For future reference, if someone at a party ever offers you meth, the ONLY proper response is to scream “NO,” hit them in the face with a lamp, start running, and never ever stop.
Why? Because meth is the scariest fucking thing that’s ever been unleashed on mankind. And quite honestly, I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT IT IS. All I know about it is that the state of Montana put together one of the most effective ad campaigns I’ve ever seen to convince me to fear it.
In honor of Halloween, and in order of the level of horror they impart, I proudly present the eight most Requiem for a Dream-like and a subtextual analysis of each.
8. “Friends”
Subtext: Taking meth destroys all sense of responsibility, and will dissolve all meaningful friendships you currently enjoy.
Less Obvious, Positive Subtext: Taking meth makes you an extremely cautious, alert driver.
Simple Addition that Would Make the Video Hilarious: If at the end the shot widened to reveal that the girl’s friends left her at a Shakey’s Pizza.
7. “Boyfriend”
Subtext: If you take meth, you will sleep with faceless middle-aged men at the behest of your enterprising boyfriend.
Less Obvious, Positive Subtext: If you take meth, you’ll get laid.
Simple Addition that Would Make the Video Hilarious: If instead of consoling his girlfriend with a stroke on the arm, the young man offered her the rest of a Diet Root Beer he’d been drinking.
More horror after the jump.
6. “Mother”
Subtext: If you take meth, you will hit your mother and then lie about it in voiceover.
Less Obvious, Positive Subtext: If you take meth, you’ll dress in keen stonewash jeans, a swell vest, and have a trendy haircut.
Simple Addition that Would Make the Video Hilarious: If the framed photographs at the beginning were pictures of greyhounds dressed in deerstalker caps and smoking pipes.
5. “Junkie Den”
Subtext: Smoking meth makes everyone around you turn into cruel pseudo-zombies.
Less Obvious, Positive Subtext: Smoking meth makes you popular.
Simple Addition that Would Make the Video Hilarious: If there were a dog in the background humping everything.
4. “Jumped”
Subtext: Smoking meth is worse than getting killed with a cinder block.
Less Obvious, Positive Subtext: Taking meth will give you a retrospective clarity on par with the wisest sages of our time.
Simple Addition that Would Make the Video Hilarious: If the bullies were played by the bully from Teen Wolf.
3. “Laundromat”
Subtext: Taking meth will make you a violent madman, able to knock a large man out with a single punch and frighten small children by simply screaming at them.
Less Obvious, Positive Subtext: Taking meth will make you TRAVEL THROUGH TIME.
Simple Addition that Would Make the Video Hilarious: If instead of crying, the baby giggled uncontrollably when screamed at.
2. “Everything Else”
Subtext: DON’T SMOKE METH! DON’T FUCKING DO IT! AAAAAAGHHHH!
Less Obvious, Positive Subtext: Today’s meth dealers are refreshingly honest.
Simple Addition that Would Make the Video Hilarious: If the dealer went on to introduce the girl to her meth apartment, meth swimming pool, meth toaster, meth part time job at a Starbuck’s, and meth night classes at a City College.
1. “Bathtub”
Subtext: If you take meth, MONSTERS WILL ATTACK YOU IN YOUR BATHROOM.
Less Obvious, Positive Subtext: Taking meth means you never have to shower again.
Simple Addition that Would Make the Video Hilarious: If the person on the other end of the phone conversation were revealed to be a Southern Civil War General.
In case your pants are still dry, here’s a link to a Youtube gallery that has the rest of the ads. The first person who can explain to me why this Youtube user has collected all of the Montana Anti-Drug ads wins a free hit of meth.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 at 8:00 am and is filed under Advertising, Anti-Drug, Meth, Montana, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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July 5th, 2009 at 9:35 pm
@Totally: Yes, these did originate in Montana. I live there, and they are EVERYWHERE. Seriously. A bunch of them have been converted into billboards. Like: “Normal isn’t thinking there are bugs under your skin. Meth is.” And other terrifying things.
I hate these ads so much right now.
As to the questions I saw about what meth is . . . yes, it really is that destructive to your body, mainly because a lot of the people cooking it can’t afford ephedrine or the over-the-counter drugs containing it and improvise with fun substitutes like road flares. No joke. Meth is basically any chemical crap you can get your hands on for cheap.
So yeah. I concur with the title of this article. DON’T. TAKE. METH. Especially because the sad thing is that even with its horrid, debilitating effects, it is so ridiculously addictive that when these ads were shown to test groups that had tried meth, they just sat there and laughed, then went off to get some more.
June 7th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Did some “meth” in College, back when it was called speed, wrote my thesis high as a kite, it helped me graduate, prescription free, Just wasnt interested in continuing my relationship with uppers after that…
March 18th, 2009 at 3:54 am
Why did they decide to give a portuguese name (Nuno at 0:18) to the guy in “mother”? Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
March 17th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Day 4: I’ve not had food for 3 hours. I’m so hungry
March 11th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Meth is the little half-step above crack. It’s what holds your hand on the way to the crack house basement where you’ll be beaten and brutally sodomized by said faceless middle-aged men who contribute to the drug fund. After something like that, I think I would deserve a freaking diet root beer, don’t you?
February 21st, 2009 at 7:21 pm
I FIGURED IT OUT. I’ll post it after I get back from getting my meth… meth…. yeah. Ill be back later….
February 11th, 2009 at 10:44 pm
These commercials air in my state too. Which isn’t Montana.
Did they originate in Montana though? Now I want to know. Heh.
January 21st, 2009 at 12:33 pm
METH is the devil incarnate I know this from personal experience from being a hardcore speedfreak for over 25 yrs , WHAT EVER YOU DO DONT DO FUCKING METH!!!!!!!!!!
December 11th, 2008 at 10:18 am
Gotta love government propaganda. We have lots of it in the UK, too.
Funny shit.
July 9th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
deadasdisco: As someone who grew up in Montana and lived there for close to twenty years, I can say that, yes, people DO in fact live in Montana. Granted, given its size and population, there is only an average of 6 people per square mile (actual fact). But still, people live there nonetheless.
June 30th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Hahaha,
Buckminster, you made as much sense as….well, a crack baby.
I’ve met crack babies, they are lanky, with small heads and big eyes.
“What?” thoroughly pwned you, and you just have to swallow that like you swallow every night.
And a very special “Booyah!” to Mr,What, for his reference to the oh so awesome Monkeysphere article. That article really did explain a lot of the suffering in this world.
June 25th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Buckminister that is the most retarded thing Ive ever heard. It was insensitive, ill-informed, and not funny whatsoever (if that was what it was suppose to be). Im not trying to start a flame war or an arguement but I strongly disagree with your whole “crack babies are productive criminals” outlook. Ive met a few crack babies. They were stupid, and crippled because of the choices their parents made. And now they are making bad choices themselves because they have been raised in poverty and vice. Undoubtedly, they will turn to crime but I doubt they would be able to outsmart any reasonable police officer. “Productive criminals” you say? No offense but that title should be reserved for mafiosi and white-colered criminals. I am in no way siding with the government, but drugs are a threat to our already unstable (at the most) society and you cant seriously think they would be doing it for any other reason than to prevent our downfall. The government isnt just some face-less fascist daemon whom tries to keep us down. Yes, it still kinda sucks and is corrupt but I reccomend the “Monkey Sphere” article from cracked to explain that.
June 7th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
What I wanna know is where are all the damn “meth babies”.
After Ollie North arranged for the importation of tons of coke, our government needed to demonize that very same substance. So they invented “crack babies”. Remember how Time and every other neo-con paganda rag were showing America the damage iinflicted on all ‘dem po’ innocent little babies by those heathn, brain damaged crack addicts ?
Now meth is the drug chosen by the government propaganda machine to demonize but those incompetent morons forgot to include the “meth babies”! How come? I think the anti-drug guys probably realized they couldn’t use the same ploy again since all those children grew up normally and now no one can even tell that they were once crack babies.
Fortunately those former crack babies were able to take their rightful place as part of criminal underclass If the crack babies had not become productive criminals the war on drugs could be over. Without their current illegal activities, all the people working for the justice system, the contract prisons and the former drug abusers now employed by the rehab industry might now be on welfare rolls or turned to crime themselves!
So I guess that’s really the good news about the meth epidemic, huh?
buck futt
May 7th, 2008 at 11:15 pm
These aren’t just in Montana. I’m in Arizona, I’m a substance abuse counselor, and I got to watch a lot of these commercials as a sort of test run and give my input. I ridiculed them, I told them they were intense, but far too unrealistic. This article has brought to the forefront the sheer hilarity of these commercials. Meth is a nasty drug, but propaganda is at least as nasty.
March 5th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
simple additions that completely kill the shock of the ad you just watched because you’ll now think of them everytime you see the commercial
…not like that’s necessarily a bad thing
February 18th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
quite funny “simple additions”
February 6th, 2008 at 9:50 am
tycoon games for windows vista…
haha gotta love Windows……
February 1st, 2008 at 12:37 pm
the comic relief of the “hilarious additions” was great, I literally ROFLed
January 28th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
man these are all amazing. but i was actually hoping the article would be a story about whether or not people actually live in montana.
December 2nd, 2007 at 11:37 pm
1. These are very creepy and well-made.
2. They were followed two minutes later by a beer commercial.
November 25th, 2007 at 3:40 am
Meth use is almost non exsistant here in Wisconsin which is strange since Iowa is Really bad… I think it’s because Heroin addicts and Meth heads don’t get along.
November 17th, 2007 at 8:57 pm
Hey, I know how to inform the kids about the possible dangers of drug-use.
Let’s be completely condescending!
November 8th, 2007 at 1:30 am
Yeah meth is pretty crazy. Now let’s all go home and smoke weed like normal people.
November 3rd, 2007 at 2:17 am
number three would be even more hilarious if the guy screamed “this wasn’t supposed to be your life” was screaming at just some random guy
November 1st, 2007 at 1:39 pm
That shit is fucknig scarey, between the “No one ever said I wanted to be a junky when I grow up.” ads of the 90’s, the ones when the kid lets his friend get run over by a log truck and these ads I think that I going to give up fucking Tylenol and Red Bull.
November 1st, 2007 at 8:54 am
Question for Michael: Was I supposed to, when reading this title, sing the jingle for the commercial for “Don’t Wake Daddy”? Because I was. I absolutely was.
November 1st, 2007 at 2:51 am
In San Francisco, I only ever see PSAs (print, mostly) warning only the gay men against meth. Apparently us straight folks can go right on and keep using.
November 1st, 2007 at 1:33 am
They ran some anti-meth PSA’s down in Florida in the last couple of years. Nowhere near as awesome as these ones.
If all commercial’s were that entertaining I wouldn’t be DVRing everything so I could fast fwd all the time.
October 31st, 2007 at 10:48 pm
RADMAN — Yeah, that’s kind of funny. What’s even funnier is the fact that you expect me to have sympathy for a family member of yours who was stupid enough to try meth in the first place, then even more stupid to get hooked and completely fuck up his life.
Thin the herd. More power to ‘em.
October 31st, 2007 at 9:52 pm
I believe that these PSAs are, in fact, viral marketing in support of “The Fever”. The moral of the story: If you are a Gilded Age industrial tycoon, don’t murder the homeless with your cane in an attempt to steal their panhandling money to support your meth habit. You’ll only wind up getting hacked to pieces by a maniac with a hatchet.
Now, Mr. Swaim, where may I collect my free hit of meth?
October 31st, 2007 at 9:46 pm
Caps-lock fixation aside, Radman does have a point. Skeletor wishes he could fuck people up the way Meth does. Skeletor riding a T. Rex, maybe…
Good to see anti-drug ads that aren’t about miss Jane.
October 31st, 2007 at 8:32 pm
Radman, you did read the rules of the site and realise THIS IS A HUMOUR SITE DUMBASS.
October 31st, 2007 at 7:30 pm
Funny? Surely You Jest. A Family member is wasted for life BECAUSE of Crystal Meth. He’s a 42 year old and the Only thing going for him is he still has most of his teeth.
His thinking compacity is that of a 5 year old. His attention span lasts for all of about 90 seconds. Some one will have to care for him the rest of his life due to the damage his brain has sustained.
Yeah, that’s REAL FUNNY.
October 31st, 2007 at 6:44 pm
What’s really funny is they usually reserve this sort of fervor for anti-weed and anti-smoking ads. They really just got more and more ridiculous as it went along. It started off hyperbole filled but believable and ended just short meth being anthropomorphized as skeletor.
October 31st, 2007 at 6:34 pm
This was funny yet disturbing. I don’t think I could handle watching this anti-drug adds without the hilarity afterwards because they were so depressing, disgusting and evil. Anybody who has seen one of these adds and then does Meth must be previously psychologically impaired or already messed up on coke and ran out of money so they downgraded.
Good article and nice way to bring meth commercials from a single state, onto a more North American platform.
October 31st, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Dammit! You got me sir, you got me.
October 31st, 2007 at 3:00 pm
It’s not her backpack. It’s the trauma pack (or whatever it’s called) that the EMT type folks have with them when they respond.
October 31st, 2007 at 1:17 pm
I just noticed something strange. At the end of the number 8 video, is it just my imagination or is that nurse about to rifle through the girl’s backpack and steal things? Maybe SHE’S on meth!
October 31st, 2007 at 12:04 pm
Ironically, Stache is in meth class.
October 31st, 2007 at 11:53 am
Haha, I’m in class, this shit made me giggle like a school girl (on meth). Swaim your the man.
October 31st, 2007 at 11:08 am
Second to last ‘…would make it hilarious’ is best. Meth Toaster I think is the first point I actually giggled out loud at this.