In Japan, a pharmacologist in 1919 made the methamphetamine as an upper. It helped with feeling tired and helped boost energy. Soon enough in the 1930s the United States started using amphetamines to treat narcolepsy and asthma. (Methamphetamine Prevention, 2005) Methamphetamine is mainly used to treat people with narcolepsy. When a study came out in the 1993 it showed that meth helped people with narcolepsy to stay awake. With this drug their sleeping episodes decreased as well as other common affect that people with narcolepsy get, such as hypnologic hallucinations. This might let people to believe that methamphetamine is put to a good use, but reality is that it can damage so much more. ( Merrill M. Miller, Roza Hajdukovic, and Milton K. Erman, 1993)
People that use methamphetamine for a long time look older than they really are. Methamphetamine causes the skin to lose elasticity and make the skin sag. Acne and blisters are signs of the abuse of the drug. The blood flow in the body is damaged and can no longer flow evenly around the body. This drug also damages the body’s capacity to fix itself and meth users can develop a disorder called formication. Formication is a constant picking at the skin because of the feeling or hallucination of insects on the body. This drug is used at times to lose weight and seem more attractive but in the process it makes the user less attractive. Hygiene is not an important issue in meth users. Meth users have mouth problems and most users have bad looking teeth. This all happens because of methamphetamine and this is a path that many people chose to take. There are so many other factors that involve this drug and how it affects the brain. (Frontline, 2006)
Dopamine is a tremendously important part in how the brain works. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that helps with the movement of the body as well as other things like thoughts or logic. The neurotransmitter is released after the satisfaction of sex or food. When this happens the person feels pleasure and gives the person motivation to do the act again. Dopamine is released when methamphetamine enters the body and causes the pleasure affect. That is why many people that try methamphetamine keep using because of the addicting pleasure. Too much dopamine can lead to further problems that include axons dying off or losing strength. These changes in the brain can change the person’s pleasures or the user may no longer feel pleasure at all. This is when depression comes in and some users become suicidal. Meth can be a very tricky and dangerous drug and can affect other neurotransmitters. Meth has a very similar chemical shape to dopamine and what is does is very tricky and dangerous. Meth is ingested and begins to release dopamine and as it does the dopamine begin to “park” in the receptors, but since meth has similar shape it also gets into some receptors. There are also some meth chemicals and other dopamines in the synapse, where some get recycled and other get thrown away. Well, most of the time a lot of dopamine gets thrown out and meth chemicals are recycled. All of this affects the brain and since not enough dopamine is being poured out the depression begins. (Montana.edu)
The brain is a very important part of the body that controls what people feel as well as how they learn. Well, the brain can accommodate itself very easily and learns how to take the amount every time. Then what happened was that the brain already knew when the drug was coming, so what it does is that the heart beat begins to slow down and when the drug enters the body the heart comes back to normal. By doing this the same amount will no longer give users the same high and that is when the users start to take more amounts of methamphetamine. This type of learning came from Pavlov’s theory and how the dogs salivated when they saw Pavlov walk in to the room. The brain can adapt very well, but sooner or later it will just collapse. The brain can only take so much and once people abuse it there is nothing doctors can do. (KCI, 1995)
Methamphetamine can bring on brain hyperthermia and become a tremendous problem. Hyperthermia brings up body and brain temperature very quickly and can cause brain damage. (P. Leon Brown, Roy A. Wise, and Eugene A. Kiyatkin, 2003)
So, people still might ask why Methamphetamine takes over people’s lives? Well, there are more than just a couple of things that give people the idea that meth is bad for the brain and the body. Family and friends are no longer around because they don’t want to deal with people that are always high on meth. People around the drug abuser as well as work and lifestyles are an essential part of life, but once the user gets obsessed with the drug they neglect everything and everyone around them. Aggression comes in to play when the drug user feels out of place and feels as they don’t belong in a normal society. Some drug users are lucky to get out before it gets worse or causes more damage to their families. These people that do clean up are sometimes treated with Wellbutrin to be extremely helpful. The reason why this helps treatment is because it helps stop some of the recycling neurotransmitters to let whatever dopamine is left to be more effective. Even though this is helpful it doesn’t help stimulate the barrels of dopamine it drain out. (KCI, 1995) Methamphetamine is bad for the body, brain, and heart.