Tips for keeping your mouth healthy and avoiding "meth mouth"

Dental student here. I posted this in a thread earlier asking about people that have had dental problems because of their stim use and I'd like to share some tips to help everyone keep their mouth in as good of condition as possible (shoutout to u/DreaminScitzophrenia for convincing me to make this post; Never would have expected such a strong response). "Meth mouth" being caused directly by meth is not a thing as many of you are probably aware. What people call "meth mouth" is caused by not taking proper measures to protect your teeth adequately while using stimulants (dry mouth and grinding are big ones). Edit: u/23_pair's comment about poorly made and/or shake and bake meth being bad for your teeth is true! Acidic stuff is bad enough on your teeth and you don't want to be smoking anything acidic. I would absolutely recommend you not smoke anything you question the quality of for many reasons, but that stuff can cause even more problems with your mouth.

• The obvious one is brush twice a day. Try to floss at least once a day, but if you're only going to do one, brushing is far more important. Brush after smoking when you can. You don't need to do it every single time if that is often (you don't want to be brushing tons of times every day), but try to do it often.

• Get Biotine Dry Mouth Rinse for when you're stimming hard and your mouth is dry. Alcohol based mouthwashes like normal Listerine can dry your mouth out too and my instructors have all suggested either Biotene or a non-alcohol based mouthwash. Lack of saliva is arguably the most important factor leading to dental decay. Your mouth needs to have saliva to kill off bacteria, prevent future decay, and remineralize existing decay. Without saliva, your teeth don't stand a chance no matter how often you brush. Drinking more water can never hurt saliva production either.

• Use a fluoridated toothpaste. I can't stress this enough. This is hugely important for high risk patients such as stimulant (and many other drug) users. I personally get fluoride treatments every 6 months and would recommend the same to any of you out there. Every 12 months is okay if your teeth are on the healthier side already, but 6 months is better for most people. Fluoride in combination with the saliva in your mouth is the only way to remineralize decayed tooth structure (which everyone has to some extent at some point in their life).

• Also make sure your toothpaste contains no SLS. SLS does nothing but make the toothpaste foam more (which provides no health benefits) and it makes dry mouth and gum/tongue irritation even worse. This can be especially useful for tobacco smokers and stim users in general (even if you're snorting, swallowing capsules, etc).

• If you chew gum while you're stimming, get xylitol gum. I love Epic Xylitol spearment (stuff is delicious). Xylitol coats your teeth and kills bacteria because they think it's sugar but can't digest it and die. Kind of like borax for ants (except obviously way safer for you than borax). If you're already chewing gum, you may as well get some with higher amounts of xylitol! There are no downsides unless you start chewing 15-20+ pieces a day.

• If you're going to eat sugary candy or anything like that, try to brush after half an hour, or you can chew xylitol gum right after (which isn't quite as good, but way better than nothing).

• Lastly, if you grind your teeth a lot, look into getting a guard/retainer to wear when it's bad. They have special night guards if you grind a lot at night. Once you have ground that tooth structure off, it's not coming back! I have a very good friend who doesn't use drugs, but she grinds bad at night and her teeth already have wear facets (where the tooth just got ground off) in her 20s. Having flat teeth makes chewing a big pain in the ass so you want to preserve all those cusps and sharp points.

• Go see your dentist for a cleaning and don't ignore dental pain. 99% of the time, your problem will only get worse and more expensive to fix.

I think that's about everything I can think of. If anyone has any questions about particular issues or habits, feel free to ask. If you have a spot/lump/painful tooth, it's probably best to post some pictures in a text post to r/dentistry as evaluating this stuff online without being able to probe, dry the teeth, and other things is pretty hard. Even in a sub full of dentists, you'll still see plenty of disagreements because we're going on limited information. And trust me, no one in that sub will be grossed out by anything in your mouth.

Just because someone was curious about this, I used to be a polydrug addict and my life wasn't going anywhere. I wasn't great at the whole moderation thing so I had to stop. It was either nothing or drugs constantly. I guess that addiction has kind of turned into learning about dentistry and trying to help people. The amount of dentists and dental students I am around that look down on drug users 'because it's their fault' is gross to me, and drug users sometimes don't get the care they deserve. I just want everyone to be safer if possible.

TL;DR: Go see your dentist for a cleaning and take care your mouth! Don't ignore dental pain. Brush and try not to let your mouth dry out for long periods of time.