How Drugs Mentally Make You Crazy
There are a number of ways in which drugs can affect your mind, depending upon which drug that you are using, how high your tolerance is, and how much you are using, as well as your particular body chemistry. However, there are some solid ways in which drugs can affect you mentally, warning signs that you can watch out for and use to mark milestones on the addict’s path – whether it be you or someone else that is suffering from an addiction to drugs. This includes alcohol , illegal drugs and those that you get with a prescription.
Addiction
One of the most destructive ways that drugs affect your mind and take you to a level to where you will do anything to get your next drink, or whatever your drug of choice is, is by getting you addicted, or by making your addictive personality even more destructive. Originally, people though that the substance itself was to blame. For instance, alcohol and opium were believed to contain substances that made the user unable to resist using the drug over and over again, and people blamed the contents of the substance. However, later research discovered that addiction is actually born in the body itself and people that become seriously addicted to alcohol and other drugs is something that is actually wired into the brain even before the alcoholic takes the first step or shoots up for the first time. Now, drug addiction is considered a disease .
We do know that certain substances have an effect on the brain – in essence rewiring the brain in a process that is irreversible and makes the person using drugs want to use more, which combines with any predisposition to addiction that they may have already had. Today, there is plenty of data available from studies on addiction and alcohol and substance abuse but we still don’t have all of the answers, or a cure to people that can’t help themselves. Also, people that abuse drugs and alcohol are considered by society to be at fault mainly because of the fact that they chose to use drugs in the first place.
How Drugs Keep Your Brain from Making Connections
On the road to mental illness is an inability to process new information and drugs play a huge part in that. Your brain is a three pound organ that is made up of around 100 billion cells, called neurons which are responsible for communicating with other areas of the body. These neurons are in a state of on or off, and in the on state they send electrical impulses down the axon of the neuron and the end of the axon produced a chemical that is called a neurotransmitter. These neurotransmitters, like epinephrine, norepinephrine, serotonin and dopamine are how information is communicated in the brain, traveling across the synapses of the neurons in order to perform functions in the body or thought processes. However, drugs can affect this complex process in many different ways depending upon the type of drug that you are using.
Marijuana
Marijuana for instance, or more specifically, the active ingredient in marijuana, THC, attaches to the nerve cell receptors. The hippocampus of the brain is a popular area for THC to attach because it contains a lot of receptors that are THC friendly. However, the hippocampus is responsible for memory and leaves the user unable to concentrate or react quickly and affects coordination. For some people, paranoia can happen when smoking marijuana , depending upon what the drug is laced with and there have been studies that point to marijuana causing schizophrenia, especially if used as a teen.
Cocaine
Cocaine can have a significant effect on mental health as it can prevent dopamine from being absorbed by the body . This means that the dopamine builds up, which can make you feel great and even euphoric, but when the drug has worn off, the dopamine levels return to normal, but there are less receptors available than before, which results in craving the drug desperately. The long term mental effects include the inability to function , aggressive behavior and a variety of physiological effects as well including nosebleeds , increased likelihood of hepatitis or HIV . Also, the nasal septum may eventually collapse because of snorting the drug.
Amphetamines
Amphetamines are one of the most destructive drugs out there when it comes to leading to mental illness . The amphetamines cause the neurotransmitters norepinephrine and dopamine to enter the synapses between the nerve cells, which while causing feelings of pleasure and euphoria also cause serious effects in the brain like swelling and hemorrhages . Also, the person who is addicted to amphetamines will experience hallucinations and paranoia that will eventually lead to irreversible mental illness and changes in the neurons that produce dopamine can lead to problems like Parkinson’s disease.
Opiates
Opiates are another drug that can affect your brain and cause serious damage. Within the limbic system of your brain and on the spinal cord and brain stem there are nerve cells that are opiate friendly. When opiates stimulate these opiate receptors, the brain and the body responds. Opiates can cause damage to your brain stem , which controls automatic functions like breathing and coughing, and while the opiate receptors on your spinal cord can help to stop pain signals from getting through, the euphoric feeling will make you addicted and eventually you are in danger or overdose which will cause slow breathing, convulsions, coma and eventually potential death.
Alcohol
Alcohol is another drug that can cause serious mental health problems . Alcohol depresses the nervous system affecting millions of nerve cells when it gets to the brain and keeps oxygen from getting to the blood cells . When these cells do not get oxygen they will become impaired and die and anyone who is addicted to alcohol is susceptible to permanent brain damage especially those that abuse alcohol when they are young and the brain is still in a stage of development. Alcohol can cause serious effects on organs of the body as well in addition to the brain damage that is caused.