Addiction Solution Source

Chronic, heavy marijuana use during adolescence, which is a critical period of ongoing brain development, is associated with poorer performance on thinking tasks, including slower psychomotor speed and poorer complex attention, verbal memory and planning ability.

Research supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) shows that it is evident even after a month of stopping marijuana use. There may be partial recovery of verbal memory functioning within the first three weeks of abstinence from marijuana, but complex attention skills continue to be affected.

Not only are their thinking abilities worse, their brain activation to cognitive tasks is abnormal. The tasks are fairly easy, such as remembering the location of objects, and they may be able to complete the tasks, but the adolescent marijuana users are using more of their parietal and frontal cortices to complete the tasks. Their brain is working harder than it should.

Girls may be at an even greater risk than boys.

Methamphetamine is one of the most addictive and neurotoxic drugs of abuse and it produces large increases in dopamine, a brain chemical associated with feelings of pleasure and reward — both by increasing dopamine’s release from nerve cells and by blocking its reuptake.

Using positron emission tomography (PET) to track tracer doses of methamphetamine in humans’ brains, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory found that meth was slow to clear the brain.

“This slow clearance of methamphetamine from such widespread brain regions may help explain why the drug has such long-lasting behavioral and neurotoxic effects.” Methamphetamine is known to produce lasting damage not only to dopamine cells but also to other brain regions, including white matter, that are not part of the dopamine network” stated chemist Joanna Fowler, lead author on the study.

The proof every person must see about drugs, alcohol and the brain!

SEE FOR YOURSELF on DVD how drugs and alcohol damage your brain . . .

Meet five young people from different backgrounds, with different levels of substance abuse, including two who chose to stay clear of drugs or alcohol.

Hear their stories and learn about the impact their choices have had on the quality of their lives.

Next, look at the scans of their brains. See for yourself how their choices; good or bad; have affected the health of their brains.

The candid conversations between these young people and Dr. Daniel Amen, a pioneer in the use of brain scans, are revealing. They want to know if it’s too late . . . and they want another chance . . . now that they realize they DO have a choice.

The question echoes in their ears . . . Which Brain Do You Want?

This powerful, high-energy production includes . . .

* How the brain works
* How the brain is involved in everything you do
* What happens when the brain “misfires”
* The physical impact of drugs and alcohol on brain function
* How to improve your brain

I have this DVD and it is . . .

A MUST-SEE FOR PARENTS AND TEACHERS WHO WANT TEENS TO KNOW THE TRUTH ABOUT DRUGS AND ALCOHOL!

It compares normal brain images to abnormal brain images and looks at functional neuroanatomy.

Comparisons of normal brain images and brains that have been affected by alcohol and drugs.

Studies have shown that people who take prescriptions for an anxiety disorder don’t get much help from it. And doctors have no definitive way to predict who will, and who won’t, benefit from each anti-anxiety prescription they write.

You are like a medical experiment or guinea pig.

K. Luan Phan, M.D., University of Michigan Medical School researcher, and his team are working to bring more certainty to how doctors and patients choose anxiety treatments, by probing the connection between brain activity, genetics and medication. According to the Journal of Neuroscience, he is reporting intriguing findings from brain imaging studies with marijuana users and making comparisons with prescription drugs such as Zoloft.

Dr. Phan notes that some individuals may be using illicit drugs and misusing prescribed drugs to alleviate their anxiety.

Wow – what a revelation! I call this self medication.

For much of his adult life, Robert Downey Jr., 43, was caught in a ruinous cycle of drug addiction, imprisonment and disgrace. (This post has excerpts from an article in Parade Magazine)

Raised in a show-business family, Downey claims that by 8 he already had used drugs with his dad, a filmmaker.

“I was mercurial and recklessly undisciplined and, for the most part, I was happily anesthetized.”

“You use whatever rationalization you can to justify the fact that you’re not living truthfully,” he observes about substance abuse. “You make this death machine seem glamorous so you can get on to the next moment. But it isn’t glamorous, and it isn’t fun.”

“Now it’s all about becoming rooted in the mundane, in the day-to-day stuff,” he continues. “Life is 70% maintenance. I think of myself as a shopkeeper or a beekeeper. I’m learning the business of building a life.”

“Instead of getting instant gratification by getting high, I push my nose as far into the grindstone as I can. The honey, the reward, is the feeling of well-being, the continuity, the sense that I am walking toward a place I want to go.”

The book, Beautiful Boy, by David Sheff, is a heartbreaking and wrenching story of a father’s journey through his son’s drug addiction. He states that he was addicted to his son’s addiction. Any parent who has had a child abuse drugs will be able to identify with this story.

I know I did. Even though my son did not use Meth (thank God) and did not disappear for weeks at a time on the streets, there were still many anxious moments wondering if he was OK.

David Sheff mentions early on how he confronted his son, Nic, about smoking Pot (Marijuana) and at first Nic lies and denies it. Then Nic admits that he is using some drugs “like everyone,” “just pot,” and only “once in a while.”

Over time, Nic gets more and more involved in using drugs including Meth and is in and out of rehab several times. Nic is in denial that he is an addict.

In recovery, Nic Sheff states that “a using addict cannot trust his own brain – it lies, says, ‘You can have one drink, a joint, a single line, just one.'” Nic learned that he could not trust his own brain.

3 Levels of Drug Use

Generally, you can think about 3 levels of drug use.

1 – Drug User – this is someone who occasionally uses drugs or alcohol but is not “hooked” on a substance.

2 – Drug Abuser – this is someone who frequently uses drugs, usually to the detriment of them self and those around them. This can include prescription drugs as well as street drugs.

3 – Drug Addict – this is someone who is compulsive about using drugs and using it is the most important thing in their life. It comes ahead of family, friends and work.

Almost all drugs overstimulate the pleasure center of the brain, flooding it with the neurotransmitter dopamine. This produces euphoria and the user wants that feeling back again and again. Unfortunately, with repeated use of a drug, the brain becomes accustomed to the dopamine surges by producing less of it, so the user has to take more and more of the drug to feel the same pleasure (this is known as building up tolerance).

A series of studies at University of Florida over the past five years has shown that using the popular club drug Ecstasy, also called MDMA, and other forms of methamphetamine lead to the same type of brain changes, cell loss and protein fluctuations in the brain that occur after a person endures a sharp blow to the head, according to recent findings.