Doctors say for a short while meth can boost sexual appetite and performance - in a way that's much stronger cocaine.

Doctors and government officials don't like to talk much about it, but there's an obvious reason people get hooked on methamphetamine: sex.

The drug eventually destroys the sex drive, but doctors say for a short while meth can boost sexual appetite and performance - in a way that's much stronger than stimulants such as cocaine. Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Laymon said he has interviewed hundreds of meth users, and a startling number - men and women - say the drug enhances sexual performance and desire.

"Who wouldn't want to use it? You lose weight and you have great sex," Laymon said recently at a meeting of Tennessee's meth task force.

But Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, who attended the meeting, winced when Laymon called the drug an "aphrodisiac" and said his description "just set us back quite a ways here."

For obvious reasons, government officials, facing an epidemic of meth abuse in rural Appalachia, want to focus on the misery meth causes and not its aphrodisiac effect.

But Dr. Mary Holley, an obstetrician who runs a Mothers Against Methamphetamine ministry in Albertville, Ala., said sex is the "No. 1 reason" people use the meth. "When you first start using this stuff it makes you want sex all the time," Holley said. The effect doesn't last long. "After you have been using it about 6 months or so you can't have sex unless you are high," Holley said. "After you have been using it a little bit longer you can't have sex even when you're high. Nothing happens. It doesn't work."

An addiction specialist with the Council for Alcohol and Drug Abuse Services in Chattanooga, Dr. John Standridge, said meth and other stimulants initially "rev up the dopamine nervous system in the brain. They rev it up and burn it out."

Meth users can never recapture the feeling of that initial high, but they keep trying in "a vicious downward spiral," Standridge said. "It's the same way with sexual arousal. At first, meth users report greater sexual arousal and prolonged stamina, and if they are of the right personality they get into compulsive sexuality. That leads to an inhibited sexual desire." Its sex appeal is part of why meth is so hard to fight.

Meth is also easy to make. It's typically cooked from ordinary household products and cold tablets such as Sudafed that contain ephedrine or pseudoephedrine. Holley, who has interviewed men and women addicted to the methamphetamine, said it stimulates the "pleasure center" in the brain. "Its technical name is 'nucleus accumbens' and that is where everything feels good, including sex. That's where music sounds good and a plate of food tastes good. Everything that feels good feels good in the nucleus accumbens," said Holley, whose 22-year-old brother was an addict who killed himself. "Methamphetamine makes a direct hit on the nucleus accumbens with its favorite chemical, dopamine," she said.

"The effect of an IV hit of methamphetamine is the equivalent of 10 orgasms all on top of each other lasting for 30 minutes to an hour, with a feeling of arousal that lasts for another day and a half." Holley said the body "doesn't have enzymes to metabolize this stuff, so the dopamine high lasts for 20 hours. That is 10 times longer than cocaine."

Holley said meth abusers can recover their ability to have sex "if you quit it soon enough. If you have done too much damage to the nucleus accumbens it doesn't always come back." "It's vicious," she said. "It gives you a hallucination of being in control, power confidence, intelligence and endurance. You feel great but it is all a hallucination. You think you chose to use it again, but you had a desire to do it again and you couldn't control that desire. You didn't choose meth. It chose you."

Meth is a neurotoxin, a chemical that ultimately damages cognition and memory. Consequently, Carol Falkowski cautions that meth use "places an individual at heightened risk of long-term, possibly irreversible behavioral, cognitive, and psychological problems over the course of a lifetime."

"Meth addicts interface with multiple public agencies at enormous public expense: human services, criminal justice, environmental health, child protection and emergency medicine," Carol Falkowski writes in the journal Spectrum. She goes on to detail the effects of methamphetamine use on the human body. After using meth, a person "may be in an altered state for 8 to 12 hours. After the initial euphoric 'rush,' the behavioral effects include heightened concentration, increased alertness, high energy, wakefulness and loss of appetite."

Meth can also work as an aphrodisiac, as described in an Associated Press. "Who wouldn't want to use it? You lose weight and you have great sex," Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Laymon said at a meeting of Tennessee's meth task force. But meth's aphrodisiac effects are short-lived. While meth may at first "makes you want sex all the time," as Alabama obstetrician Mary Holley claims, meth users can lose the ability to have sex at all after only 6 months of meth use. And national drug czar John Walters notes the physical deterioration meth users often undergo: "Hair falls out, teeth fall out. That's not sexy."

Falkowski paints an even more grotesque picture of the effects of meth addiction and its long-term effects on users. Meth addicts binge on larger and larger quantities of the drug as they become reliant on it. As addicts binge, they typically go extended periods of time - often days on end - without eating or sleeping. These binges result in a cycle of physical deterioration that occurs rapidly, much more rapidly than that associated with addiction to other drugs. Prolonged addiction usually results in methamphetamine psychosis, where victims "see things that aren't really there, including elusive 'shadow people'"and a psychological state where "meth addicts believe that everyone is 'out to get them,' even innocent strangers or inanimate objects."

Along with the long-term health effects of meth use, injuries associated with meth use and production add to its danger, the Charleston Daily Mail reports. "Methamphetamine producers risk not only legal troubles, but also the safety of themselves and their families," George Gannon writes. He reports that meth users face an increased risk injury due to fire as well as exposure to hazardous fumes and chemicals.

Treating meth addiction "may be one of the most difficult challenges in the field of substance abuse recovery," Lee Ann Prescott of the Smyth County (Va.) News and Messenger reported in a lengthy, well-researched package. "The drug’s complex array of severe effects, coupled with a changing health care industry, have left treatment professionals seeking new answers." In one sidebar, Prescottt reported, "Police officers know it, but hesitate to say it publicly: Many people begin using methamphetamine because they like what it does to their sexuality. 'Women follow meth,' a local police officer admitted."

Long-term use of crystal meth may result in addiction. Crystal meth abuse can also cause violent behavior, anxiety, and insomnia, as well as psychotic behavior such as paranoia, hallucinations, mood swings, and delusions. The crystal meth user can also develop a tolerance to the drug, which requires the user to take increasing amounts to induce the desired effects. Chronic users of crystal meth are also characterized as having poor hygiene, a gaunt or pale complexion, and, at times, sores on their bodies from scratching at "crank bugs", which is a common delusion that bugs are crawling under their skin. Additionally, long-term use of crystal meth can cause damage to the dopamine-producing cells of the brain.