Posted on 07/19/2004 8:22:02 PM PDT by neverdem
People who do not want to wait for old age to shrink their brains and bring on memory loss now have a quicker alternative - abuse methamphetamine for a decade or so and watch the brain cells vanish into the night.
The first high-resolution M.R.I. study of methamphetamine addicts shows "a forest fire of brain damage," said Dr. Paul Thompson, an expert on brain mapping at the University of California, Los Angeles. "We expected some brain changes but didn't expect so much tissue to be destroyed."
The image, published in the June 30 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience, shows the brain's surface and deeper limbic system. Red areas show the greatest tissue loss.
The limbic region, involved in drug craving, reward, mood and emotion, lost 11 percent of its tissue. "The cells are dead and gone," Dr. Thompson said. Addicts were depressed, anxious and unable to concentrate.
The brain's center for making new memories, the hippocampus, lost 8 percent of its tissue, comparable to the brain deficits in early Alzheimer's. The methamphetamine addicts fared significantly worse on memory tests than healthy people the same age.
The study examined 22 people in their 30's who had used methamphetamine for 10 years, mostly by smoking it, and 21 controls matched for age. On average, the addicts used an average of four grams a week and said they had been high on 19 of the 30 days before the study began.
Methamphetamine is an addictive stimulant made in clandestine laboratories nationwide. When taken by mouth, snorted, injected or smoked, it produces intense pleasure by releasing the brain's reward chemical, dopamine. With chronic use, the brains that overstimulate dopamine and another brain chemical, serotonin, are permanently compromised.
The study held one other surprise, Dr. Thompson said: white matter, composed of nerve fibers that connect different areas, was severely inflamed, making the addicts' brains 10 percent larger than normal. "This was shocking," he said. But there was one piece of good news: the white matter was not dead. With abstinence, it might recover.
Oh, come on... How do you know it was the methamphetamines and not the Navy that did it to him?
Let's say, just for the sake of discussion, there was a law that said it was OK for one man to own another as property. (pretty silly, eh?)
Let's further suppose that the law said that if said property were to "run off" and was subsequently recaptured, it should be returned to its "rightful owner".
Isn't it nice that you've got The Law to guide your behavioral decision there?
http://news.google.com/news?q=This%20Is%20Your%20Brain%20on%20Meth%3A%20A%20Forest%20Fire%20of%20Damage&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&sa=N&tab=wn
Click on the google link above, then click on the top link with this text:
This Is Your Brain on Meth: A 'Forest Fire' of Damage
New York Times, NY
... The first high-resolution MRI study of methamphetamine addicts shows "a forest fire of brain damage," said Dr. Paul Thompson, an expert on brain mapping at the ...
This will avoid NYT registration.
Slammin' the Libertarian argument tonight, eh? Good on ya.
LOL!!
PS: Maybe should have ended that posting with: What would happen to you if you had TWENTY or THIRTY drinks EVERY night, for the last TEN YEARS?
From what I've seen, methamphetamine makes cocaine and crack look like baby food by comparison. That stuff is incredibly dangerous, and when it fries you, you stay fried.
I imagine if you abused orange juice for ten years, a scan of your kidneys would be horrible, too. Good thing OJ isn't addictive.
Good Grief! Talk about a downward spiral, post# 18, hey Martin Is there a time line for those photos?
1. Just that once I thought I'd try a hit of WOD to see if the rush was all the users claimed it was.
2. I don't do sarcasm tags
its the smoking, i think. some people use it as a cheap strong speed, orally or nasally, but many unfortunates start smoking the stuff and apparently thats when it spirals. the effect is different when smoked, too.
| From what I've seen, methamphetamine makes cocaine and crack look like baby food by comparison.
The drug has been around as long as I have. But you never meet an old tweaker. You don't even meet any middle-aged tweakers. I've met 40-year-old crackheads. I've never seen a 40-year-old tweaker. |
Why not?
It was a double blind study and I didn't suffer the same effect. The control group was your local chapter.
Oh NO! You commented:
"I imagine if you abused orange juice for ten years, a scan of your kidneys would be horrible, too. Good thing OJ isn't addictive."
I joke quite often that I have a drinking problem with OJ, no matter how much I buy, I drink it ALL within 24 hours! I just can't stop!
Are you SURE it is NOT addictive? But, I must admit, I only buy it when it is on sale! And I NEVER put anything like vodka in it. But I gotta admit, once every couple or three years I do have a bit of tequila and have a "sunrise". But that makes my head hurt really bad.
Uh, oh. My advice is that you keep an inventory of the number of navels you have. When it gets to be more than one, watch for resemblance to Anita Bryant, the terminal stage. :)
As they say, if you're not crazy when you start Meth, you will be after...
I assume a speedfreak is a tweaker. Let me know if I'm wrong. It's the first time that I've heard or read it. Do you have any idea how it was derived?
High 19 out of 30 days, it was under any of the users were still coherent.
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That's what I've seen too. The crackheads you can sometimes pull back. The tweakers are gone. They are broken people with broken brains, and no one knows how to fix them. I have met too many 20- and 22-year old tweakers who will never have "lives." They will have "existences" as paranoid vegetables, living in flophouse hotels and stealing and lying their way to the next hit.