D.A.R.E.

NewFNP has one word of advice for readers out there who may be considering dabbling in methamphetamine use: don't.

Please, just have some Two Buck Chuck or treat yourself right and share a $20 bottle of Pinot Noir with your special pal, but for the love of Pete, stay off the meth.

It's not like the skin-picking is bad enough.  Sure, it's awful to be paranoid and feel certain that there are bugs under your skin.  That's no good dirty poop!

But then you get the tooth rot, the horrible tooth rot and that is truly awful on several levels. 

For one, anyone who has ever heard of methamphetamine has probably heard of "meth mouth."  So not only do you have a frightful looking mouth, tons of people will know why your teeth are decayed brown stubs.

For two, it's hard to find a job if your mouth if full of rot, even if you have been clean for years.

For three, you feel self-conscious about your appearance and don't want to smile.

For four, you can't chew and, if you try, it hurts.  And you risk worsening infection.

And finally, when you are getting your dental clearance from newFNP, you can pull pieces of your rotting teeth out of your mouth for show and tell.  As if newFNP didn't believe that a mouth full of stubby brown and black nubs and one solitary whitish partial tooth warranted a hasty dental visit.

As newFNP has noted previously, her clinic sees more carbohydrate addiction that it does drug addiction.  Therefore, this man was her first patient with a mouth destroyed by meth use.  She understand that the rapid dental decline is attributed to xerostomia, a lack of oral hygiene and an increased consumption of excessively sweet foods, but is that it???  Is that all it took for her patient to go from normal dentition to horrible dentition in the course of two years?  And why did it happen after he had been clean for three years?  (Or is newFNP just naive and he isn't really clean?)

NewFNP is swirling her own saliva around in her mouth as she types.  After that frigging root canal and crown, newFNP has no interest in dental interventions in the future.

In fact, she just might go brush and floss right now!