Breaking Bad in Methland

Whenever anyone tries to conjure up a “real” American or that emptiest of all signifiers, the “American people,” invariably we are supposed to picture a small town somewhere far from the coast. Sarah Palin tells us that the real America is found in the small towns, and at least she says it out loud. The mythology of small town inhabitants is that they are more selfless, ethical, hard-working, rational and honest. I learned at an early age travelling year after year that the heartland hamlets were riddled with racism, suspicion, poverty, obesity, and drugs. I never met anyone in any of those places that seemed more ethical or honest than most of the folks around me, and hell, we lived a mere 15 miles from the pinko sin capital of the world, San Francisco.

In Methland, Nick Reding examines the great myth of America’s small towns in his compelling but flawed account of the proliferation of meth in Oelwein, Iowa, a 6,000-resident farming village that is his representative drug-saturated Midwest spot nearly destroyed by speed. He focuses on several individuals and is at his best when tracking the arcs of their lives as they wrestle with how meth devastates the lives of so many in Oelwein. We meet a family doctor, a lawyer, the mayor, some dealers (including Tom Arnold’s sister, Lori, who twice becomes a Midwest meth kingpin) and couple of addicts, one of whom blows up his house and burns up most of his body. Reding delivers nuanced accounts of these people, and it is these sections that pack the most emotional power. You come to understand why selling and using speed is an attractive option as you watch the farm and meat-packing industries collapse and factory wages crumble as near-monopolies start hiring illegal immigrants at slave wages. Do you want to work at the same job you’ve had for ten years when your wages have been cut from 18 to 6 dollars an hour, or do you want to build a makeshift lab in your garage, sell some meth and make your monthly nut in just a few sales? Reding makes the conditions of these folks’ lives painful enough that the turn to drug-using and dealing makes, well, good, down-home sense. Sadly, meth is such an insidious drug that the euphoria one first experiences doesn’t last long, and while the energy it provides keeps folks working like good little Protestant drones, over time the body literally begins to waste away. The devastation that follows is heartbreaking, and Reding illustrates the suffering in all its poignancy.

Methland has larger ambitions, however, and Reding’s attempt to tie together DEA policy with FDA policy with the failures of anti-trust efforts with Mexican drug gangs with farm policy with, well, things do get disjointed. He produces interesting insights along the way, as we see how compromises in drug policy allow ephedrine to remain in Sudafed, which allows meth dealers to scour the countryside Walmarts, buying up cold medicine so they can extract the goods necessary to make the bad stuff. What he fails to do, however, is to pull it all together into a coherent narrative. The book lacks that seamless weave, and several chapters, such as a brief history of his father, appear seemingly out of nowhere. Perhaps a better editor could have brought the various strands together into a more cohesive package, as the lack of continuity and the stand-alone chapters diminish any suspense he might have built as we move through the four years of his coverage. The individual accounts are moving and he offers some explanations for how meth came to spread as fast as it did. I just wish he would have organized it differently and spent more time shaping it to maximize the story’s impact.