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- What Is Methamphetamine Misuse?
- The decreasing number of users is expected to keep going as long as more people avoid prescription stimulants
People know that methamphetamine is nasty stuff. As such, only 1 percent of adolescents in 8th, 10th and 12th grade make use of the drug. There has been a steady decline in recent years even in the number of adults who choose to use methamphetamine. In 2012, 133,000 people have tried methamphetamine; a number that is half of what was recorded from 2002-2004.
- Methamphetamine “Meth” is a man-made stimulant sometimes manufactured in underground labs from cold meds like pseudoephedrine and other toxic chemicals like those found in antifreeze solutions, battery acid, and drain cleaner.
- Methamphetamine can make its user more physically active and awake with an increase blood pressure reading, rapid heart rate, and high body temperature.
- The repeated use of this drug can also cause teeth to fall out and induce users to pick at their skin until they get open sores.
What Is Methamphetamine Misuse?
Methamphetamine is misused when it is taken more frequently than what is prescribed by your doctor. An abuse in use may also happen when there is an increase in the dosage beyond what is only prescribed; when the stimulant is prescribed by a doctor for someone else, such as a friend but is taken by another; and when the medication is taken even if ADHD is not diagnosed.
There are times when patients misuse prescription stimulants for the sake of getting high, in high hopes of losing weight, or boosting their study performance. While prescription stimulants are known to promote wakefulness, studies have shows that they do not necessarily enhance the person’s ability to think or learn, especially with those who do not have ADHD.
The misuse of prescription stimulants has been found to have negative effects in users, which are manifested by symptoms like:
- Paranoia
- Depression
- Sleep Problems
- Serious Heart Complications
- Stroke Due To High Doses of Prescription Stimulants
- Abnormally high levels of Dopamine, the chemical that produces the “high” effect.
The decreasing number of users is expected to keep going as long as more people avoid prescription stimulants
In the recent years, the number of teens misusing prescription stimulants like Adderall and Ritalin has been decreasing. For instance, around 6 percent of teens have been reported to have misused Adderall in 2016; a slight decrease from the statistics in 2015. Furthermore, only around 1 percent of teens have been reported to have misused Ritalin, a figure down by 5 percent from 2004.
However, there is still a lot of work to do to prevent the use of methamphetamine. The drug is increasingly becoming more and more available and in its pure, most dangerous form and even cheaper than before. The U.S. Dept. of Justice once considered methamphetamine a huge threat to the country.
There are a number Facebook pages devoted to showing how destructive methamphetamine is to the body. There are highly disturbing stories of people who got addicted to methamphetamine and while a few consider it as scare tactics, they surely depict how awful the drug is.
