Seriously. How do I calm my brain down?

Let’s talk meth. Specifically, the mouth that results from consistent, heavy meth use: Meth Mouth. (That likely does not need to be capitalized, but it seems to lend it a sort of legitimacy—the sort needed to sound academic and scholarly). If you’re not familiar with Meth mouth (which the National Institute of Health actually calls METH mouth. Good thing they capitalized all the letters or I would have confused it with meth), do a quick google image search. If you were considering dabbling in the METHical arts, you will likely reconsider.

In their 2021 article, Lee et al describe METH mouth as “characterized by severe tooth decay and gum disease, which often causes teeth to break or fall out” (Lee et al., 2021). It’s actually caused by a number of factors connected to METH use (not just the drug itself), including reduced saliva leading to growth of bacteria, increased consumption of sugary drinks (but really, who doesn’t imbibe in the occasional—read frequent—64 ounces of Coca-Cola Classic?), teeth grinding (while jonesing for METH), and poor oral hygiene (judgey much Lee?). Parenthetical jokes aside, METH mouth is actually a horrifying result of a very dangerous and often crippling addiction that destroys the lives of those addicted and their family and friends. So you can imagine my shock and horror when I too developed METH mouth.

Perhaps METH mouth might require actual use of METH…

After spending a delightful evening with my wife and son watching the premiere of season 2 of Severance and eating likely METH-laden strawberry popcorn from Sam’s Club, I felt the need to floss my teeth, certain I felt the lodgings of a midnight snack between my teeth. I have confusing teeth. I can’t tell if they are too close together or too far apart. If I plan to eat an apple, for example, I must ask my wife to cut it up for me after she’s done cutting the crust off my bread. If I don’t, I will find the small sprouting of an apple tree growing between my teeth around dinner time. It occurs to me, maybe this is common and why I am encouraged to floss my teeth regularly, but really, is dentistry even based in science?

I opted for a targeted flossing of the affected tooth, so as to avoid any detrimental over-flossing and making my dental hygienist obsolete. However, I was not entirely sure of the exact location of the obstruction, just the general quadrant. It could have been my m45 or even the m46 (I’m pretty sure I’ve heard my dentist use those terms…and that we have at least 52 teeth). First floss: nothing. Second floss: eureka. I had struck…popcorn. I felt relief flood my mouth as the pressure of the obstruction was alleviated. And even more rewarding, I felt the quite large obstruction fall onto my tongue.

Perhaps too large. I know my teeth might practice social distancing with each other, but I can’t usually fit an entire popcorn kernel betwixt them. As I gently expelled the not-so-tiny object, I found myself staring at a part of my tooth. Maybe a part of my tooth? It was white-ish (the kind of white that heavy Coke consumption produces) and hard, indicating tooth mishappery. The biggest indicator of METH mouth, however, was the large hole in my upper left m49. I quickly hurried downstairs worriedly yelling to my wife, “I have METH mouth! What is wrong with me?!

My wife did a quick oral examination using her phone flashlight and the unhappy lotus pose. Thankfully, she reassured me that it was likely not actual tooth, but rather a cap or filling that has fallen out. To attest to her bonafides, her father and brother are both oral surgeons and she also has teeth, so…

Perhaps I was overreacting, but it does feel a little unnerving to feel your tooth just fall into your mouth. It was made more unnerving by the fact that not 48 hours before, the crown on my m27 fell off. Just chewing a piece of gum and my crown. Apparently, “Don’t eat caramels,” wasn’t just a heads up. So, in just two days, I had lost two teeth. Sorta.

Maybe it’s less meth, and more aging?

Seriously! What the crap?! When I was younger, I would go to the dentist and he would go on and on about my teeth. He would assure me that I had great, strong teeth—that I was genetically dentally superior to all other patients. But now, I’m METH mouthing it? What gives? Are Lee et al judging me? Do I have poor oral hygiene? Or is it an aging thing? I’m 46. Stuff doesn’t work right anymore. Like, I went on the Matterhorn at Disneyland a couple weeks ago and I genuinely felt like I was in a prize fight with Mike Tyson, taking jab after jab to the ribs. So, is teeth falling out just part of the aging?

I don’t know. I’ll just chalk it up to dumb luck. Could be that, right? I didn’t even know I had a cap where the whole now is. Maybe I just have a dodgy dentist who is drilling holes and filling them willy-nilly. Maybe I don’t pay attention to them while they are trying to have a conversation with me while blasting my mouth with air and water and interrupting Love It or List It on HGTV.

Maybe, like me, you’re wondering why I told you this story. It’s not particularly climactic. And I’m not particularly sure what point I will draw from it. Except maybe this potentially massive derailing: meditation is really helpful and we should all practice it more consistently.

People complain about it, but mediation is really helpful.

Stay with me. I’m not a particularly anxious guy, but I have always had a fear of money. Specifically, I have always been afraid of money drying up, having no support or resources to lean on, and showing my family around the spacious tent we have under the I35 overpass. And what happens if your tooth falls out? You have to go pay the dentist to make you a new tooth. That’s not cheap anymore. Not like the good ol’ days when you could get a new tooth for a nickel and a smile. So suddenly one night of eating popcorn or caramels becomes a new mortgage to maintain my winning smile, not to mention not having to gum my food.

But something weird happened as my wife was pronouncing her familialy-professional opinion: I didn’t freak out about the money. Instead of getting worked up, talking about how much it would cost, how dental insurance is a scam, and how I’ll have to take work off, essentially quadrupling the ‘realized’ cost of the procedure, I just sort of laughed and joked that my wife couldn’t love someone with METH mouth.

This felt monumental to me and I wondered why it was. Over the past year, and more deliberately in the past month, I have been focusing on increasing calm in my life, specifically through meditation. I have been meditating daily, often multiple times a day. I encourage most clients to meditate, though most just moan about it and then don’t do it. I think they mistakenly look for immediate effects, but the results of consistent meditation and mindfulness are often more subtle and indirect than we can easily measure. But my METH mouth showed my how impactful it can be in lowering my baseline stress level, rewiring my thought patterns, and seeing possibilities where I didn’t before.

If you’ve never tried meditation, or perhaps worse, if you have, you might feel the way I did about it. It was boring, cliche, and borderline painful. I couldn’t stand the people using their overly-soft voices telling me to clear my mind. But it turns out, that’s not what they do. Sometimes they use soft voices, but they don’t tell you to clear your mind. Instead, the tell you to focus your mind. Focus on breathing, the feeling of it, the pattern of it. Focus on gratitude or something you’ve struggled with. Meditation is actually about teaching you how to control your mind and what it focuses on. So instead of worrying I’ll be the poster child for METH mouth with an anonymous Google photo, I can refocus my mind to be calm and figure it will work out fine. I’ll fill my METH holes and won’t have to ditch one of my kids under the overpass.

So, if you don’t already, make a regular practice of mediation. Set aside 5-10 minutes each day to sit and be still. Download an app like Calm or Headspace. Or, if you’re cheap like me, download Healthy Minds Project. Or just sit and listen to calming music. Pay attention to the way you breath. Practice progressive muscle relaxation—you can Google it after METH mouth and then use it to lower your heart rate.

Now go brush your teeth and count all 57. Then be still and meditate.