Methamphetamine Use Disorder: The Next Addiction Crisis

With the love and support of your family, and loved ones, we make sure to treat your addiction by understanding the root reasons behind it. We do everything in our power to help you succeed in breaking the cycle of addiction, and know that with the right kind of help, everyone is capable of healing. Contact us and we can begin the process of building a life worth living. We pride ourselves on carefully selecting men and women who are not only thoroughly informed and knowledgeable about addiction, but also those who have Drug rehabilitation personally experienced the trials and blessings of recovery themselves. Our team is comprised of doctors, clinicians, therapists, mentors, and recovery coaches with decades of experience in the field. Carolina Center for Recovery is lucky to have some of the most qualified and experienced addiction specialists in the country.

A soldier going to battle on Pervitin usually found himself unable to perform effectively for the next day or two. Suffering from a drug hangover and looking more like a zombie than a great warrior, he had to recover from the side effects. Methamphetamine belongs to the substituted phenethylamine and substituted amphetamine chemical classes. It is related to the other dimethylphenethylamines as a positional isomer of these compounds, which share the common chemical formula C10H15N. People who use meth often need a professional counselor or drug treatment program to help them get better. Meth addiction is one of the hardest drug addictions to treat, but it can be done.

Increased Sex Drive

Consult a healthcare professional today to undergo an assessment. The powder form of methamphetamine is usually white, beige, or light tan. This is a less potent form of meth and is sometimes dissolved and injected or swallowed. Crystal meth looks like glass fragments or small crystals or large chunks of crystals.

How to Recognize and Treat Meth Addiction

But if you choose to use meth, there are steps you can take to make your experience safer. There’s ongoing research into the health effects of secondhand meth smoke. Still, you may test positive for the drug if you’re around the smoke. Some people swallow it in a pill form or smoke it by heating up crystals in a glass bowl or pipe and breathing in the vapors. In the past, middle-aged white people used this cheap drug most often. But over the past decade, rates have gone up among Black people and younger folks aged 18-23.

SUD treatment

When you take a drug, certain genetic factors can increase your risk of developing an addiction.Regular drug use changes your brain chemistry, affecting how you experience pleasure. This can make it difficult to simply stop using the drug once you’ve started. Both racemic methamphetamine and dextromethamphetamine are illicitly trafficked and sold owing to their potential for recreational use. The highest prevalence of illegal methamphetamine use occurs in parts of Asia and Oceania, and in the United States, where racemic methamphetamine and dextromethamphetamine are classified as Schedule II controlled substances. While dextromethamphetamine is a more potent drug, racemic methamphetamine is illicitly produced more often, owing to the relative ease of synthesis and regulatory limits of chemical precursor availability. By law, private insurers have to cover some of the costs of substance use treatment, and most drug rehab centers accept private and public health insurance.

What support is available to help me stop using methamphetamine?

• Meth causes an excessive release of these neurotransmitters while inhibiting their reuptake, leading to intense euphoria and overstimulation.
• It also describes withdrawal from the drug, dependency treatment, and the extent of its use in the United States.
• Methamphetamine affects the brain and body function through its profound impact on neurotransmitters, particularly dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin.
• There are many short-term and long-term effects of using crystal meth.
• During World War II, methamphetamine tablets were handed out to German, Japanese and American soldiers and pilots to keep them awake during long military actions.

According to a 2018 review of studies, people who have had adverse childhood experiences are more likely to develop methamphetamine-related psychiatric symptoms (MAP). In this article we will explore the symptoms and causes of meth addiction, how doctors diagnose and treat it, and when to speak with a healthcare professional. The substance is similar in chemical composition to amphetamine, which is a drug doctors prescribe to treat conditions including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and narcolepsy.

Lifestyle Quizzes

People who abuse METH heavily suffer from a variety of neurological consequences of chronic abuse of the drug and have the hardest time quitting METH use 29-31. Chronic METH users are at higher risk for developing Parkinson’s disease than non-users 32. Conversely, Parkinson’s disease patients are more prone to addictions 33. These findings implicate a compromised nigrostriatal pathway in individuals heavily dependent on METH. Animal studies showed that intermittent and long access stimulant self-administration changes the brain in different ways to influence motivated behavior 34.

This program is ideal for educating patients and their families, school faculty and staff, behavioral and mental health professionals, and more. By the 1950s, amphetamine, marketed as Benzedrine, was widely used to treat asthma, hayfever and colds. During the Vietnam War, amphetamine, nicknamed “pep pills,” was issued to American soldiers to “increase alertness” during lengthy jungle expeditions. Once the drug wore off, many soldiers reported feeling anxious, angry and aggressive. As with other substances that may cause a person to develop an SUD, using meth can lead to physical, mental, and social difficulties.

Sustained Recovery

Your loved one might deny having a problem at all or refuse to seek help. If that happens, consider seeking out additional resources or find a support group for family members or friends of people living with addiction. What’s more, combining meth — a stimulant — with depressants like alcohol, opioids, or benzodiazepines can have a tug-of-war effect on your bodily functions. However, drug tests can detect even tiny amounts of meth, so you’ll need to wait much longer before you can test negative on a drug screening. A hair test, on the other hand, could reveal meth usage up to 3 months after you last used meth. In everyday language, that means most of the meth will leave your system before the day is done.

Rates of use continue to rise due in part to the drug’s availability and low cost. In 2023, 2.6 million Americans reported using meth in the past year. The 2023 National Survey on Drug Use and Health also found that 1.8 million people, or 0.6% of Americans over 12 years old, had a methamphetamine use disorder. Using methamphetamine is a risk to your physical and mental health. This is partly from the drug itself and partly from the things you tend to do when using it. Harm can also be caused by contaminants and by-products of the manufacturing process.

We can offer guidance and insight into the recovery process, and will work to provide you with clarity into the steps that lay ahead. Apart from medications, another novel approach being tested for MUD treatment is the administration of METH antibodies (passive immunotherapy) or compounds that turn the body’s own immune system against METH (active immunotherapy). Passive METH immunotherapy involves vaccination with a pre-produced high affinity monoclonal antibody designed to bind to METH in a bloodstream following METH administration. Active METH immunotherapy involves vaccination with an immunogenic METH-containing conjugate which is able to stimulating specific antibodies capable of sequestering METH in the periphery 124. Reduction of METH entering the brain diminishes its reinforcing effects, thus reducing METH use and relapse 125.

Since these events can also be caused by common risk factors such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and genetics, sometimes meth use isn’t always taken into consideration when determining the cause of death. If meth abuse is continued over a long period of time, the brain begins to rely on its effects and creates a need for its use. This dependence can then turn into addiction — one of the most dangerous of all long-term effects of meth use. Other possible long-term health effects can be divided into physical and psychological categories.