How does heroin affect the brain of its users?

Question

I know it does damage. Can the damage be reversed?

Answer 1

Heroin affects the brain functioning of a person. It affects the way that a person thinks and acts. It slows down a person's thinking, memory, and reaction time. It also alters the brain. Fortunately, the brain's functioning can be restored back to normal by getting the addict treated. Various medications and behavioral therapies will greatly help in bringing back an addict to sobriety.

Answer 2

Heroin Brain Damage

Answer 3

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RE:
How does heroin affect the brain of its users?
I know it does damage. Can the damage be reversed?

Answer 4

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Answer 5

Heroin causes Alzheimer-like brain damage

By Deborah Condon

Researchers have found that young heroin users suffer a level of brain damage similar to that seen in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease.

The research team from the University of Edinburgh studied the autopsied brains of 34 drug users with a history of opiate abuse - mainly heroin and methadone. Most had died of a drug overdose, but all were HIV negative and had no history of head injuries.

They also looked at the autopsied brains of 16 people who had no history of drug abuse or neurological impairment.

The average age in both groups was 26 and drug abusers as young as 17 were included.


The study found that young drug abusers were up to three times more likely to suffer brain damage, than those who did not use drugs. The drug abusers meanwhile sustained a level of brain damage normally only seen in much older people and similar to the early stages of Alzheimer's.

"Our study shows evidence of an increased risk of brain damage associated with heroin and methadone use, which may be highest in the young, when individuals are most likely to acquire the habit", said lead researcher, Professor Jeanne Bell.

Professor Bell said that in a previous study, the research team found that drug abuse causes low grade inflammation in the brain. Taken together, she explained, the two studies suggest that intravenous opiate abuse may be linked to premature ageing of the brain.

"This study shows that drug abuse can lead to a build up of proteins which cause severe nerve cell damage and death in essential parts of the brain. The drug users we looked at sadly died at a young age, but there are many others who don't realise the long-term effects that these drugs may be causing", Professor Bell said.


Details of this study are published in the journal, Neuropathology and Applied Neurobiology.

http://www.irishhealth.com/index.html?level=4&id=7759


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TO COUNTERACT the drug-related brain disruptions that produce addiction and cognitive and motor problems, researchers are seeking to mobilize two important brain capacities. First, under the right circumstances, the brain can self-repair some types of damage. Second, the brain is plastic-that is, when cell losses disrupt the neural circuits that the brain has been using for a specific function, it can learn to use other circuits to perform that function. Plasticity is extremely powerful, as shown by numerous patients' recoveries from extensive cerebral injuries.

Treatments that alleviate some drug-related brain damage are already here. In fact, in recent months, researchers have demonstrated that methadone therapy ameliorates a particular biochemical abnormality in the brains of opiate abusers. The longer patients stayed in therapy, the more this aspect of their brain biochemistry approached normal. NIDA is currently supporting several similar projects that use new brain imaging techniques to evaluate the full impact of current medication and behavioral treatments on brain neurology and biochemistry. Ultimately, such imaging is likely to become an important tool for assessing patients' treatment needs, their progress in treatment, and the effectiveness of treatment approaches.

Ultimately, researchers envision a two-stage process for helping restore drug abusers' impaired abilities. Interventions will be used first to stop ongoing brain damage and repair damaged brain cells, and then to retrain the brain. The rationale for this approach is that repairing the brain first will restore lost mental resources and capacities that patients then can apply in further treatment. Both behavioral and medication treatments may prove to be effective for both stages of treatment. The first stage may benefit from medications already in use to treat neurological conditions that produce brain abnormalities similar to those associated with abuse of some drugs. For example, deprenyl (used in Parkinson's disease) and acetylcysteine (being tested in Lou Gehrig's disease) have the potential to help people with drug-related neurological damage.

The new knowledge produced by drug abuse research not only brings present goals closer, it also makes possible new and farther-reaching goals. Today we are applying our understanding of brain processes to the development of treatments that directly target the brain mechanisms of addiction and to the alleviation or reversal of drug-related brain disruption. What we learn in that effort will undoubtedly lead to even more powerful insights and strategies for reducing drug abuse and addiction and their health and social consequences.
http://www.nida.nih.gov/NIDA_Notes/NNVol15N4/DirRepVol15N4.html

Answer 6

What are the immediate (short-term) effects of heroin use?
Soon after injection (or inhalation), heroin crosses the blood-brain barrier. In the brain, heroin is converted to morphine and binds rapidly to opioid receptors. Abusers typically report feeling a surge of pleasurable sensation, a "rush." The intensity of the rush is a function of how much drug is taken and how rapidly the drug enters the brain and binds to the natural opioid receptors.

Short-term effects of heroin

"Rush"
Depressed respiration
Clouded mental functioning
Nausea and vomiting
Suppression of pain
Spontaneous abortion
Heroin is particularly addictive because it enters the brain so rapidly. With heroin, the rush is usually accompanied by a warm flushing of the skin, dry mouth, and a heavy feeling in the extremities, which may be accompanied by nausea, vomiting, and severe itching.


After the initial effects, abusers usually will be drowsy for several hours. Mental function is clouded by heroin's effect on the central nervous system. Cardiac functions slow. Breathing is also severely slowed, sometimes to the point of death. Heroin overdose is a particular risk on the street, where the amount and purity of the drug cannot be accurately known.


What are the long-term effects of heroin use?
One of the most detrimental long-term effects of heroin is addiction itself. Addiction is a chronic, relapsing condition, characterized by compulsive drug seeking and use, and by neurochemical and molecular changes in the brain. Heroin also produces profound degrees of tolerance and physical dependence, which are also powerful motivating factors for compulsive use and abuse. As with abusers of any addictive drug, heroin abusers gradually spend more and more time and energy obtaining and using the drug. Once they are addicted, the heroin abusers' primary purpose in life becomes seeking and using drugs. The drugs literally change their brains.


Long-term effects of heroin

Addiction
Infections diseases, i.e., HIV/AIDS - hepatitis B & C
Collapsed veins
Bacterial infections
Abscesses
Infection of heart lining and valves
Arthritis and other rheumatic problems
Physical dependence develops with higher doses of the drug. With physical dependence, the body adapts to the presence of the drug and withdrawal symptoms occur if use is reduced abruptly. Withdrawal may occur within a few hours after the last time the drug is taken. Symptoms of withdrawal include restlessness, muscle and bone pain, insomnia, diarrhea, vomiting, cold flashes with goose bumps ("cold turkey"), and leg movements. Major withdrawal symptoms peak between 24 and 48 hours after the last dose of heroin and subside after about a week. However, some people have shown persistent withdrawal signs for many months. Heroin withdrawal is never fatal to otherwise healthy adults, but it can cause death to the fetus of a pregnant addict.

At some point during continuous heroin use, a person can become addicted to the drug. Sometimes addicted individuals will endure many of the withdrawal symptoms to reduce their tolerance for the drug so that they can again experience the rush.

Physical dependence and the emergence of withdrawal symptoms were once believed to be the key features of heroin addiction. We now know this may not be the case entirely, since craving and relapse can occur weeks and months after withdrawal symptoms are long gone. We also know that patients with chronic pain who need opiates to function (sometimes over extended periods) have few if any problems leaving opiates after their pain is resolved by other means. This may be because the patient in pain is simply seeking relief of pain and not the rush sought by the addict.



What are the medical complications of chronic heroin use?
Medical consequences of chronic heroin abuse include scarred and/or collapsed veins, bacterial infections of the blood vessels and heart valves, abscesses (boils) and other soft-tissue infections, and liver or kidney disease. Lung complications (including various types of pneumonia and tuberculosis) may result from the poor health condition of the abuser as well as from heroin's depressing effects on respiration. Many of the additives in street heroin may include substances that do not readily dissolve and result in clogging the blood vessels that lead to the lungs, liver, kidneys, or brain. This can cause infection or even death of small patches of cells in vital organs. Immune reactions to these or other contaminants can cause arthritis or other rheumatic problems.

Of course, sharing of injection equipment or fluids can lead to some of the most severe consequences of heroin abuse - infections with hepatitis B and C, HIV, and a host of other blood-borne viruses, which drug abusers can then pass on to their sexual partners and children.



How does heroin abuse affect pregnant women?
Heroin abuse can cause serious complications during pregnancy, including miscarriage and premature delivery. Children born to addicted mothers are at greater risk of SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome), as well. Pregnant women should not be detoxified from opiates because of the increased risk of spontaneous abortion or premature delivery; rather, treatment with methadone is strongly advised. Although infants born to mothers taking prescribed methadone may show signs of physical dependence, they can be treated easily and safely in the nursery. Research has demonstrated also that the effects of in utero exposure to methadone are relatively benign.



Why are heroin users at special risk for contracting HIV/AIDS and hepatitis B and C?

Because many heroin addicts often share needles and other injection equipment, they are at special risk of contracting HIV and other infectious diseases.