What Alcohol and Other Drugs Do To Our Brain
Submitted by Terry Gorski on October 15th, 2009Here is the critical point that I want you to remember. I want you to burn this idea deeply into your consciousness: Mind-altering drugs directly affect our brains and can cause brain damage. They make us feel better by disrupting the normal functioning of our brain, but we always pay a price.
Mind-altering drugs can cause brain damage. They make us feel better by disrupting the normal functioning of our brain. But we always pay a price.
Any time we take alcohol or other drugs into our bodies, we are tampering with the chemical balance of our brains. The brain is the most important and a complex organ in the body. Disrupting the way it works by using alcohol and other drugs can be dangerous.
Using alcohol or other drugs is like putting your brain in a bucket and pouring a combination of anesthetics and acid over it. While the acid is damaging the brain, the anesthetic is blocking out the pain. As a result, we feel fine, at least until the drug wears off. Once the drug wears off, we have difficulty functioning normally. The brain dysfunction associated with the use of alcohol and drugs can make it difficult to think clearly, numb and distort our feelings and emotions.
This will make our behavior difficult to control. This condition is in its early stages and is called Post Acute Withdrawal; (PAW). In its later stages, it can develop into permanent brain dysfunction.
Here is another thing to consider. Some people have brains that are sensitive to and easily damaged by alcohol and other drugs. If you are one of these unfortunate people, using drugs will do a lot of damage to your brain in a very short period of time. As a result, you will have to pay a higher price in the future for the good feelings you are getting today.
Some people have brains that are sensitive to and easily damaged by alcohol and other drugs.
If you are using alcohol or other drugs to handle your problems or to make you feel better, it is important to keep one thing in mind: Life does not give free rides. There is always a price to pay. We can pay now by stopping our use of alcohol any other drugs or we can pay later by having to deal with the pain and dysfunction of addiction.
The problem is that not everyone responds the same way to any drug. The effect of all drug use, even medicines that don’t make us high, is a directly result of both the drug we take, and how our own unique brain chemistry responds to that drug. Since each of our brains our different, no one will experience the exact same effect from the same drug. In the next Gorski Blog, we will look at how this individual response to a drug can cause us to really like and crave some drugs, feel little or no effect by others, and not like the effect of still other drugs.
