Neurological Damage Inflicted By Club Drugs Similar To Traumatic Brain Injury?
Yet another reason to avoid “experimenting” with strange drugs you’ve never heard of: the damage caused by overdose and over use of so-called “club” drugs is similar to the damage caused by physical brain injury. According to a new study out by the University of Florida, a chain of similar chemical reactions occurs in both situations, reactions that result in long-term and short-term memory loss, irreversible brain damage, and cell death.
A drug called MDMA or Ecstasy first became popular in the underground rave scene back in the early 1990s and has increased in popularity over time. Now it is commonly found in dance clubs and even fraternity parties, a “happy” drug that makes people feel the awe and wonder of a 2 year old it can actually turn the user into someone with the brain capacity of an actual 2 year old.
Firas Kobeissy is a postdoctoral associate in the College of Medicine department of psychiatry. He says, “Using methamphetamine is like inflicting a traumatic brain injury on yourself. We found that a lot of brain cells are being injured by these drugs. That’s alarming to society now. People don’t seem to take club drugs as seriously as drugs such as heroin or cocaine.”
Nor are prescription opiates taken as seriously as they should be. Simple experimentation with pain pills like OxyContin, Vicodin, morphine and Lortab can result in similar brain damaging effects. And due to the fact that prescription medications are in almost every medicine cabinets, they are even easier to procure.
Another problem is that the dose that will have toxic effects varies for everyone. There’s no way to know who will respond with permanent brain damage and who won’t. One pill, two pills, three, in combination with other drugs or alone.
“Sometimes people go to the clubs and take three tablets of Ecstasy or speed,” Kobeissy said. “That may be a toxic dose for them. Toxic effects can be seen for methamphetamine, Ecstasy and traumatic injury in different areas of the brain.”
Taking opiate painkillers habitually and without regard to the dose or combination is the action of addiction. Suboxone treatment is a good way to transfer the addiction to a drug that is less physically damaging and mentally overwhelming, allowing for an easier detox and withdrawal from opiates.
For more information on this and other studies, check out the University of Florida website.
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