FROM METH LAB TO METH BRAIN

Methamphetamine Addiction

This interesting study suggests something that most people who have worked in drug treatment for any length of time have observed:  Methamphetamine is more damaging than other stimulants.  This study suggests that the methamphetamine stays in the brain longer than cocaine.  Drug abuse of this magnitude needs to be treated as soon as possible before more and more drug addicts die as a result of use.

It also appears to cause more dental damage and overall physical destruction as evidenced by the pencil thin methamphetamine addicts, who arrive to drug treatment.

As there will never be any evidence that methamphetamine is anything but bad, let’s suggest a study on how to best remove this plague from this civilization.

Effective drug treatment and education on a broad scale is the place to start and can perhaps stave off the severe consequences of meth for a bit.

The real answers lie in a community that is interested and empowered enough to let their elected officials know they have had enough.

In the meanwhile there is no reason that any meth addict needs to continue to feed this drug to the brain because there is effective treatment.  Narconon has successfully helped many methamphetamine addicts not only stop using the drug but regain their life.

Here is the report.

‘New research from Brookhaven National Laboratory suggests that methamphetamine enters the brain just as quickly as cocaine but spreads further and stays in the brain longer.

Researchers measured brain uptake, distribution, and clearance of methamphetamine in 19 healthy, non-drug-abusing men by injecting them with radioactively tagged forms of methamphetamine and cocaine in doses too small to have any psychoactive effects. Through brain PET scans, the authors tracked the concentration, distribution and number of dopamine reuptake proteins in each subject’s brain.

The authors found that both drugs enter the brain quickly, but that methamphetamine clears the brain later and affects more brain regions than cocaine. “This … may help explain why the drug has such long-lasting behavioral and neurotoxic effects,” lead author Joanna Fowler said.

The researchers also separated their subjects by race to see if there were any differences that might explain why rates of methamphetamine abuse are lower among African Americans than Caucasians. However, while the scientists found significant differences in rates of uptake of cocaine — African Americans showed higher uptake, later rise to peak levels, and slower clearance — the scientists failed to find similar differences in methamphetamine metabolism.

“The differences observed for cocaine pharmacokinetics are surprising considering there are no differences in cocaine abuse prevalence between these two ethnic groups,” Fowler noted.