Dr. Alex Stalcup once worked with heroin addicts several decades ago. Now, he works with as well as conducts research on meth addicts. He cautions that once they reach the point where they have become psychotic, they are very dangerous, unpredictable, usually without any sense of limitations or boundaries. They can also be drive by the extreme paranoia caused by the drug with impaired cognitive function brought on by sleep deprivation. Meth has a stimulant effect which can last as much as fifty times longer than that of cocaine, meaning that users are often up for three or more days at a stretch when they are on a binge. For some users, that can translate into a super clean house as they fly around, filled with unbound energy. For others, it can translate to murderous rampages.

The US Department of Justice's Drug Intelligence Center has called meth one of the country's biggest and most dangerous drug threats.

The most recent case has left a twenty three year old woman, her two children and a cousin dead and the woman's husband clinging to life in a hospital. Aide Mendez reportedly taped herself smoking meth, but it has not been determined exactly how long it had been between her use and the shooting rampage that followed. Mendez shot her children, three year old Isaiah Escheverria and seventeen month old Aliya, a cousin and then her husband before shooting herself fatally in the head. Mendez's husband survived being shot and stabbed.

In Bakersfield, California, Danielle Mailloux has recently been sentenced to just under a year in jail after being found guilty of attacking her baby while high on meth. Her baby, stabbed in the back, slashed on the stomach and across the face, survived the attack. An Oklahoma woman, Lyndsey Fowler, has been convicted of second degree manslaughter, also while using meth after she drowned her baby in the washing machine. Liesha Henderson, from New Mexico, announced that "God wanted her son dead" before stabbing the child in the neck with a screwdriver.

The problem with meth is not only in how it affects users but how it affects entire neighborhoods. A known meth house becomes a target for violence as well as frequent traffic from the police. Meth labs are dangerous because of all of the volatile chemicals that are used to cook the drug as well. If the "cook" is using, the lab becomes even more dangerous. Some users have turned to a new recipe, one that can be made with simple ingredients in smaller batches. An Oklahoma woman was recently arrested using that meth recipe, spending over six hours in the local WalMart store where she shoplifted the items she needed, mixing the ingredients for meth in the store.