The Internet's Meth Underground, Hidden In Plain Sight - NBC News

By Benjamin GogginIllustrations by Ibrahim RayintakathMarch 11, 2022

In December, Paul went home for the holidays. Like many people, he hadn’t seen his family for almost a year.

But instead of spending time with his loved ones, he said he stayed in his room and injected methamphetamine. While his family was downstairs, Paul said he pretended to be sick while he relapsed in a multiday meth binge.

Though he was alone in his room, he was using drugs with other people. As he was injecting methamphetamine, he connected with hundreds of other individuals doing the same thing over Zoom.

“There is no meth without Zoom, and there is no Zoom without meth,” Paul, whom NBC News is identifying only by his first name to protect him from professional harm, said in an interview. “That is where I found a forum, like a tribe, where I could be my authentic self with no fear of judgment.”

Paul, who said he’s been addicted to meth for about eight years, is part of a sprawling online community of meth users, hidden in plain sight on nearly every major social media platform and digital communication tool, from Facebook to Zoom to Reddit to Twitter.

If you or someone you know is struggling with an alcohol, drug or other substance abuse problem, call the free and confidential helpline of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration at 1-800-662-HELP (1-800-662-4357), or visit findtreatment.gov.

As nearly all social media platforms and tech companies have trended toward increased platform moderation amid heightened scrutiny from watchdogs, meth users have attracted little attention as they build online communities of tens of thousands of people. With a mixed bag of policies pertaining to drug content that varies by platform, users have found numerous venues where they can post photos and videos of themselves using methamphetamine, sell drugs and encourage other people to use meth.

The growth of these communities has coincided with a meth boom in the U.S. and other parts of the world. According to the U.S. National Institutes of Health, frequent meth use increased by 66 percent between 2015 and 2019. During that same time period, noncocaine stimulant overdoses nearly tripled, in part due to meth use. While the internet has long been home to groups of drug users and sellers, prosecutors and law enforcement are now increasingly targeting these groups. Despite that fact, meth-focused online behavior is openly thriving.

In interviews with NBC News, 10 current and former meth users described how modern-day social media platforms and communication tools like Zoom have fundamentally changed the experience of people using — and trying to get sober from — methamphetamine.

Meth, unlike opiates and other types of drugs, can keep users awake for days at a time, and often leaves them craving a level of social and sexual connectivity not found with many other drugs. Not only does technology make connecting with other users and sellers easier than ever before, it also provides numerous easy and sometimes hard-to-ignore triggers for craving and relapse.

All but one person asked to withhold their last names or to go by their first initials to publicly discuss their drug use without fear of personal and professional harm.

A review of online communities conducted by NBC News found Zoom rooms with hundreds of people congregating to use meth, Reddit groups where people frequently post photos and videos of themselves using meth and seek meth connections, Facebook groups where people sell meth, and Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube and Instagram profiles devoted to meth content. On Reddit, similar communities exist among heroin and cocaine users, but searches for Zoom communities devoted to other drugs didn’t return any results.

The meth communities pose challenging questions for tech companies, which must determine how to moderate the groups, if at all. While experts and current and former meth users agreed that technology and the internet were worsening aspects of an already blazing global meth addiction problem, some sources said that online groups gave them a source of connection during their lowest points of isolation.