Unplugging Your Brain: Drug Use!

Drugs have a profound effect on the developing brain of an adolescent. Many suffer under the illusion that once drug use has stopped, the brain returns to normal. This is simply not the case. One indication of maturity is the ability of an individual to look at themselves objectively, as if they were a third party. This ability begins during the early teens. Individuals with a variety of brain injuries, including tumors, invasive wounds, serious blows to the head, and exposure to toxic chemicals, lose the ability to see themselves accurately and objectively. The same thing occurs with adolescents and young adults who become regular drug and alcohol users. The mature trait of objective self-awareness is quickly lost and does not return when the drug use has stopped. This is popularly called "denial".

The brain is a chemical organ of the body. It contains millions of neurons (brain cells) that connect with each other to form neuron networks. These networks carry all of the functions of thinking, feeling, movement, as well as the senses of the human body. Each neuron is fired by chemical reaction at the beginning of the cell. The electrical impulse moves through the cell as a result of chemical reaction. The information from one brain cell (neuron) is carried to the next brain cell across a gap by small packets of chemicals, called neurotransmitters. All mood altering drugs affect the process of chemical transmission in neuron networks. As drug and alcohol use becomes regular and abusive, the chemistry of the brain is increasingly distorted.

Distortion of the chemical process results in a number of specifically observable changes in the adolescent. The adolescent has trouble controlling impulses, thinking through a problem to a reasonable solution, getting new information into memory, recovering information already stored in memory, and new learning in general. In addition, the developing system of reasoning with reference to appropriate social behaviour, responsibility and moral behaviour is impaired to the point that it does not exist.

Some of these basic forms of human thinking and behaving have been developed by the teenager in the process of maturation, and then are lost. Others are not developed because the chemical imbalance in the brain interferes with the chemistry of developing new neuron networks. When the young person stops use of drugs and drinking, it takes the chemistry of the brain many months to slowly recover normal balances. Attempts to treat it with medical drugs only perpetuate the imbalance. One study of middle-aged alcoholics showed rapid progress in recovery during the first year of sobriety, but normal levels of brain activity were not achieved until after ten years of sobriety.

Achieving normal levels and balances of neurotransmitters does not automatically bring restored function. For those functions that were never developed because of the drug insult to the brain, specific treatment is needed to repair those developmental deficits. Often it is quite hard for the adolescent to develop these traits and abilities after the normal time for their development in the growth process. Tasks and abilities that were developed, but lost as a result of drug abuse, tend to be easier to recover than those that were not developed in the first place. Teenagers in the process of this kind of treatment tend to "grouse, moan, and bitch" because they find it so hard to accomplish things that are normal for their healthy peers.

Many young people who have received short simple treatment for drug and alcohol dependence return to drug use quickly because their immaturity of brain and behaviour makes it difficult to meet expectations of the work world, educational institutions, family, and social world for mature behaviour. They decide "it's too hard" and return to drug use as a way to medicate their bad feelings about not being competent or adequate enough for their age.

The Bottom Line: Those young people who have become active users during the adolescent years require treatment not only for the immediate problem of drug and alcohol dependence, but also treatment that involves developmental repair of the brain with reference to cognitive abilities, self control, and general behaviour.