Intellectual Decline Associated With Drug Use

Is there some sort of mental impairment associated with drug use? The answer is quite clear: yes. Sooner or later, drug use affects the brain in one way or another. Not only that, but the effect is always negative.

Studies show that more than 20,000 people die prematurely each year as a result of excessive alcohol consumption. Remember that alcohol is also a drug. What is different about alcohol is that our society normalizes its use. But what about other drugs?

More than 4,000 people are admitted to hospitals in Spain each year for drug-induced psychosis. This is an upward trend. According to the National Strategic Plan of Action to Combat Drugs , the number of people admitted for drug-induced psychosis has increased by 103% over the past decade.

There are a number of studies that support the idea that frequent drug use causes significant harm. Not only that, but it seems that the effects of drug use are difficult to reverse. It doesn’t matter how early the intervention comes.

Why do people use drugs?

This is not an easy question to answer. In fact, it would be impossible to attribute every case to one cause. It’s true that there is a genuine social concern about drug use, but we still don’t know much about it. There is a lot of talk about drugs and drug use, but we tend to just talk in circles. People repeat a lot of misinformation and say things that make no sense.

People also often associate drugs with two things: youth and crime. As such, the information we get is biased from the start. Drug use causes serious health problems. Not only that, but it is the root of many crimes and family conflicts.

Frequent and intensive drug use certainly affects the body. On the other hand, we cannot isolate these recreational substances from the society that made this wild increase in consumption possible. Not only that, social circles are so often the facilitators and even drivers of drug use. Our society normalizes drug use. The negative effects of drug use are ignored along with the fact that drug use intensifies the problems the person is trying to avoid.

How does drug use cause intellectual decline?

Drug abuse can cause morphological changes in brain structure. These changes have the following effects:

• Loss of brain volume.
• Reduction in the percentage of gray matter.
• A decrease in ventricular cerebrospinal fluid.
• A widening of the peri-articular space and both lateral ventricles.
• A decrease in neuron size.
• Neuronal death.
• Brain atrophy.

At the same time , drug use causes damage through the metabolic reorganization of the synaptic connection circuits. Metabolic reorganization occurs as a result of tolerance, abstinence and withdrawal.

These processes are common in all addictions. They cause biochemical adjustments in the systems that control dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine. These neurotransmitters interact with glutamate receptors. They can block the long-term amplification and suppression mechanisms in the hippocampus and nucleus accumbens (literally: adjacent nucleus).

Finally, they can cause:

• vascularization changes
• blood vessel constriction
• intraparenchymal and subarachnoid cerebral hemorrhage
• cerebral infarction

What do studies say about drug-related brain damage?

Now we know that drug-related brain damage is a reality. But how does drug use affect cognitive performance?

In terms of memory, people who consume more alcohol and cannabis than cocaine and other drugs have poorer short-term memory. The longer the usage period, the greater the impact on working memory.

In terms of executive functions , patients who use cannabis and alcohol for a longer period of time have a reduced interference capacity. That means they show reduced inhibition of automatic responses.

We also know that drug users have a reduced attention span. They need more time to perform activities that require sequential and logical thinking. However, alcohol and cannabis users experience milder side effects in other areas. For example, they maintain their phonological verbal fluency.

As you can see , drug use causes neuropsychological and neuroanatomical changes. These changes produce functional neuroadaptation in cognitive, motivational, behavioral, and emotional functions. As a result, the user’s daily psychosocial functioning and quality of life are also affected.

These changed functions have to do with attention span, concentration, integration, information processing and execution of specific action plans. Not only that, but according to the bio-psychosocial explanation, these changes play an important role. When looking at addiction from a broader and ideographic point of view, they act as variables that support drug use.