. >> it's a lot like richard dreyfus in "close encounters of the third kind" where he has this image in his head of this mountain, and he doesn't know what it means, but he just feels compelled to tear up his yard and build this giant mound in his living room. and ultimately that leads him to the answer. i didn't get any aliens out of it, but i got some pretty interesting answers. >> narrator: the answers lay in the very chemistry of the brain of a meth addict. suo learned about the neuroscience of meth from dr. richard rawson of ucla. >> it has most of its effect via dopamine. dopamine is the brain's primary pleasure chemical. when people do things that the brain wants to reward, it releases dopamine. this is the slide that we use to illustrate the principal that one orgasm equals two cheeseburgers. probably not true, but that's what this represents. however, in terms of dopamine release, the mother of them all is methamphetamine. you get an increase from this base level to about 1,250 units. it produces a tremendous release of dopamine. the brain isn't designed to produce this kind