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How Chronic Drug Use Affects the Brain

understanding the effects of addiction on the brain

Medically Reviewed By:  Dr. Patricia Sullivan, MD MPH

An iconic series of commercials illustrate how addiction affects the brain. The commercials used simple imagery: An egg (“This is your brain.”), and the egg cracked into a sizzling frying pan (“This is your brain on drugs.”). It’s simple, but the Partnership for a Drug-Free America commercial effectively drives home the point of how drugs affect the brain over time.

If that’s too reductive, there is a mountain of research showing the connection between drug addiction and the brain. Unfortunately, America’s most common drug problems stem from meth, opioids, heroin, and alcohol. Each one of those has a devastating impact on the brain. Suppose you or a loved one are struggling with addiction and want to stop harming your brain. Call (385) 327-7418. Do not give up. You can overcome addiction.

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Chronic drug and alcohol use definitely affect the brain. Jump to the information you need to learn in this guide below:

understanding the effects of addiction on the brain

How Addiction Affects the Brain

The brain is a complex but fragile organ. So, learning the impact drugs have on it is invaluable. Different parts of the brain are responsible for coordinating and performing specific functions.

Drugs can alter important brain areas that are necessary for life-sustaining functions. They can also drive the compulsive drug abuse that marks addiction. The areas of the brain that drugs can alter include:

  • The basal ganglia play an important role in positive forms of motivation, such as the pleasure derived from eating, socializing, and sex. It’s also involved in forming habits and routines.
  • The extended amygdala deals with stress, anxiety, irritability, and unease. These are characteristics of drug withdrawal that cause a person to seek the drug again. As drug use increases, this circuit becomes even more sensitive.
  • The prefrontal cortex allows planning, problem-solving, decision-making, and impulse control. Since this is the part of the brain that matures last, drugs make teens more vulnerable. A person with a substance use disorder seeks drugs compulsively. With reduced impulse control, the balance between the prefrontal cortex circuits shifts among the circuits of the basal ganglia and the extended amygdala.
  • The brain stem controls basic functions critical to life, such as heart rate, breathing, and sleeping. When people overdose on drugs like opioids, the result can be depressed breathing and death.

Addiction affects the brain by tapping into its communication system. It then interferes with the way neurons normally send, receive, and process information.

For example, the chemical makeup of heroin is similar to the natural neurotransmitters the body has. As a result, heroin attaches onto and activates neurons. But the neurons aren’t activated the same way as those of a drug-free brain. This leads to abnormal messages being sent through the network.

Chronic Meth Use and The Brain

Methamphetamine use has increased in the United States with the mega-labs that produce a cheaper, more potent drug. In 2018, data in the National Survey on Drug Use and Health shows that approximately 1.9 million people used meth in the past year.

Unlike some other drugs, it is extremely easy to become addicted to meth. The reason is that meth increases the amount of natural chemical dopamine in the brain. Dopamine is involved in body movement, motivation, and reinforcement of rewarding behaviors. The drug rapidly releases high levels of dopamine in the reward areas of the brain.

Meth shows how drugs affect the brain over time. Neuroimaging studies show changes in the dopamine systems associated with reduced motor speed and impaired verbal learning. Other studies on chronic meth users reveal serious structural and functional changes in areas of the brain associated with emotion and memory. Researchers say those changes may account for the emotional and cognitive problems observed in long-term meth users.

According to NIDA, research in primate models finds that meth alters brain structures involved in decision-making. It also impairs the ability to suppress useless or counterproductive habitual behaviors. Researchers speculate that these changes could explain why meth addiction is hard to treat. This could also explain why the chances of relapse early in treatment are so high.

NIDA reports on another study that shows recovery in some brain regions after at least 14 months of not using meth. Recovering meth users showed improved performance on motor and verbal memory tests. However, function in other brain regions did not return even after 14 months of abstinence. Researchers say this indicates how drugs affect the brain over time and how signs and symptoms of long-term drug use can last a very long time.

Opioid Use and The Brain

The nation continues to fight the opioid epidemic engulfing all parts of the country. Unfortunately, opioids were involved in 46,802 overdose deaths in 2018 — nearly 70 percent of all overdose deaths.

Opioids are insidious. They bind to and activate opioid receptors on cells located in many areas of the brain, spinal cord, and other organs in the body involved in feeling pain and pleasure.

When opioids attach to these receptors, they block pain signals sent from the brain to the body. As a result, large amounts of dopamine are released throughout the body. Because the dopamine release feels good, users want to repeat the experience. Addiction and the brain are not partners.

Opioids demonstrate how addiction affects the brain by stimulating opioid receptors in deeper brain regions. The result is drowsiness and respiratory depression. This can cause hypoxia, a condition that results when too little oxygen reaches the brain. Additionally, it can cause an anoxic in which no oxygen reaches the brain. According to the Brain Injury Association of Virginia, hypoxic and anoxic brain injuries can cause:

  • Short-term memory loss
  • Problems with concentration
  • Vision and hearing loss
  • Loss of coordination and balance
  • Difficulty doing things that were once familiar routines
  • Confusion, irritability, and depression
  • Impairments in reading, writing and communicating

The longer the brain is deprived of oxygen, the higher the risk for more serious brain damage. For example, just three to five minutes of oxygen deprivation causes permanent brain injury.

A Word On Heroin Use and The Brain

Heroin use is on the rise. According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), in 2016, about 948,000 Americans reported using heroin in the past year. The increase appears mostly due to young adults aged 18–25. Also, in 2016 170,000 people started using heroin.

There is growing concern that the increase in heroin-related overdoses is an unintended consequence of blocking the availability of prescription opioids.

Research shows that prescription opioid misuse is a risk factor for heroin use. 

Eighty percent of new heroin users start by abusing prescription opioids.

Heroin can activate neurons because its chemical structure mimics that of a natural neurotransmitter. How addiction affects the brain is shown in how heroin’s similarity in structure “fools” receptors.

This allows the drugs to attach to and activate the neurons. Although these drugs mimic the brain’s chemicals, they don’t activate neurons in the same way as a natural neurotransmitter, and they lead to abnormal messages being transmitted through the network.

According to NIDA, symptoms of long-term drug use change the physical structure and physiology of the brain. It creates long-term imbalances in neuronal and hormonal systems that are not easily reversed.

Signs and symptoms of long-term drug use also include some deterioration of the brain’s white matter due to heroin use. This may affect decision-making abilities, the ability to regulate behavior, and responses to stressful situations. In addition, this can include disorders of the mind such as anxiety and depression.

With heroin, addiction and the brain produce profound degrees of tolerance and physical dependence. Tolerance occurs when more and more of the drug is required to achieve the same effects. Comparatively, with physical dependence, the body adapts to the presence of the drug, and withdrawal symptoms occur if use reduces abruptly.

Chronic Alcohol Use & The Brain

The 2018 National Survey on Drug Use and Health finds that 14.4 million adults ages 18 and older have alcohol use disorder (AUD). About 7.9 percent of adults who had AUD in the past year received treatment.

An estimated 88,000 people die each year from alcohol-related causes. Alcohol is the third-leading preventable cause of death in the United States, behind tobacco and poor diet.

Besides affecting multiple organs and even be linked to certain cancers, long-term alcohol use shows how addiction affects the brain.

Drinking makes it difficult for the brain to create long-term memories. It also reduces the ability to think clearly and make rational choices.

Eventually, frontal lobe damage can occur. This area of the brain is responsible for emotional control, short-term memory, and judgment.

Chronic and severe alcohol abuse can show how addiction and the brain also cause permanent damage. This can lead to Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome (WKS), a brain disorder that affects memory.

WKS consists of two separate syndromes. The first is a short-lived and severe condition called Wernicke’s encephalopathy. It produces mental confusion, paralysis of the nerves that move the eyes, or difficulty with muscle coordination. They may not even be able to walk.

The second is a long-lasting and debilitating condition known as Korsakoff’s psychosis. The condition is characterized by continuous learning and memory problems. Patients with Korsakoff’s psychosis are forgetful and quickly frustrated. These patients also have problems remembering old information and “laying down” new information. A patient may have a detailed discussion about something that happened in his life. However, an hour later, they can’t even remember having the conversation.

The cerebellum, which is responsible for coordinating movement and some forms of learning, demonstrates how drugs affect the brain over time, with this region being most frequently damaged by chronic alcohol consumption.

Getting Help 

Researchers now know more about how addiction affects the brain. The same sort of mechanisms involved in the development of drug tolerance can eventually lead to changes in neurons and brain circuits. This carries with it the potential to severely compromise the long-term health of the brain.

For example, glutamate is another neurotransmitter that influences the reward circuit and the ability to learn. When the optimal concentration of glutamate is altered by drug abuse, the brain attempts to compensate. This can cause impairment in cognitive function.

In addition, long-term drug abuse can trigger changes in conditioning. Conditioning is a  type of learning in which cues in a person’s daily routine or environment become associated with the drug experience.

These routine actions can rigger uncontrollable cravings for drugs. This behavior can affect a drug user even after a year of abstinence.

Chronic abuse of drugs disrupts the way critical brain structures interact to control and inhibit behaviors. Another way drugs disrupt the brain is through tolerance. This leads to the need for higher drug dosages to produce a high.

Suppose you or a loved one are struggling with addiction (385) 327-7418 today. Do not lose hope. You can overcome addiction. Our specialists will connect you with a treatment center that will provide individualistic and compassionate care while you undergo addiction treatment.

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