The Science of Getting High

[Rob W. Case]

Some individuals use drugs to escape reality. Some use drugs to have “fun” as they call it temporarily, however getting high is an abuse to your body that can kill you.

First off, let me begin by offering this scenario. You take a puff of marijuana, snort cocaine, or whatever. You then feel this high. Your blood pressure rises, and there seems to be a cork on the harsh reality of the real world. There is a science behind it.

When you take drugs, the drugs are intended for medicinal purposes…obviously. If your body has drugs in its system, and nothing to cure, the medicine gets “confused” and then stimulates what it can. It flows in the bloodstream and affects the organs that all drugs are designed to affect. It imposes on your immune system. The conflict between the drugs and the body of the healthy person abusing it are affecting the brain, the heart, and other organs that your bloodstream leads to.

When it reaches the brain, some cannot think properly. All they care about is relaxation. Some people use this as a therapy for their problems, however with some, their problems snowball, and when they come back to reality they either have to deal with that giant snowball, or think they have to find “another way out.” I believe this is the reason why so many drug users (who are depressed) commit suicide.

Overdosing: Is where the body can’t take all the drugs anymore.

Drug use just to get high is an abuse, and when you abuse something too much, it doesn’t work anymore.

[MysteriousGuestX]

I consider the abuse of alcohol as getting "high". Maybe it doesn't make you euphorically happy but many people use it to get rid of their problems. What I want to know is how much alcohol does it take before you are abusing it?

I have a friend that gets drunk almost every weekend and he is only 19. I would consider him an alcoholic but co-workers of mine (also around 18) think that you're only an alcoholic if you are dependent upon it. They themselves only think that you can have fun if your drunk. Being a non-drinker myself (not from my dislike of alcohol but from the dislike of the taste) I think that what they say shows that they themselves have a dependency on alcohol that they can't recognize.

Maybe someone can shed some light on this subject for me.

[Rob W. Case]

MysteriousGuestX said:

I consider the abuse of alcohol as getting "high". Maybe it doesn't make you euphorically happy but many people use it to get rid of their problems. What I want to know is how much alcohol does it take before you are abusing it?

I have a friend that gets drunk almost every weekend and he is only 19. I would consider him an alcoholic but co-workers of mine (also around 18) think that you're only an alcoholic if you are dependent upon it. They themselves only think that you can have fun if your drunk. Being a non-drinker myself (not from my dislike of alcohol but from the dislike of the taste) I think that what they say shows that they themselves have a dependency on alcohol that they can't recognize.

Maybe someone can shed some light on this subject for me.

Q: What I want to know is how much alcohol does it take before you are abusing it?

A: Everybody has a different tolerance level. For example, heavier men may have more of a tolerance to alcohol than a skinnier man. When I drink, and I feel comfortable, then I stop. If you exceed that comfort limit, then you tend to get lightheaded, you cannot access thought as well as if you were sober, and you get drunk. Some people spend lots of time in front of the toilet seats.

I think that people who drink alcohol to get rid of their problems attempt to do so because when you are lightheaded, your problems do in fact, seem lighter. In other words, you keep pushing them away, and pushing them away. It is dangerous to use alcohol in such a case because the more you push your problems away, the more they will return, and eventually snowball into something that is so big, some of the weaker souls tend to consider suicide.

Addiction Vs. "Having Fun"

When I take a drink, I do it to relax, but I do it once in a while. This is the best way to tell if your friend is an alcoholic.

If your friend says he "NEEDS" a drink, then he is dependent on alcohol. After all, needs are necessities.

You are right about your friends at work. If they only think that being drunk is the only way to have fun, then they are dependent on alcohol to bring them that fun. It is their chance to drop their true selves, and behave in manners that they wouldn't do so if they were not drunk. In other words, it is their dependency on alcohol that allows them to escape reality. When they turn 21, they might drink less.

Being able to recognize that they may have a problem might be hard because there is a pride thing that needs to be considered. Some people have too much pride to admit that they may have a problem. If I was addicted to pain killers, I would not go out and advertise it.


You said, "I think that what they say shows that they themselves have a dependency on alcohol that they can't recognize."

Replace the word "can't" with the word "won't" and you got it down pat.

[Rob W. Case]

Here is an interesting article from the New York Times.

Amazing huh?


Behavior: Marijuana and a Slower Mind and Body
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR

March 21, 2006
Vital Signs

www.nytimes.com/2006/03/21/health/21beha.html?pagewanted=print

Long-term heavy users of marijuana perform significantly worse on tests of mental agility and physical dexterity than short-term users or nonusers, even when they have abstained from smoking for more than 24 hours, new research shows.

Scientists, led by Lambros Messinis, a neuropsychologist at University Hospital in Petras, Greece, tested three groups.

They were 20 long-term users who had smoked four or more marijuana cigarettes a week for at least 10 years, 20 short-term users who had smoked a similar amount for 5 to 10 years and, finally, 24 people, representing a control group, who had used marijuana no more than 20 times in their lives and not in the prior two years.

The long- and short-term users were drawn from participants in a drug rehabilitation program.

Even after controlling for I.Q., other drug use, age, sex, depression and other variables, long-term users scored significantly lower than control group members and shorter-term users on tests of verbal fluency, memory and coordination.

The exercises included naming objects when shown pictures of them, thinking up words with the same initial letter, listening to lists of words and later recalling them and drawing lines in the proper order among numbers and letters randomly spread on paper.

The study appears in the March issue of Neurology.

Dr. Messinis acknowledged that the results might have differed with marijuana users from the general population. Still, he said, the study was carefully controlled, and frequent heavy use appeared to have significant negative effects on performance.