention.

Nathan says his outlook on humanity has devolved thanks to the meth epidemic. Having regressed into seeing every meth user as the same, he will struggle with the temptation to view all addicts as degenerates throughout most of the book. 

Reding describes the accident that disfigured Roland Jarvis in greater detail. In 2001, Jarvis tried to dispose of chemicals while police prepared to raid his home. As he poured acid down the toilet, an explosion burned him. For 45 minutes, he ran back into the burning house, trying to save what he could. He finally stopped when he began to melt, his skin peeling off of him. Jarvis was in so much pain that he pleaded with the police officers on the scene to kill him. He later tells Reding that he knew onlookers wished he would die rather than listen to him scream as he burned. He didn’t blame them.

Reding shares several stories of sadistic behavior from people who are high on meth. Nevertheless, he writes, “methamphetamine was once heralded as the drug that would end the need for all others” (43). Nagayoshi Nagai, a Japanese chemist, was the first to synthesize the compound desomethamphatamine in 1898. In 1919, another chemist named Akira Ogata made a strain of the drug that enabled mass production.

In 1939, the pharmaceutical company Smith, Kline, and French marketed the drug under the name Benzedrine. It was prescribed “for thirty-three illnesses, including schizophrenia, depression, anxiety, the common cold, hyperactivity, impotence, fatigue, and alcoholism” (44). During World War II soldiers from various countries took meth to keep them awake and focused.

Up until the 1980s, doctors still prescribed meth for many uses, including as an appetite suppressant and anti-depressant. As meth’s reputation disintegrated, it crept into the economies of small towns. One reason for this is that meth was easy to make, highly affordable when compared to other drugs, and its ingredients were easy to find. Bulk stores carried most of the ingredients, and the rest could often be found at farm co-ops, purchased from people hoping to make extra money.  

As with all recreational drugs, the prime selling point of meth is that it makes them feel good—or at least less bad. Meth is a catecholamine agonist, “which means that it blocks the reuptake of neurotransmitters” (47), flooding the brain with dopamine. Meth makes people feel so good that when it is taken away, the user is incapable of feeling good by any other means. Clay Hallberg says that he would rather be in the ER with a paranoid schizophrenic than with a meth head, because they are “literally out of their minds” (49) and have little chance at recovery.

Roland Jarvis had a good job at Iowa Ham. While he was on meth, he was able to perform double eight-hour shifts, similar to the soldiers who had to remain alert and energetic for long periods of time in World War II. When George Gillett bought Iowa Ham and the company deunionized, Jarvis realized he could make more money in meth. So did many others.

In 2005, Jarvis is two months away from returning to jail for the possession of drug paraphernalia. He only leaves his home to visit his children. 

Reding writes, “Meth, if it is a metaphor for anything, is a metaphor for the cataclysmic fault lines formed by globalization” (58). He visits the Iowa town of Ottumwa in 2005, an early source of the Midwest’s eventual meth epidemic. By 1980, Ottumwa experienced a decline similar to Oelwein’s, with local industries going bankrupt and meth filling the gap. According to Reding, “Ottumwa, more than any other place, defined the development of the modern American meth business in the Midwest” (59).

Reding tells the story of Lori Arnold, who became a meth kingpin in the region. Sister to the comedian Tom Arnold, Lori is 45 years old and has corresponded with Nick since 2005 from an Illinois prison. A high school dropout, she sold pills for a local Madame in exchange for lodging.

In 1984, Lori’s brother-in-law gave her two lines of meth. Lori took some meth to the bar and sold it quickly. After only six months, she had made over $50,000. Lori soon became one of the primary meth distributors for the region. She dealt with a group of traffickers she called the Mexican Mafia, built by the brothers Jesus and Luis Amezcua.

Meth was a source of employment for Lori as much as it was a diverting pastime. As her empire grew, she bought a car dealership to have access to delivery vehicles. She also purchased 14 houses to launder money and house her workers. In 1989 she bought a 144-acre horse farm and constructed a meth superlab under military tents in the hills nearby.

In 1987, the DEA was somewhat ambivalent towards meth. Gene Haislip, a deputy assistant administrator in the Office of Compliance and Regulatory Affairs, took it more seriously. He knew that ephedrine, a precursor drug used in the production of meth, was being redirected to the Amezcua organization. Two years prior, he proposed a law allowing the DEA to monitor ephedrine imports to the US. Haislip encounters bureaucratic frustrations and the many false starts as he advocates for bills that would make it harder to manufacture and distribute meth.

By 1991, Lori’s meth use had increased. She went to prison for ten years and was released in 1999. By then, the meth business had mutated and grown. She saw new opportunities that she could exploit and returned to the business immediately. 

As he wrote in the Des Moines Register, Clay compares meth to a social cancer. He believes that one of his jobs is to treat what he calls the “collective low self-esteem” (73) caused by meth in Oelwein. Reding says that three years after they met, Clay would be the one who needed to be saved. Clay’s father was an abusive bully, and Clay abused drugs to cope with the psychological trauma. He went to medical school because he thought that he would eventually go to jail otherwise. Clay is a smoker who also drinks heavily.

Independence, Iowa is 14 miles south of Oelwein. Reding goes there to meet a recovering meth addict named Major, his two-year-old son Buck, and his parents to gain insight into meth’s generational effects. Major is a former member of the Sons of Silence motorcycle gang which embraces Nazi ideology and symbolism.

According to Reding, Buck was the most famous meth baby in Iowa. When Child Protective Services took him away from Major and Sarah, his hair had the highest meth content in its follicles that had ever been recorded in state history. The long-term effects of meth ingestion by children are still vague, and Major worries about the damage he may have already done to Buck.

Major’s parents can’t leave for fear that he will relapse and endanger Buck. Joseph tells Reding that addicts should be sterilized because it would ensure that they could not pass on their habits and addictions to children. Major’s parents have adopted Buck and will not be able to retire. Major’s drug habit has completely consumed their lives. 

Reding spends time at the Do Drop Inn where he met Sean and James. Through interviews with various addicts, he gets a better idea of the disastrous effects meth can have on a town like Oelwein. A large city might have more meth users, but they make up a much lower percentage of the total population. Moreover, small towns cannot absorb the costs of widespread addiction. 

Reding meets a couple named Chad and Ella. Chad suddenly starts asking where Ella is, accusing Reding of having sex with her, despite Ella only being a few feet away. Then he accuses Reding of being a federal officer. Reding finally convinces him that he is harmless and that he is only conducting research, but the encounter unsettles him.