• Question: can drugs affect you badly? If so. How?

    Asked by anon-188267 to Nadine on 16 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Nadine Mirza

      Nadine Mirza answered on 16 Nov 2018:


      Thanks so much for your question! Because there are so very many different drugs (in seven different categories) I’ve tried to cover each one to give you the best info- sorry it’s so long!!!!
      Yes drugs can definitely affect you badly though different drugs would do that in different ways. Essentially, the purpose of a drug is to alter your brain chemistry. Now sometimes this can be a good thing, especially when prescribed by a doctor to treat something. But drug misuse can lead to severe effects depending on the type of drug:
      1) Stimulants make the body feel like it’s speeding up. Caffeine is an example of one that’s safe to take when not overused. More dangerous ones are ecstasy and cocaine. These can cause anxiety, paranoia, depression, heart failure, stroke and seizures.
      2) Depressants slow the body down. They can cause delirium, slow down thinking, low blood pressure, impaired memory and hallucinations.
      3) Hallucinogens, like LSD or Peyote, make it difficult for brain cells to communicate with one another. They cause rapidly shifting emotions, paranoia, hallucinations, delusions, nausea, fear and can distort your brain’s functioning.
      4) Dissociatives like Ketamine or PCP, distort perception of reality or cause people to feel as if they are outside their bodies. These can cause depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, speech difficulties, memory loss, numbness, and also hallucinations.
      5) Opioids are painkillers and the most well known one, which is used in hospitals, is morphine. However, heroin is also one and can cause liver, heart and lung damage, drowsiness, sedation, constipation and irreversible brain impairment.
      6) Inhalents are drugs that-surprise-we can inhale as fumes or gas that are used to make one feel happy. This can cause loss of smell, brain damage, nosebleeds, weakness, loss of consciousness and slurred speech.
      7) And finally, cannabis or marijuana has the effects of both a hallucinogen and a depressant. Sometimes it can be prescribed and many cancer patients take it to help cope with chemotherapy for example. But when abused it lowers immunity to illness, can lead to depression and anxiety, slows down your reactions and impairs you sense of time.
      So you have all these different types of drugs that are taken to experience different sensations, and each does a lot of damage to your body and your brain in some ways. But drugs also do something along with all this stuff, which is make you experience withdrawal.
      Basically, for whatever reason you’re taking the drug eg. taking a stimulant to make you more alert or active, eventually your brain chemistry becomes altered by the drug and your brain becomes reliant on that drug to achieve that result eg. without stimulants you can now never be alert. You then need to take more and more of the stimulant to try and achieve the same result. Eventually, an overdose of the drug in trying to achieve this would probably irreversibly damage your brain or kill you.
      I really hope this has explained how drugs can badly affect your brain!

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