In the new series on Discovery Plus, Queen of Meth, we delve into the former life of Lori Arnold, sister of actor Tom Arnold, who was a prominent meth manufactorer in the late 80’s and early 90’s. In fact, she is self-credited in the series saying that she is probably the reason that meth rose to prominence.
I say former life because she no longer is in the business, thankfully, and has served a prison sentence for all that she did back in the day. This series is a look back at her life and what drove her to dealing drugs.
Queen of Meth – Why isn’t Lori Arnold mre angry?
In the first episode we get to see her detailing her childhood, or really, lack thereof. She said that her parents were just barely 20 when they got married, Tom was the oldest, Lori was the middle child, and there was younger brother named Scotty.
She said that her parents divorced early in her life, rather than fightng for the kids, their Dad just left them with the Mom. However, their Mom, who acted more like a friend to her kids than a Mom, soon realized that maybe that wasn’t the best move and then dumped them with their Dad.
From the sound of it, their Dad tried to be, at the very least, stable, but he was strict and soon married again to a woman who believed in strict gender roles, which Lori didn’t particularly care for. She soon went back to live with her Mom.
Her Mom didn’t care about how she dressed and let her get by with wearing jeans and the like, which was pretty progressive for back in the 1960’s. We were just coming off the conservative 1950’s and clothing styles were still pretty steeped in being traditional.
However, one night when she was 14, she was caught out at a bowling alley with an older boy, not just any older boy, but a 23 year old man. The family didn’t want a town scandal, so they told them to get married. Not engaged, no promise rings here, no ‘wait until you finish high school’, nope, the family didn’t want to deal with it so they told this 23 year old man to marry their 14 year old daughter.
Tom Arnold said that his Mother basically served his sister up to a pedophile, and he’s not wrong, because Lori said that their relationship only ended up lasting for 6 months after they initially got married. She found out that he was running around with a 12 year old behind her back. Yes, that’s right, a 12 year old.
Thankfully, unlike a lot of girls, Lori didn’t put up with this kind of treatment, at least not out of this guy, she packed her stuff and called Tom to come get her and then she left, divorcing her first husband. She said that she tried to go back to high school after that but found herself unable to relate to the kids because they all seemed “so young” compared to a 15 year old who had been married and divorced.
While standing at their Mother’s graveside (A funeral that she didn’t get to attend because she was in prison at the time) Tom asked her why she wasn’t angry and she said that she had forgiven their Mother for most of what happened. I think that she realizes that her Mom was just mentally and emotionally ill-equipped to be a Mom, and perhaps she was co-dependant on a few substances herself, considering that it was her Mom that originally gave her qualuudes to begin with.
(A diet pill that gave you tons of energy that was prescribed by one of her Mom’s doctors.) Tom views it from the older brothe’s standpoint, he wanted to protect his younger sister from something and he feels like his parents failed, and maybe he felt like he was parentified a bit.
Lori however has more of the PTSD kind of response, where she is almost detached from it and can talk about it objectively. Still, the series is an interesting look on Arnold’s motivations. Stay tuned!!!
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