The Alchemy of Meth: A Decomposition

A multi-perspective exploration of the affects, economies and materialities of methamphetamine production (and consumption) in the decaying heartlands of the United States.

The Alchemy of Meth is a nonfiction storybook about St. Jude County, Missouri, a place in decomposition, where the toxic inheritance of deindustrialisation meets the violent hope of this drug-making cottage industry. Jason Pine bases the book on fieldwork among meth cooks, recovery professionals, pastors, public defenders, narcotics agents, and pharmaceutical executives. Here, St. Jude is not reduced to its meth problem but Pine looks at meth through materials, landscapes, and institutions: the sprawling context that makes meth labs possible. The Alchemy of Meth connects DIY methlabs to big pharma’s superlabs, illicit speed to the legalised speed sold as ADHD medication, uniquely implicating the author’s own story in the narrative. By the end of the book, the backdrop of St. Jude becomes the foreground. It could be a story about life and work anywhere in the United States, where it seems no one is truly clean and all are complicit in the exploitation of their precious resources in exchange for a liveable present - or even the hope of a future.