Methamphetamine - Amphetamines - Meth Rehab & Treatment

What is it?
Amphetamines are stimulants, which speed up the way your body works. They make your heart work faster and they pump adrenaline into the system. The most common type of amphetamine on the street is a white powder called amphetamine sulphate. It is an illegally manufactured powder having a varied strength. Off the streets, it is usually between 6% and 10% purity. Another form of speed known as 'base' is much stronger and is between 25% and 35% pure. Drug Treatment Centers

Street Names
Whiz, Speed, Pep Pills, Co-pilots, Footballs, Uppers, Billy, Crystal, Glass, Ice Cream, Ice, Meth, Beans, Black Beauties, White Beanies, Crosses, Hearts
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How It Is Taken
Methods of usage varies from orally, snorting, smoking, and injecting.

What Does It Do?
Amphetamines give users extra energy for 4-6 hours. It prevents sleep, reduces appetite, speeds up breathing and heart rate and widens the pupils. At first the user feels more energetic, cheerful and confident. There is a "come down" during this time, usually 8 hours after using, the person feels sad, helpless, hopeless, nervous, angry, even violent. Because of these drastic effects, there is a high risk of psychological dependence. Regular users who take high doses may develop delusions, hallucinations and feelings of paranoia. This can develop into paranoid psychosis from which it may take many months to recover or which may be permanent. Many women who use amphetamines find that their periods become irregular or even stop.
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Medical Uses
Amphetamine is used medically for treatment of ADHD, obesity, and narcolepsy. Medical use of amphetamines was common during the 1950's and 1960's for depression and weight loss.

As a powerful stimulant, methamphetamine, even in small doses, can increase wakefulness and physical activity and decrease appetite. A brief, intense sensation, or rush, is reported by those who smoke or inject methamphetamine. Oral ingestion or snorting produces a long-lasting high instead of a rush, which reportedly can continue for as long as half a day. Both the rush and the high are believed to result from the release of very high levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine into areas of the brain that regulate feelings of pleasure.

Methamphetamine has toxic effects. In animals, a single high dose of the drug has been shown to damage nerve terminals in the dopamine-containing regions of the brain. The large release of dopamine produced by methamphetamine is thought to contribute to the drug's toxic effects on nerve terminals in the brain. High doses can elevate body temperature to dangerous, sometimes lethal, levels, as well as cause convulsions.

What are the long-term effects of methamphetamine abuse?

Long-term methamphetamine abuse results in many damaging effects, including addiction. Addiction is a chronic, relapsing disease, characterized by compulsive drug-seeking and drug use which is accompanied by functional and molecular changes in the brain. In addition to being addicted to methamphetamine, chronic methamphetamine abusers exhibit symptoms that can include violent behavior, anxiety, confusion, and insomnia. They also can display a number of psychotic features, including paranoia, auditory hallucinations, mood disturbances, and delusions (for example, the sensation of insects creeping on the skin, which is called "formication"). The paranoia can result in homicidal as well as suicidal thoughts.

With chronic use, tolerance for methamphetamine can develop. In an effort to intensify the desired effects, users may take higher doses of the drug, take it more frequently, or change their method of drug intake. In some cases, abusers forego food and sleep while indulging in a form of binging known as a "run," injecting as much as a gram of the drug every 2 to 3 hours over several days until the user runs out of the drug or is too disorganized to continue. Chronic abuse can lead to psychotic behavior, characterized by intense paranoia, visual and auditory hallucinations, and out-of-control rages that can be coupled with extremely violent behavior.

Although there are no physical manifestations of a withdrawal syndrome when methamphetamine use is stopped, there are several symptoms that occur when a chronic user stops taking the drug. These include depression, anxiety, fatigue, paranoia, aggression, and an intense craving for the drug.

In scientific studies examining the consequences of long-term methamphetamine exposure in animals, concern has arisen over its toxic effects on the brain. Researchers have reported that as much as 50 percent of the dopamine-producing cells in the brain can be damaged after prolonged exposure to relatively low levels of methamphetamine. Researchers also have found that serotonin-containing nerve cells may be damaged even more extensively. Whether this toxicity is related to the psychosis seen in some long-term methamphetamine abusers is still an open question.

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Short-term effects can include:
Increased attention and decreased fatigue
Increased activity
Decreased appetite
Euphoria and rush
Increased respiration
Hyperthermia
Long-term effects can include:
Dependence and addiction psychosis
paranoia
hallucinations
mood disturbances
repetitive motor activity
Stroke
Weight loss

How is methamphetamine different from other stimulants, such as cocaine?

Methamphetamine is classified as a psychostimulant, as are other drugs of abuse such as amphetamine and cocaine. We know that methamphetamine is structurally similar to amphetamine and the neurotransmitter dopamine, but it is quite different from cocaine. Although these stimulants have similar behavioral and physiological effects, there are some major differences in the basic mechanisms of how they work at the level of the nerve cell. However, the bottom line is that methamphetamine, like cocaine, results in an accumulation of the neurotransmitter dopamine, and this excessive dopamine concentration appears to produce the stimulation and feelings of euphoria experienced by the user. In contrast to cocaine, which is quickly removed and almost completely metabolized in the body, methamphetamine has a much longer duration of action and a larger percentage of the drug remains unchanged in the body. This results in methamphetamine being present in the brain longer, which ultimately leads to prolonged stimulant effects.

Although both methamphetamine and cocaine are psychostimulants, there are differences between them.

Methamphetamine vs. Cocaine

Man-made
Smoking produces a high that lasts 8-24 hours
50% of the drug is removed from the body in 12 hours
Limited medical use
Plant-derived
Smoking produces a high that lasts 20-30 minutes
50% of the drug is removed from the body in 1 hour
Used as a local anesthetic in some surgical procedures

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What are the medical complications of methamphetamine abuse?

Methamphetamine can cause a variety of cardiovascular problems. These include rapid heart rate, irregular heartbeat, increased blood pressure, and irreversible, stroke-producing damage to small blood vessels in the brain. Hyperthermia (elevated body temperature) and convulsions occur with methamphetamine overdoses, and if not treated immediately, can result in death.

Chronic methamphetamine abuse can result in inflammation of the heart lining, and among users who inject the drug, damaged blood vessels and skin abscesses. Methamphetamine abusers also can have episodes of violent behavior, paranoia, anxiety, confusion, and insomnia. Heavy users also show progressive social and occupational deterioration. Psychotic symptoms can sometimes persist for months or years after use has ceased.

Acute lead poisoning is another potential risk for methamphetamine abusers. A common method of illegal methamphetamine production uses lead acetate as a reagent. Production errors therefore may result in methamphetamine contaminated with lead. There have been documented cases of acute lead poisoning in intravenous methamphetamine abusers.

Fetal exposure to methamphetamine also is a significant problem in the United States. At present, research indicates that methamphetamine abuse during pregnancy may result in prenatal complications, increased rates of premature delivery, and altered neonatal behavioral patterns, such as abnormal reflexes and extreme irritability. Methamphetamine abuse during pregnancy may be linked also to congenital deformities.

Are methamphetamine abusers at risk for contracting HIV/AIDS and hepatitis B and C?

Increased HIV and hepatitis B and C transmission are likely consequences of increased methamphetamine abuse, particularly in individuals who inject the drug and share injection equipment. Infection with HIV and other infectious diseases is spread among injection drug users primarily through the re-use of contaminated syringes, needles, or other paraphernalia by more than one person. In nearly one-third of Americans infected with HIV, injection drug use is a risk factor, making drug abuse the fastest growing vector for the spread of HIV in the nation.

Research also indicates that methamphetamine and related psychomotor stimulants can increase the libido in users, in contrast to opiates which actually decrease the libido. However, long-term methamphetamine use may be associated with decreased sexual functioning, at least in men. Additionally, methamphetamine seems to be associated with rougher sex, which may lead to bleeding and abrasions. The combination of injection and sexual risks may result in HIV becoming a greater problem among methamphetamine abusers than among opiate and other drug abusers, something that already seems to be occurring in California.

NIDA-funded research has found that, through drug abuse treatment, prevention, and community-based outreach programs, drug abusers can change their HIV risk behaviors. Drug use can be eliminated and drug-related risk behaviors, such as needle-sharing and unsafe sexual practices, can be reduced significantly thus decreasing the risk of exposure. Therefore, drug abuse treatment is also highly effective in preventing the spread of HIV, hepatitis B, and hepatitis C.

What treatments are effective for methamphetamine abusers?

At this time the most effective treatments for methamphetamine addiction are cognitive behavioral interventions. These approaches are designed to help modify the patient's thinking, expectancies, and behaviors and to increase skills in coping with various life stressors. Methamphetamine recovery support groups also appear to be effective adjuncts to behavioral interventions that can lead to long-term drug-free recovery.

There are currently no particular pharmacological treatments for dependence on amphetamine or amphetamine-like drugs such as methamphetamine. The current pharmacological approach is borrowed from experience with treatment of cocaine dependence. Unfortunately, this approach has not met with much success since no single agent has proven efficacious in controlled clinical studies. Antidepressant medications are helpful in combating the depressive symptoms frequently seen in methamphetamine users who recently have become abstinent.

There are some established protocols that emergency room physicians use to treat individuals who have had a methamphetamine overdose. Because hyperthermia and convulsions are common and often fatal complications of such overdoses, emergency room treatment focuses on the immediate physical symptoms. Overdose patients are cooled off in ice baths, and anticonvulsant drugs may be administered also.

Acute methamphetamine intoxication can often be handled by observation in a safe, quiet environment. In cases of extreme excitement or panic, treatment with antianxiety agents such as benzodiazepines has been helpful, and in cases of methamphetamine-induced psychoses, short-term use of neuroleptics has proven successful.

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Methamphetamine is...
A powerfully addictive stimulant that dramatically affects many areas of the central nervous system. The drug can easily be made in clandestine laboratories from relatively inexpensive over-the-counter ingredients and can be purchased at a relatively low cost. These factors make methamphetamine a drug with a high potential for widespread abuse.

Sometimes referred to as "speed," "meth," and "chalk." In its smoked form it is often referred to as "ice," "crystal," "crank," and "glass." Comes in many forms and can be smoked, snorted, injected or orally ingested. A white, odorless, bitter tasting crystalline powder that can be easily dissolved in water or alcohol.

Populations using methamphetamine...
Traditionally associated with white, male, blue-collar workers, is now reportedly being used by diverse groups in all regions of the country.

Use is increasing among men who have sex with men and use other drugs, making this population more vulnerable to contracting and spreading sexually transmitted diseases, especially HIV/AIDS.

Young adults who attend "raves" or private clubs also are increasingly using methamphetamine. Include notable increases among homeless and runaway youth.

Increasing use of methamphetamine is reported among male and female commercial sex workers who also trade sex for drugs and among members of motorcycle gangs. Also, people in occupations (such as long-haul truckers) that demand long hours, mental alertness, and physical endurance, have been using this drug at increased rates.

New trends in methamphetamine use...
There is emerging evidence that methamphetamine is being administered increasingly via the intravenous route. Injecting this drug puts the user at increased risk for engaging in behaviors (both sexual and non-sexual) that could increase his/her chance of contracting HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, and other infectious diseases

Methamphetamine is not usually sold and bought on the streets like many of the other known illicit drugs. Users report that they obtain their supplies of methamphetamine from friends and acquaintances. It is typically a more closed or hidden sale, prearranged by "networking" with those producing the drug. Often it is sold "by invitation only" at all-night warehouse parties or "raves."

Because methamphetamine can be made with readily available inexpensive materials, there is great variation in the processes and chemicals used. This means that the final product that is sold as "methamphetamine" may not be methamphetamine at all, but rather a highly altered chemical mixture with some stimulant-like effects. Uncertainties about the drug's sources and the pharmacological agents used in its production makes it especially difficult to determine its toxicity, and resulting consequences and symptoms.

Methamphetamine is often being used in dangerous combination with other substances, including cocaine/crack, marijuana, heroin, and alcohol.

Long reported as the dominant drug problem in the San Diego, California, area, methamphetamine has become a substantial drug problem in other sections of the West and southwest as well. The drug has now been reported in both rural and urban areas of the South and Midwest. It is emerging in major urban areas in the East, but not to the extent seen in other regions of the country.

You can identify methamphetamine users by...
Signs of agitation, excited speech, have decreased appetites, and increased physical activity levels. Other common symptoms include: dilated pupils, high blood pressure, irregular heartbeat, chest pain, shortness of breath, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, and elevated body temperature.

Occasional episodes of sudden and violent behavior, intense paranoia, visual and auditory hallucinations, and bouts of insomnia. A tendency to compulsively clean and groom and repetitively sort and disassemble objects, such as cars and other mechanical devices.

Preventing methamphetamine use...
Effective prevention begins with an assessment of the specific nature of the drug problem within the local community and adapting the program accordingly. This could be assessed by looking at variety of indicators including drug treatment and emergency room admissions.

In general, prevention programs should start early, be comprehensive, and repetitively stress key points. Family-focused prevention efforts have been found to have a greater impact than strategies that focus on parents only or children/adolescents only.

The general prevention principles established in NIDA's research-based booklet entitled "Preventing Drug Use Among Children and Adolescents" hold for all drugs of abuse, including methamphetamine and serve as a good starting point for establishing programs in your community. (Call 1-800-729-6686 for a free copy)

Treating methamphetamine addiction...
Several cognitive behavioral interventions designed to help modify a patient's thinking and behaviors, and to increase skills in coping with various life stresses, have been found to be effective.

Unfortunately, there are currently no medications available to treat addiction or overdose to amphetamine or amphetamine-like drugs such as methamphetamine. Withdrawal from methamphetamine is typically characterized by drug craving, depressed mood, disturbed sleep patterns, and increased appetite. Antidepressant medications can be prescribed to combat the depressive symptoms frequently seen in methamphetamine withdrawal.

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see Drug Abuse