Crystal Meth's Weight Loss Dangers

Highly Addictive Drug Can Lead Women To Lose Control Over Lives

(CBS)  Rizzo says she saw crystal meth, which is made in home labs for the most part, as just another step in her battle to shed pounds.

And she did lose weight on crystal meth, a lot of weight.

"The first week that I did it," Rizzo says, "I probably lost, well, like 15 or 20 pounds."

The drug that enables people to party for hours and even days, also suppresses the appetite, Murphy explains.

Eventually, Rizzo dropped from 140 pounds to 118, but she still didn't think she was thin enough.

Rizzo wrote about that when she was high, and read Murphy a part of the letter: "I try so hard to look my best. I just want to look like the rest. Maybe one day I'll look like the person I want to be. It's that cute petite body that I want to see."

But, Murphy says, what started out as a way to diet soon became a full-blown drug addiction.

Rizzo tells Murphy she'd get the drug from "people. Around. Like teenage guys, definitely, you know, had it all the time and they would just give it to the girls. And girls would do anything for it."

Anything? asked Murphy.

"Well, pretty much, yes. …I'm ashamed of some of the things I've done."

"We've known for a long time," says Dr. Terry Horton, "that individuals who suffer from eating disorders have, in general, a higher rate of substance abuse issues."

Horton is medical director of Phoenix House, the largest residential drug treatment center in the United States.

He says Rizzo is not alone: "In California, for example, the young women who use this drug, about ten percent of 'em describe using it for its purposes of appetite suppressant."

But, he cautions, beware thinking that sounds like a good way to lose weight, and you could just do it for a couple of weeks and then stop: "That's the hook, is to think that you can control a dangerous drug … and that you can stop when you think you wanna stop. It's misleading. And that's the trap."

It's a trap that certainly ensnared Rizzo.