Meth Addiction Paper

Meth: A Potentially Curable Addiction The arising spread of methamphetamine has drawn some attention to researchers due to its devastating effects it has on its users and abusers. Meth was seen as a regional issue for many years along the West Coast but began to spread in Midwestern communities rapidly in the mid-nineties. Many hospitals began receiving patients, who had been abusing meth, with no idea how to treat the patients due to a lack of understanding. They soon discovered the heavy toll it had on its users and why the drug was so addicting. Meth proved to cause an addiction to the rush and high it gave to its users but showed its true colors through the extremely negative effects (Sommerfeld 2013). Methamphetamine is a powerful stimulant

There’s not a severe physical withdrawal with methamphetamine, but rather a feeling of anhedonia, an inability to experience pleasure, that can last for months and which leads to a lot of relapse at six months. The anhedonia appears to correspond with the period when the brain is recovering and producing abnormally low levels of dopamine. (Sommerfeld 2013) If a user takes in too much of the drug, they tend to become more aggressive, irritated, and have schizophrenic outbursts. The effects outweigh the feelings with meth. Many users can have heart damage, psychosis, long term neurological damage, are more prone to strokes, and have a chance of getting Parkinson’s Disease with age and abuse. Parkinson’s disease is a disorder found in the central nervous system that affects speech, motor skills, and memory. Many abusers have equal to worse effects than most people with Parkinson’s Disease no matter the age of the abuser. Many researchers have struggled with finding an efficient way to cure meth addiction (Sommerfeld

Their brain is out of tune, it’s not working very well, and it takes awhile to recover. (Sommerfeld