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Need Help Amphetamine neurotxicity

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Vrachox

Bluelighter
Joined
Sep 20, 2022
Messages
64
How much neurotoxic are amphetamines,and what that even mean?
Tnx much love
 
They are neurotoxic at a certain dosage. Low doses of Amphetamines actually induce neurogenesis (the opposite effect.). The neurotoxicity effects dopamine pathways.

It’s arguable though at what dosage Amphetamine becomes neurotoxic.

-GC
 
Can't be that bad. I was hooked on street amphetamine, which was actually quite potent stuff, for years. I snorted, swallowed and plugged (nose was too damaged) enormous amounts of amphetamine on a daily basis. As a teenager, before I used any drugs, I was tested for my IQ. Now, after years of heavy drug abuse, my IQ is still exactly the same. This indicates that amphetamine is not really all that neurotoxic. Not sure about methamphetamine, I would be more concerned about meth.
 
^ It's good that your IQ has remained the same but your IQ comes from certain parts of the brain and not all parts. Synapses, electrical activity, neurons and receptors can all be damaged by stimulant abuse but your frontal cortex and other parts of your brain that regulate how smart you are can remain undamaged. I have no doubt that I am still as smart as I was 20 years ago but I also have no doubt that I have damaged my health and certain areas of my brain.

Not just stimulants but any chemical can do that. Opioids, benzos, alcohol.....lots of substances damage our brain it's just that the damage it does can be either a little so that we don't notice or a lot as when people go into long term psychosis. Pretty sure all drug users that have gone hard at it for long periods of time will have some kind of damage. None of us ever got brain scans in our youth and compared them to us being older adults now. Pretty sure we changed our brains in some capacity.
 
Tnx everybody :))
One more questions,,where does beliefe that if you experience euphoria it is sign of neurotoxicity come from.
I am pretty sure i never experienced euphoria from amph but i am just better and more productive man.
Tnx love you all
 
^ Euphoria ( to me ) must come from the dopamine dump we get when we do certain drugs. I'm not real sure we are damaging our brains when we feel euphoria. We have those pesky little receptors that each drug hits and when that receptor is tickled it changes how we biologically feel. Euphoria is the pleasant feeling we get when a certain receptor is tickled.

On the other hand people think that nausea and vomiting comes from our stomach and our gut. Yeah, that's where we feel it but if our brain didn't have that " puke " receptor we would never feel sick to our stomachs. It's our brain that makes us vomit and that's why some people swear that counting backwards or doing something else to take our brain away from that activity will help us not to ralph. It never worked for me. When my mouth starts watering I find the nearest toilet.

I don't think feeling euphoria ( from any drug ) does any damage. It's doing the chemical daily for long periods of time that causes the damage. Because once we wear out that receptor it's game over. That's why meth and heroin addicts reach a point where they are just staying out of WD and not getting high at all. Once we bombard that receptor on a long term basis it takes time to get back to normal. The receptor will repair itself if we stop whatever chemical we are using.
 
Vrachox said:
Very infromative tnx.
I use about 30-50mg of amph daily,,i didnt find any evidence in studies or metanalysis that amph in such dosage do any harm,but maybe i am just rationalising my drug use.
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We all rationalize our drug use so that's normal. 30 to 50 mgs sounds like a standard medical grade dose and not abuse. Hope you continue to feel okay and have a good life and just try and know when ( and if ) it ever gets out of hand. Then maybe you will have to ease up a bit.
 
Nurse Ratched said:
^ It's good that your IQ has remained the same but your IQ comes from certain parts of the brain and not all parts. Synapses, electrical activity, neurons and receptors can all be damaged by stimulant abuse but your frontal cortex and other parts of your brain that regulate how smart you are can remain undamaged. I have no doubt that I am still as smart as I was 20 years ago but I also have no doubt that I have damaged my health and certain areas of my brain.

Not just stimulants but any chemical can do that. Opioids, benzos, alcohol.....lots of substances damage our brain it's just that the damage it does can be either a little so that we don't notice or a lot as when people go into long term psychosis. Pretty sure all drug users that have gone hard at it for long periods of time will have some kind of damage. None of us ever got brain scans in our youth and compared them to us being older adults now. Pretty sure we changed our brains in some capacity.
Click to expand...

Not sure that I agree here. You are correct about the frontal cortex being the main driver for logical thinking and IQ. The frontal cortex is not a dopaminergic centre so it may not be a target of amphetamine mediated neurotoxicity. Amphetamine could damage dopaminergic neurons in older brain regions such as the midbrain. But where are the symptoms of that damage? I do not have motor issues, I do not have motivation issues, no depression. If there is any hidden, mysterious "damage", it is certainly a benign kind of damage. Unfortunately, amphetamine use/abuse is associated with a higher risk of Parkinson's disease in some studies, which argues for your hypothesis of hidden damage. This could be a confounder, though, as people with some kind of dopamine issue may be more inclined to abuse amphetamines. There is a reason that many find speed boring and unappealing while others love this stimulant and this reason is likely somehow associated with our dopamine system.

This study here even found a protective effect of amphetamines against Parkinson's disease: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.06.20089748v1

Most of the data on neurotoxicity of amphetamines stems from cell culture and /or mouse or rat experiments. Those may be valid or they may be complete BS as humans are different from rodents. All of that said, I would probably try to NOT abuse amphetamine. Also, stay away from Meth and excessive MDMA use. Meth and MDMA may have more damaging potential.
 
I think there has been some proper expert work for which 60 mg is generally max. dose of amphetamine in medical use. And one reason for that is minimizing neurotoxicity.

I can not straight cite any study nor promise I have not mistaken but main routes of neurotoxicity in amphetamines are oxidative stress (of endogenous and exogenous compounds) and excitatory stress (it sounds little weird but I read it like, when there is too fucking much activation in neuron, it self-destructs in order to prevent possibility of forming into cancer cell and eventually destroying you completely).

On correct dose there shouldn't be excitatory stress really, and while oxidative stress is still present, your system has ways of fighting it. You can help by doing magnesium or any antioxidative. Magnesium citrate tho can prevent absorption of amphetamines and improve their elimination (you probably want latter to happen before you go to sleep?)
 
Then there is this thing about delta jun b and delta fos b regulating presentation of dopamine receptors and it was little too hard for me, I don't even remember which one did what.
 
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