What I learned about addiction from a Czech crystal meth cook

‘It was clear to me Lenka wasn’t just choosing to stay on meth because it was a comfort in a lonely and isolated life, but because it was central to it.’ Photograph: Barbora Benesova

I was researching ideas for a documentary when a friend told me about a village in a rural region of the Czech Republic. He half-joked that when people in this place visited their family, the grandma wouldn’t bake fresh cakes to serve with coffee, as is the custom, but fresh meth. Most people in the village were on meth, he said, even those with children.

I grew up in 1980s Czechoslovakia when it was still part of the Soviet bloc. As a teenager I read Memento by Radek John and Zoo Station by Christiane F, both about meth and heroin addicts. When I was 20, I discovered that one of my childhood friends had become a heroin user. He was the only one from among his group who lived.