DISCLAIMER: Methamphetamine is a very dangerous, very harmful, very illegal drug that should never be used, human or rodent alike. This editorial was created out of pure boredom and curiosity and is in no way advocating for the usage of meth. Please don’t do meth. Like, at all.

So, if you’re anything like me, when you read the story about an Athens, Alabama man administering meth to a squirrel in an attempt to make it aggressive, you had questions. Apart from the general question of why the heck anyone would do such a thing, I took it a step further: How much meth does one give a squirrel to make it aggressive?

Well, I found out.

1. THE DRUG

I would like the record to indicate that, until today, I knew NOTHING about methamphetamine. It’s a trait I considered to be one of my proudest. But the research needed to be done.

Through asking around and falling down a quick rabbit hole of Google searches (in Google Chrome’s incognito mode, of course), I learned the basics of the drug and what taking it entails. First, there are six common ways to do meth. No, I will not link them or list them. But, judging by their descriptions, I made a confident assumption that if the squirrel did indeed take meth, it probably swallowed it.

Beyond that, I also had to make an assumption about what quantified as “one dose” of meth. After careful consultation (in other words, after reading a couple of Quora forums), I decided I was going to consider 0.1 grams to be a typical “novice” dose of crystal meth.

So I’ve got my dose and I’ve got my method. Onto the host.

2. THE DRUGGED

The average weight of an adult male is 197.8 pounds. I decided to use 150 pounds for my equation because meth causes (very unhealthy!) weight loss. Plus, it’s an easier figure with which to do math. Incorporating the aforementioned meth numbers, 0.1 grams of meth is a likely enough amount to get an adult man high.

Now that I have a man-to-meth ratio, all that’s missing is the squirrel.

The most common squirrel species found in Alabama is Sciurus carolinensis, or the eastern gray squirrel. The average weight of one of these little guys is 1-1.5 pounds, so I decided to take the median of that and continue my research using 1.25 pounds as the control weight.

So, only one question remains: how much meth is required for a squirrel to get high?

3. THE METH MATH

It’s pretty simple algebra, really. I set up an equation to show the proportional values between meth-and-man and meth-and-squirrel. Like any good math student, x will be my variable. Here’s my figuring:





Editor’s note: Editor can’t check this math because said editor has better things to do.

3. THE CONCLUSION

And there you have it. It would take 0.833mg, or 833 μg, to get an eastern gray squirrel high on meth. And as we learned in our bonus round, one 8-ball of meth could get 4,200 squirrels high.

None of this matters because, of course, no one should be giving anyone or anything methamphetamine for any reason (legitimate prescriptions excluded), but this little data journalism project was a fun way to kill an afternoon.

Back to work!