Photographs by Chip Litherland

All images © Chip Litherland

"Alexia," a 22-year-old Boulder, Colo. resident, shows her friend the 8-ball, an eighth-ounce of methamphetamine she bought the night before in Denver from a surrogate family of bikers she befriended in the fifth grade. Known on the street as "meth," use of the stimulant has risen greatly among youth in recent years, and can be made relatively cheaply with products available at a hardware store.

The drug is spooned onto a small pocket mirror to be cut and inhaled. Alexia stopped using cocaine in favor of meth at the age of 15. Through troubled teenage years spent in and out of her family home she has used ecstasy, mushrooms, and marijuana as well as easily available methamphetamine.

Alexia jumps after inhaling a line of meth. The effects of the drug include extreme hyperactivity, dizziness, tooth grinding, nervousness, sweating, and -- most commonly -- insomnia. Alexia finds in the drug a long-lasting boost of energy and alertness that, she says, makes her "mind come alive."

Alexia plugs her nostrils to try to keep the meth in her nose after snorting. The meth she took on a Saturday evening kept her wide-awake until the following Monday night.

In addition to snorting meth, Alexia smokes the drug using a makeshift pipe made of aluminum foil called a "foilie." The technique will produce a different kind of high for the user, she says.

Secluded in a small room in the basement of a house in Boulder, Alexia prepares another foilie.

Alexia's eyes tear after inhaling a line of the drug at a party with friends in Boulder.

After a few hours of heavy drinking and riding the effects of the stimulant, Alexia smokes the depressant marijuana from a water pipe to calm her methamphetamine high.

Alexia props herself against a doorway with a beer as the cocktail of drugs and liquor swim through her system.

As police break up the party upstairs because of noise and underage drinking, Alexia and a friend emerge from the basement where the drugs were being used. The party was quickly shut down by Boulder police at 3:30 a.m.