Drug Abuse And Its Effects On The Brain

All heroin users—not just those who injected the drug—risk becoming addicted. Individuals who abuse heroin over time develop a tolerance for the drug, meaning that they must use increasingly larger doses to achieve the same intensity or effect they experienced when they first began using the drug. Heroin ceases to produce feeling of pleasure in users who develop tolerance: instead, these users must continue taking that dug simply to feel normal.

According to an article written by Anna Gorman of Health Leaders Media, the use of prescription drugs is a growing concern. The article mentions Lola Cal, a patient in a geriatric unit in Santa Monica, California whose medical records show that she is on 36 different medications. Although people born from 1946 to 1964, known as the baby boomer generation, only make up 16% of the U. S. population, this generation accounts for one-third of prescription drug use. Many elderly patients take several medications to treat chronic illnesses and raise their chances for serious side effects and dangerous drug interactions. Dr. Maristela Garcia, director of the inpatient geriatric unit at UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica states that polypharmacy is “America’s other drug problem.

Methamphetamine stimulates different parts of the brain, as shown in figure 2 of a PET scan. In Figure 2 it reveals that a methamphetamine addict has various parts of their brain more stimulated than the control, and other section of their brain were not stimulated. Imaging studies have shown changes in the activity of the dopamine system that are associated with reduced motor skills and impaired verbal learning (NIH,2). Methamphetamine affects the parts of the brain that control judgment, reward and memory. In addition, methamphetamine has an effect on the reward system of the brain, which makes the user feel pleasure, which is normally felt through things such as eating, sex, and drinking. Furthermore, Methamphetamine affects the limbic

Methamphetamine is a highly addictive stimulant that can be taken in a number of ways. Many of the chemicals that are commonly used in making meth are things like brake cleaner, engine starter, rubbing alcohol, batteries, and fertilizer. When using meth, the person's brain releases high amounts of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which deals with the brain's reward and pleasure areas of the brain. The use of the drug is able to alter the chemicals of the brain fairly quickly, which makes the drug so addictive and allows people to feel a sort of rush when using the drug. Due to how fast the drug works, many users are often chasing after the same rush they got when it was first taken.

It is widely known that drugs are bad. All drugs, whether it be something as simple as marijuana, or as deadly as methamphetamine, they are all equally dangerous. Each drug has the same dangerous effect on you as the the others. They destroy your brain. An example would be cocaine, what cocaine does is it ends up binding to the dopamine transporters, and so it prevents the removal of the dopamine from our synapses. Then as a result dopamine begins to build up in the synapse, which causes continuing stimulation of the receiving neurons, and is possibly responsible for euphoria described by cocaine

One of the largest domestic problems around the world is drug usage. My family wasn 't perfect; we lacked affection growing up and you never really got it until you were born or dying. We didn 't care though we didn 't let it affect us we were grateful that we were raised with that tough exterior, we were grateful they built us ready for reality and that life was not going to be a walk in the park, they taught us to expect the worst but to always hope for the best. We were never loving but always there for each other through the tough and good times but there was also a lot of negatives that came with growing up like that, we had always had problems with violence, divorce, alcohol and illnesses in my family. We were brought up to be tough, physically and mentally, but out of all the things my family has seen, out of all the things my family has been through, we were not prepared for the challenge that was about to be brought upon us for a couple of years. In fact most of us didn 't even know there was a problem no one expected it or saw it coming.

Using drugs and alcohol can lead to addiction. Addiction and use are two very different things. Using a substance can lead to addiction, and the process of getting un-addicted is a long, bumpy road. But what is addiction? When people start taking drugs, they do not plan to get addicted. They enjoy how the drug makes them feel and believe they can control how much and how often they take the substance. However, the drug will change the brain and drug users start to need the drug just to feel normal. That is addiction, and it can consume a

The drugs affect the brain by either increasing the amount of a neurotransmitter by activating the release of a neurotransmitter, or by inhibiting the release of a neurotransmitter, or by blocking the degradation of a neurotransmitter. This action depends on the type of drug used. All drugs activate the reward center of the brain. Virtually all drugs of abuse directly or indirectly augment dopamine in the reward pathway. The neurotransmitters involved in drug addictions are dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, acetylcholine, Glutamate, and Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) plus endogenous opioids and cannabinoids. The standard functions of these neurotransmitters are regulating the pleasure and reward system, attention, mood, and memory. Dopamine

By the time he was 14 he was already snorting cocaine. He lies all the time, steals money from his mother’s purse and take items from the house. He does all of this to feed his addiction to cocaine. His family doesn’t want to give up on him but they are divided about what to do to help him overcome this addiction. His addiction has split the family down the middle some wanting to continue enabling him and others wanting to let him go completely. The one thing they do agree on is if Chad continues down this path of destruction his actions would result in his death.

Consequently, an individual who continues to use opioids repeatedly, the odds that he develops dependence on the drug is very high. Once the individual develops the addiction, then comes the dependency until, over time, he begins to feel that his body needs more and more drugs.

Ecstasy is both a hallucinogenic, causing hallucination, and a stimulant drug. Ecstasy is the name given to methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA). It was first synthesized in 1912 by Merck chemist Anton Köllisch. Ecstasy appears to disturb the body 's ability to regulate its temperature and this can lead to serious problems with overheating of the body. Ecstasy can be swallowed as a pill or tablet or snorted like a powder. Users of ecstasy can experience a rush of good feelings, a high, and makes someone 's feelings much more intense, whether they 're good or bad feelings. Ecstasy’s effects usually last up to 6 hours.

Many psychiatric and psychoactive drugs that are available on the market, pharmaceutically or illegally, closely resemble neurotransmitters and are actually able to mimic it to the extent that it fools the receptors. Basically, these drugs hijack the neurotransmitters. Once these drugs are ingested, it enters into the brain, gets into the synapse and binds itself to the receptor. This then causes the inappropriate release of neurotransmitters and alter the breakdown and recycling of neurotransmitters or can be used to destroy particular neurotransmitters completely (Sapolsky, 2005, p. 14).

It is inevitable that all drugs effect the human brain in different ways depending on the type of drug. For example, a drug that has a major effect on the human brain is ice which is a form of methamphetamine. The use of ice ultimately causes a surge in the brain chemical known as the neurotransmitters (Yodaa.org.au, 2017). When ice is taken the main neurotransmitter that is effected Dopamine (regulates pleasure, motivation, reward, attention and memory planning). Other neurotransmitters that are not effected as much are Noradrenaline (regulates attention as well as a persons mood to different things) and Serotonin (regulates cognition, appetite, sleep and learning abilities ) (Yodaa.org.au, 2017). When a person first takes drugs the first

Drugs have many effects on the human brain that drug abusers don’t think of. Drugs can lead to permanent damage and even death! They are no joking matter, and more attention needs to be brought to the subject of the effects they really have other than being “high”.

Eventually that addiction leads to drug tolerance. Tolerance is when drug user takes more and more of their drug of choice in order to receive the same type of euphoria feeling they once felt with smaller quantities.