Drug Rehab Program
What is Crystal Methamphetamine?Crystal methamphetamine is a chemical that has stimulant properties similar to adrenaline. Crystal methamphetamine has several different names (crank, crystal, speed). It may be used through snorting, smoking or injection.
Stimulants mimic the action of adrenaline and dopamine, increasing heart rate, blood pressure and breathing rate, constricting blood vessels, dilating pupils, releasing sugar and fat into the blood stream, and energizing the brain. Feelings of increased alertness, anger, fear or agitation (flight or fight) and feelings of well-being, riding high, exhilaration or euphoria result from using amphetamines. When the stimulation goes too high, it produces feelings of panic, paranoia, hallucinations, rage, seizures and stroke.
Why is Crystal Methamphetamine Addictive?
All addictive drugs produce an initial pleasurable effect, followed by a rebound unpleasant effect. An amphetamine, through its stimulant effects, produces a positive feeling, but when it wears off it leaves a person with the opposite feelings because the drug suppresses the normal production of adrenaline. A chemical imbalance is created, resulting in irritability that physically demands more of the drug to go back to normal and feel good again. This pleasure/tension cycle leads to loss of control over amphetamines - and addiction.
Methamphetamine, like other addictive drugs, is able to short-circuit your survival system by artificially stimulating the reward center, or pleasure areas in your brain without anything beneficial happening to your body. As this happens, it leads to increased confidence in methamphetamine and less confidence in the normal rewards of life.
This first happens on a physical level. Then it has a psychological effect. People, places and activities involved with using methamphetamine become more important. People, places and activities or lifestyles that gave pleasure before using methamphetamine become less important. In fact, after awhile, a heavy methamphetamine user will actually resent people, places and activities not able to fit in with methamphetamine use.
In certain studies, animals would press levers to release methamphetamine into their blood stream, no longer concerned about eating, mating or other natural drives. They will, in fact, die of starvation in the process of giving themselves methamphetamine even though food is available.
Usually a person using amphetamines never gets as big a "high" as she or he did on the first dose as a result of the drug's ability to suppress and deplete the brain's production of the normal chemical messenger for positive feelings. The brain adapts to the presence of amphetamine by decreasing production of the normal chemical messenger, requiring the user to work harder to get less and less pleasurable effect, ultimately crashing. As tolerance develops to the euphoric effects, higher and higher doses of amphetamine are needed to get pleasurable effects, thereby increasing the risk from toxic effects of amphetamine.
People who use amphetamines often lose weight because the drug turns off the drive to eat. The drug produces a feeling of satisfaction with regard to food, even though no food was eaten. Tolerance to this effect develops. When a person stops using the amphetamine, there is usually a rebound increase in appetite as the body discovers it literally has been feeding off itself and wasting tissue.
Is There Methamphetamine Withdrawal?
Yes. As more of the methamphetamine comes into the body, more of the body's natural chemistry is suppressed. Eventually, natural reward messenger chemical production is almost shut down completely. If the drug is removed at this time, there will be a feeling of panic. This extreme state of irritability, tension and anxiety is what is called withdrawal.
The severity and length of the symptoms vary with the amount of damage done to your normal reward system through amphetamine use. The most common symptoms are drug craving, irritability, loss of energy, depression, fearfulness, wanting to sleep a lot or difficulty in sleeping, shaking, nausea and palpitations, sweating, hyperventilation, and increased appetite. These symptoms can commonly last several weeks after you stop using amphetamine. With medical treatment, these symptoms can be handled and eliminated much more quickly.
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