Methamphetamine might get people higher — a higher risk for long-term damage to the brain, that is.
A recent study on methamphetamine and its long-term effects questions the recovery process for addicts.
Habibeh Khoshbouei, an associate professor of neuroscience in the UF College of Medicine — along with Ashley North of Meharry Medical College and their colleagues — studied mice that were induced into meth addiction, examined their behavior and looked at the activity in the hippocampus, a region of the brain involved in memory retention and formation.
The researchers studied the effects of meth on the animals and the impact on the animals’ change in behavior after they stopped receiving the drug, Khoshbouei said. They also wanted to see the changes in brain chemistry due to meth addiction.
The study resulted in the mice that took meth not having any changes in their hippocampal activity. Their observed behaviors did not change. Researchers also examined the mice after they stopped taking the drug.
The animals experiencing withdrawal showed changes in memory. These effects were seen two weeks after withdrawal began, which is equivalent to one year of withdrawal in humans.
“The results tell us that when you treat drug addicts, you should consider the short-term treatment — if you want to give them drugs or counseling — but we’ve got to know that because of the long-term consequences,” Khoshbouei said, “they should consider addiction as a chronic disease and as a changing of biology, so we have to treat these people who are drug addicts for a longer period of time.”
Khoshbouei compared the changes that occurred in the brains of mice experiencing meth withdrawal to neurological changes seen in degenerative brain disorders.
“The good news is addiction is a treatable condition, but the bad news is that exposure to methamphetamine specifically increases risk of long-term disease changes in the memory and hippocampal activity,” Khoshbouei said.
She said exposure to methamphetamine and drugs in general is very toxic.
Hayley Kamin, a 25-year-old UF doctoral student studying developmental psychology, said people have to accept withdrawal will be a long-term process.
“You have to remember that it is a period, and it is going to take time, and you have to be willing to accept some of the negative or unpleasant effects of making that life change,” she said.
