Meth Addiction: Signs, Symptoms & Treatment Options

But you can certainly connect them to helpful resources and continue to offer support as they work toward recovery. Emphasize you care about them and want to offer support whenever they need it. You’ll soon start receiving the latest Mayo Clinic health information you requested in your inbox. People struggling with addiction usually deny they have a problem and hesitate to seek treatment. An intervention presents a loved one with a structured opportunity to make changes before things get even worse and can motivate someone to seek or accept help. In the most severe cases, a person can die or become strongly handicapped because of the damage caused by meth.

• Blood pressure spikes, thoughts race, users often have to keep moving even though they’re accomplishing nothing.
• Crystal meth, also called just meth, is an illegal drug that’s manufactured and created with a combination of cold medicine ingredients and toxic chemicals.
• Even if you can’t take them every time, your support can help them successfully navigate the first steps toward recovery, which can empower them to continue.
• The substance is similar in chemical composition to amphetamine, which is a drug doctors prescribe to treat conditions including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and narcolepsy.
• It’s important to recognize this addiction and seek help for it as soon as possible.
• If someone is showing signs of overdosing on meth, it is crucial to call 911 immediately.

Worried About Someone Using Crystal Meth? Here’s What to Do (and What to Avoid)

With treatment, understanding, and a good support network, it is possible for a person to recover from meth addiction. The term “addiction” describes a pattern of behavior rather than bodily processes, such as withdrawal. For example, a person may feel compelled to gamble, despite harmful consequences, without ever using drugs or alcohol.

Signs of Meth Use

Practicing relapse prevention and management techniques can help improve your chances of recovery in the long term. Your loved one might deny having a problem at all or refuse to seek help. If that happens, consider seeking out additional resources or find a support group for family members or friends of people living with addiction. The first step is to recognize any misconceptions you might have about substance use and addiction.

Long-term Health Risks

It’s important to recognize this addiction and seek help for it as soon as possible. Behavioral therapies have proven effective in treating meth addiction and can help you live a substance-free life. Using meth triggers the release of large amounts of the chemical dopamine in the brain, resulting in feelings of extreme happiness meth abuse and pleasure. This high is addictive and causes people to crave the drug repeatedly in order to achieve it. It’s also dangerous to combine meth with other stimulants, like cocaine. If you take more than one stimulant at a time, you have a higher risk of experiencing a stroke or heart attack, and your body may overheat.

Meth Addiction: Signs, Effects, and Treatment

This is because methamphetamine floods the brain with dopamine, the feel-good chemical responsible for pleasure, reward and motivation. Blood pressure spikes, thoughts race, users often have to keep moving even though they’re accomplishing nothing. Alcohol could potentially boost the effects of meth by heightening its euphoric effects. But it may also lead you to feel more anxious and agitated — not to mention increase your risk of alcohol poisoning or overdose. You may not feel alcohol’s effects as you typically would, so you might drink more alcohol than your body can process. In addition to the mechanisms of physical dependence, there are also social, experiential, and environmental factors that may place a person at greater risk of developing crystal meth addiction.

• This can make it difficult to simply stop using the drug once you’ve started.
• When meth wears off, dopamine and serotonin are both depleted, resulting in anxiety and depression.
• Mental health symptoms like paranoia and delusions may take longer to disappear.
• “Tweaking” occurs when the body and mind of the meth addict stop reacting to the drug, and the addict “enters a state that is almost psychotic,” according to Methamphetamine Addiction.
• Even if they feel ready to accept help, they might have lingering worries about judgement from others or legal penalties.
• Dependence can lead to strong cravings and compulsive use in the absence of meth in order to avoid unwanted withdrawal symptoms.

A key difference between meth and amphetamines, however, is that greater amounts of meth pass into the brain when compared with a similar dose of amphetamines, making it a more potent stimulant. Also, the elimination half-life of methamphetamine is 12 hours. This means that your system would need at least this amount of time to eliminate 50% of the drug. Meth or methamphetamine is a stimulant drug like cocaine, affecting the central nervous system (CNS).

Examples include methylenedioxymethamphetamine, also called MDMA, ecstasy or molly, and gamma-hydroxybutyric acid, known as GHB. Other examples include ketamine and flunitrazepam or Rohypnol — a brand used outside the U.S. — also called roofie. These drugs are not all in the same category, but they share some similar effects and dangers, including long-term harmful effects. A weaker form of methamphetamine can help treat conditions like narcolepsy (a brain condition that causes a person to fall asleep at inappropriate moments) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Tolerance is when someone requires increasing amounts for the drug to be effective. Dependence often develops alongside tolerance and is when a drug cannot be stopped without experiencing withdrawal symptoms. The drive to prevent withdrawal symptoms is a significant contributor to addictive behaviors.