What Is Medical Meth? Woman Blames Prescribed Methamphetamine For Failed Drug Test

A New Mexico woman told her the probation officer, back in February, she failed her drug test because she was using medical meth.

According to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court, Ginger Sharpe, 34, was arrested after she violated her probation by failing a mandatory drug test. In order to fool her probation officer, Sharpe said the reason she failed the drug test was because she was ordered by her doctor to take medical meth.

Although prescribed under extremely rare circumstances, medical meth actually exists. It is available in the market under the name Desoxyn and is used to treat attention disorder with hyperactivity (ADHD) and extreme obesity, according to the Ledger-Enquirer. It is also sometimes prescribed to patients with narcolepsy and other extreme-sleeping disorders.

Since medical meth carries risks such as sudden death from heart attacks or other heart conditions, and worsening mental illness and psychosis, doctors refrain from prescribing medical meth unless all other medications have failed. The biggest risk, perhaps from prolonged intake of medical meth is addiction to the otherwise illegal drug.

To help her lie, Clarke also stuck a fake label on a prescription bottle, which said: “methamphetamine 5 mg tablets.”

However, the officer was too smart to take Clarke at her words, especially when he suspected that the label on the medicine bottle was not real. The label in question was not as glossy as it should have been and the letters on it looked “slightly fuzzy in appearance.”

“At that time I determined that Sharpe had an unknown subject (possibly herself) create a prescription pill bottle for ‘methamphetamine,'” the officer wrote in the complaint, the Albuquerque Journal reported. “Sharpe obtained this forged document in hopes that her illegal usage would not be investigated believing it was prescribed medication.”

In order verify his suspicions, the officer called up the doctor whose name was on the bottle. “I have never prescribed methamphetamine,” the doctor told the officer, proving the fact that Clarke had indeed lied.

Eventually, Clarke was left with no other choice but to admit she forged the label on the bottle and that her “friend is the one who made the prescription for her.” She added “her friend was convinced she would ‘get away’ with it.”

Clarke pleaded guilty to forgery charges last year and was sentenced to probation. After admitting that she created the fake prescription label, additional charges of forgery and identity theft have been filed against her. Clarke was released to pretrial supervision.

Apart from forgery, she was also charged with identity theft because according to her probation officer, Clarke’s misuse of her doctor’s name could have adversely affected the medical professional’s reputation and personal identity.