We were thoroughly convinced I had Lyme. I went to a Lyme specialist for years. I took antibiotics for years. I was debilitatingly sick for years. But I didn’t have Lyme Disease. We had been renting a house for just over 5 years. I was living in a meth house and didn’t know it.
Meth exposure can cause the same symptoms as Lyme Disease
Meth exposure can look like Lyme Disease. Living in a house, apartment, or rental house where meth was smoked or made can cause years of health problems that can mimic the symptoms recognized as Lyme Disease.
If you never saw a tick, and If your treatment for Lyme Disease hasn’t worked, take a moment to brainstorm. This may save your life as it did mine.
When did your symptoms begin? Get a paper out and write your answers: ______________________ Really think about it!
What was new in your life the year prior to your Lyme symptoms?
Did you move to a new house, get a new car, or get a new office space? Where there ANY changes in your situation?
It can take up to 6 months of living in a meth contaminated space to become sick, though there are often subtle signs from the beginning
When we moved into our new house we were excited, but we seemed to be really dragging after a few months. We were surprised by how low we felt. We had no energy. We felt down and depleted, which was unlike us. We also seemed to have sore throats often. Especially every time we vacuumed.
About 6 months after moving in the house I became very sick
I had tremors and numbness in my face and hands, I had pain and weakness. I could barely lift my arms. I had double vision. I was confused and foggy and tired and anxious. My legs and gait felt weird. My heart was acting funny as though it was shaking or skipping beats. I have a whole list.
I immediately when to a doctor who ordered a Lyme test (I live in Connecticut) and it came back negative. He did a slew of other test, which looked normal. He gave me 10 days of doxy “just in case” which would have been too short to help if it was Lyme anyway. My symptoms got worse and worse. I ended up in the ER and had a brain MRI. It showed demyelination but not enough to be MS. Could be anything they said, – an infection, immense stress, exposure to something toxic.
My doctor told me I had to want to get better. I was shocked. I had been well my whole life, a college graduate, a runner and outdoor enthusiast, mother of 3. Why was he suddenly treating me like mental health patient?! I was horrified and terrified.
I didn’t go to any doctors for some time. We weren’t sure what to do. The doctors said I was fine according to my blood tests.
My health decline.
My husband had to do everything. Take care of the kids and all the housework. I could only hold my baby if I was sitting. I dropped everything, and my hand would shake if I tried to shave my legs. Some periods I had to stop driving because I would get confused and for just a moment wonder where I was, even at intersections near my home. My vision got weird and I went to one eye doctor who said my eyes looked fine and that it was probably “neurological” meaning my brain and vision weren’t working together.
I went to another eye doctor who listened and looked at my eyes and then told me he thought it sounded like I had Lyme and needed to go on antibiotics for a long time. So I went home and made an appointment with a fringe doctor an hour away who treats only Lyme. (If you make an appointment and go to his office, you will be treated for Lyme, which quite honestly at the time I was very grateful to just be treated for it because that’s what I thought I had and I didn’t know what else to do.) People go to him who have tried everything else and don’t know what to do. I took a lot of antibiotics he prescribed me over the course of a few years. Sometimes I thought I felt better for awhile but it was hard to tell. I always got very sick again and then he would give me more antibiotics, maybe a different mix. After that didn’t work he added some other things so then I was taking 3 antibiotics, two antifungals and an experimental drug. I got a rash all over me and got violently ill.
I quit taking everything and I thought I was going to die. In desperation for my life, (I am a mother of 3 kids and only in my 30s) I prayed for hours on my knees. Both my husband and I wondered if I would live very long. It just seemed like my body was not going to make it. But yet every test said I was fine? How could that be? My husband had known me since I was 16 years old. I was 30 years old when I got “sick”. He knew I wasn’t crazy, he knew I was sick but didn’t know why or with what. (He’s a nurse). The last month I was sick was January 2020. I was too weak to do anything other than eat a bit and go to the bathroom, so I spent all my time in bed or in a recliner chair in my room. I started dragging myself outside to lay on the trampoline while my kids played and when I was outside I felt peaceful and better, but when I went back inside I would have to get back in bed. Looking back I realize over the 5 years I felt the most relief during the months we were outdoors more, like in the summer – that’s usually when I thought the antibiotics were “working”. But once I was back indoors for a few days I was having “a relapse”.
Ironically, the more time I spent in the house the sicker I became, and the sicker I was the more time I spent in the house. If only I knew. Because I thought it was Lyme I didn’t think about the time in my house making me ill.
So back to my story, I prayed for help and I know this might be TMI for those who are not spiritual, but I did have a little prompting and I only tell it as part of the story because there would be no story and I wouldn’t be writing this article otherwise. I’m just hoping my story can help anyone in the same situation from suffering for 5 years like I did.
Okay, so I had had this prompting a few times while I had been sick. When I first got sick in 2015 I was terrified and being a person of faith I prayed for help. A clear impression came to me “when you move from this house, you will be well”. I went downstairs and told my husband.
We had only recently moved in and there were no other houses to rent in our price range. We were lucky to get this house. We live in a really nice town with the best schools. We have a handicapped son who needs the excellent special education that the school right across the street offers. We had a river in our backyard. The house was pretty icky, but the location was amazing, the price was great, and we love our town and felt lucky to be able to find a house to rent at that time.
So my husband I and I pretty much made a huge list of reasons we couldn’t move despite that prompting or “thought”. So I stayed sick. I had that prompting more than once. I didn’t really know it was a prompting, it was just a thought that would always come to my mind after I prayed for help with the sickness.
And in January 2020 when I felt like I had maybe days left I prayed and the answer, still calm, was “if you don’t leave this house, you will not live“. I knew this time it was true and I knew where this message was coming from. I knew I wasn’t going to be living long. I had written good by letters to my kids and tucked them in with our life insurance papers so my husband would find them when I was gone. Wow. I thought it strange that this thought about leaving the house would come to me again. What would leaving the house have to do with me having Lyme? How would leaving he house help? It would turn our life upside down. We would not have the school for my son who was thriving in his special education program.
I was having internal tremors to the point I thought I would have a seizure, the dizziness and collapsing pressure I felt when I would try to stand were too much for me. My mind was full of fog all the time.
My husband took me to the emergency room. Thank God…someone would surely now be able to tell what was wrong with me now that I was this sick…finally help would come and I could be treated for something, anything. Cancer, MS, a brain tumor, surely they would find something. It had been 5 years since my first ER visit for the brain MRI when I got sick in 2015.
When I had a gown on and laid in the bed for 2 hours waiting for someone to see me I realized I didn’t have any tremors and felt fine. I
was so angry!
This always happened. Every time I went to the doctor I felt pretty okay. Not great, but not how horrible I felt at home.
The doctor looked me over and rather irritated at me wasting his time, sent me home.
I was Devastated.
It was always devastating to go to the doctor and have them tell me I was fine. I would wait years until I could barely stand and then finally go when I felt I had no other choice, sure, so sure they would now know what was wrong with me. Sure the test would come back MS, cancer, ANYTHING!!!! (And I’m someone who never went to the doctor previous to all this. I just was so healthy. I had my 3 babies at home. I ran, hiked, and ate organic food…)
I cried when I got in the van. As my husnband drove us home I started having tremors again. ???? Why not in the hospital but now? It made no sense.
I prayed when I got home, and that’s when suddenly it hit me. I didn’t have lyme…
I didn’t have Lyme.
Paradigm shift!
“…when you leave this house you will get well…”
Something in this house was making me sick.
Duh. Wow. Could it really be that simple?
I told God I would leave my house and never come back. I didn’t 100% understand or even 100% believe but I had nothing else to even hope for…I was truly at the end, I decided to listen, and hope.
I didn’t know how I would do that, but I promised right there on my knees that I would follow that prompting.
I booked a ticked to go to my mom’s in Utah for me to “rest” and see what happened.
I left 2 days later and I never went back to my house.
On the airplane, I noticed I felt okay, no tremors. But then there was turbulence, I was nervous and reached down to get my down coat and hugged it across my chest and near my face for security. I started having intense internal tremors and symptoms.
What? For the first time, I made the connection.
I realized not only my coat but all of my things from my house were making me ill for some reason. (I know, that sounds crazy, and had I not gotten well upon leaving my house after being sick for five years I would agree with you.)
I still had no idea why my things were making me sick but I knew my coat being next to my face was making me have tremors and symptoms.
I pulled out my phone on the airplane and googled reasons a house could make you sick. Most lists had everything I expected, mold, radon, etc. which we had actually tested for after I got sick in 2015.
But the last thing on the list said “Meth Exposure”.
Being completely sheltered, I barely knew what meth was.
The article said meth being make or smoked in a house could make you sick.
The symptoms listed were identical to mine. I researched more and read about how many police officers had become sick from exposure to meth houses and how meth house contamination was a huge thing that is not really on anyone’s radar but as meth use and meth cooks are exploding across the USA the past two decades many many rental houses and apartments are contaminated.
One family in Utah moved into a house, and had health problems but wouldn’t have never known why they were sick had the city not contacted them later that year to let them know there had been a drug bust in that house before they moved in.
They moved out and left all their things. (More about that later in my story). I’ll attach a link to their story at the end of my post.
Okay, so I realized my things were making me sick. My coat. My clothes.
In the ER when I had stripped down and was out of my house, my symptoms subsided. When I redressed and got in my van with my coat on I had tremors. My coat was especially obvious because let’s be honest, I never washed my coat. (So later I learned meth exposure can be washed off some things; things that can be washed, but porous things that can’t be washed are pretty much contaminated forever.)
There was more though.
In the articles I read on the airplane on the way to my mom’s house there were lists of things that meth cooks might leave in a house.
As I read the list I was in total shock and elation at having answers. I had answers.
I seriously never would have connected the strange collection of household chemicals in my basement when we moved in (which I threw out when I deep cleaned my massively contaminated basement sometime after moving in), massive amounts of acetone, heat, coffee filters, toluene, and other weird things.
I honestly didn’t think too much about it at the time. So many chemicals in the basement. I had no idea people could make drugs in a basement. I just never thought about that kind of thing.
But when I saw the photographs online of the kind of ingredients meth cooks use to make meth I knew that it was the same collection of chemicals that I had found in my basement.
It all started clicking together. It all made a lot of sense. I sat there on the airplane and thanked God for trying to help me, and thanked him for showing me. I couldn’t believe that had I trusted that prompting in 2015, I could have saved myself 5 years of suffering and fear.
It was amazing that as soon as I committed and took action and left the house I almost immediately was give evidence to validate that vague impression I had had, and within about a week to 10 days 90% relief of my symptoms.
So my mom picked me up from the airport and I immediately stashed all my stuff, including my coat in the back of her Tahoe.
I wanted everything away from me.
I talked a mile a minute on the drive from Salt Lake City to Logan telling my mom all my suspicions and what I had discovered while reading on the airplane. She helped me wash everything. Literally, everything that I had brought including my boots and purse and everything.
We read everything we could to learn. Police officers exposed to meth suffered for years but there was one study where they took police officers with these weird Lyme-like symptoms and had them use a suana/hot tub, walk everyday, and other light detoxing and they dramatically improved.
We went to the saunna and hot tub, we walked, I slept for days.
By the end of two weeks, I had no noticeable symptoms.
My husband and kids flew out to see me and I told my husband I couldn’t go back to the house, our house.
He was on cloud nine from seeing his wife be the person she had been before this nightmare had begun and he was pretty open to anything at that point.
We weren’t sure what to do next. The kids stayed with me and my mom, and my husband flew back across the country to our house and put his notice in at work. Looking back, I wish we had just had him find us a new house, but I didn’t think of that. Duh. (Hey, my brain was severely impacted by years of living in that house and I suddenly had relief and nothing seemed to matter but getting better!)
Unfortunately, we are slow learners, and my husband packed up ALL our meth-contaminated stuff in an ABF truck and then he towed our car out here behind our van.
By this point, I was living in Wyoming with my sister’s family in her beautiful 4000 sq foot house and I was feeling great. It was like all that time being sick in Connecticut was just a bad dream. This was February/March 2020.
Covid was showing up in the nation and we were not sure what to do next. My sister had so much space she was letting us stay with her while we figured out what was next for us.
I was elated I felt so well. No symptoms.
We were going to the sauna at the Rec Center and walking and jogging every day at the high school track with my 3 kids and her little ones.
My husband showed up with our van packed to the brim with our most precious things (like clothes) from our house and I ran out to hug him, ready to start our new life, our second chance at life for me!
We unloaded the things he brought into the house and had dinner. That evening I started to get dizzy and started having numbness and tremors. I had not had any tremors for over a month or more by this point.
We looked at each other and both of us realized that the things he had brought were giving me symptoms.
It was so disappointing. I had thought (hoped) that now that my symptoms were gone, and being away from the house, that I would be fine.
We took everything he had brought from our house back outside and into her garage. We spend the next week deep cleaning everything we could, throwing things away, and my husband even deep cleaned the van.
It’s harder than you think to clean EVERYTHING. Especially when cleaning it make you sick again.
I now understood why the family in Utah in the news who 100% knew they had bought a meth house walked away from everything. (I’ll link to that news story at the end of this post.) I wish we had done that now looking back because by keeping our stuff we created a lot of headache for ourselves, but it really is an emotional thing to get rid of all of your stuff. However, now I realize that stuff means very little without good health.
The ABF moving truck showed up with our contaminated things. We were so overwhelmed. We didn’t know what to do with all that stuff. Our stuff. We had paid $4,500 to move our stuff from Connecticut to Wyoming.
Super smart.
We were still learning, still figuring this out and still getting our heads wrapped around it all.
We threw some away and put the rest in storage. (Not smart).
The only times I had symptoms were when we went and dug through the storage unit for things (the kids favorite toys, etc.) I would be sick for about a week and then it would fade completely by 2 weeks. I always thought I wouldn’t have symptoms again because I felt so well, but if I was exposed to the things, then I would.
We lived with my sister from February 2020 to June 2020 when travel restrictions from covid finally lifted a bit. We wanted to move back to Connecticut, back home.
My husband had been working and my kids had been doing school remotely due to covid and we were homesick. Our life had been turned upside down (yet my health rescued) at the same time the whole country had been turned upside down.
We went back to the storage unit and just didn’t know what to do. We got rid of about half of our things, all the leather couches and anything we felt couldn’t be cleaned easily, all the mattresses etc. So we thought we could clean the rest.
I really wish we had been able to walk away from our things because it would have made the journey so much shorter.
The only time i had symtpoms after leaving the house was when digging through things from the house.
I really am still shocked that that could have an effect but it 100% did.
A coat that hadn’t been washed multiple times, or a blanket. A household of things is a LOT of things to clean. And cleaning the things made me sick. So it wasn’t worth it. I would walk away from everything if I did it again. I would put the precious things in storage until I knew what to do, like photo albums, and then just get rid of everything else and start over.
We put our things in a storage unit in Connecticut, got a new house, and then didn’t want to bring our old things into our new house. Slowly we sorted, discarded, cleaned some things. It was a process of letting go. In the end, I don’t like anything that even reminds me of that house and that terrible chapter.
Some suggestions I would have for someone going through the same thing would be to:
Go stay somewhere with only a few belonging and wash them upon arrival multiple times. DO NOT TAKE A PILLOW or anything from home.
Wash your closing/blankets at a laundrymatt with something like borax mulitple times on hot. Get new shoes/purse/wallet even a cheap one for temporary. It’s worth it.
Rest, go to a suana/hot tub to help your body release toxins.
Walk to help your body get rid of the poisen in your cells.
Rest. You will be really tired and feel terrible for a week or two while your body detoxes. You will feel scary terrible. Then you will feel good. Your body will be having withdrawal symptoms after being chemically exposed for so long.
If you have obvious relief of symptoms, only to resume them when going back to your house you will want to relocate.
You can have your house tested, but meth exposure testing is really finicky and if you know your house makes you sick you won’t want to go back.
There is unfortunately no legal process or anyone to report these things to. Most places where meth has been smoked or made will never be discovered by the police and unless there was a big drug bust there will be no proof your house was a meth house and is making you sick.
in most states, even if there is a drug bust, the house just gets flipped and the new buyers won’t even know it was a drug house. I will never ever buy a house that has been flipped. I look at the history of the house and if I can see it’s value dropped really low and then it was sold and flipped for twice the price, there’s a good chance it was a drug house and after some new cosmetic updates the house is sold to unassuming new owners, who will likely have mysterious health problems about a year later and will spend thousands of dollars trying to figure out why, only to be diagnosed with an autoimmune disease or Lyme disease.
Legislation needs to catch up with the meth problem in our country. But the most important thing you can do is take yourself somewhere else if you think your house is making you sick.
We will always be so careful about our environment from now on.
Rental houses are 80% more likely to have meth contamination, but the family in Utah who were in the news who had bought their home and become sick and later had the city inform them of a previous meth bust, said the house they had bought wasn’t very old, looked lovely, and there was absolutely no way they could have known. So that’s crazy. And that’s why I’m writing, even though I really don’t talk about it, because it just sounds so weird, and I’m so happy to be living life again I DON’T EVEN LIKE TO THINK ABOUT IT. But if this helps even one person, it’s worth it.
So many things made sense.
So many symptoms I had had that made no sense when I got Lyme, like my teeth suddenly falling apart, made NO sense, but after learning about meth contamination they made sense. (The horrible chemical used to make meth make your eyes burn, your teeth fall apart, your nervous system shatter, …all the things that happened to me.)
My Husband and Kids and their health
Looking back after it was all over we could see that our whole family had some subtle yet clear symptoms while living in the contaminated house, however it was me who had the major health crisis. I had previously been a healthy person with no major health issues, though I did have mono as a college student, which seemed to change my body’s resilience.
Other than that we think I was the one who had the major issues because I was a stay at home mom and spent most of my time in the house, and also I was the only one who slept in the room where we now know the meth was made/smoked and I was the person who was often vacuuming and cleaning the house and basement (other most likely contaminated space) where I did the laundry. I was a stay at home mom. Many women in their 30s get MS or other autoimmune diseases and I think it would be worth giving it a try to get them out of their house, just in case. I know it sounds crazy, but I am well, and I am so grateful.
Time in nature is all I want now. I love to garden, spend time with my kids and husband hiking, camping, and at the beach. I love life. I am grateful for life. I am grateful to be well.
I wish you health, courage, and wisdom.
All the best,
-MJ