How much IQ have I lost over years of drug use?

[Ziebug]

Is there a good website or chart somewhere on the web that shows you how much IQ/brain cells people lose through using different substances over different periods of time? I have used/abused many different drugs over the course of my life and sometimes have a sneaking suspicion I have hurt my brain; sudoku is harder, reading, math, understanding science..... So I'm really just curious if my brain is just out of shape, or have I done some damage..... Thanks,
ziebug

 

[mb-909]

Many drugs alter the function of how your brain areas interact witch each other. For example MDMA leads to a change in the functioning of serotonin release. So it may seem that you have done damage to your system, which isn't necessary the case. Neuroplasticity is always active till you die and so the brain can always adapt to new circumstances. Besides that you can never know how much damage was done by drug x, it is pretty useless to ask in the first place. MDMA and other drugs can cause anxiety and other psychological reactions, which probably is the case for you. These conditions interfere with daily tasks. Take an off time and improve your functioning, by doing the things you have problems with.

Take my word that you can be a useless piece of garbage rotting in the shady place you call home, not seeing anything but shades of grey - all done by your psyche. In my case I wasn't even able to think about suicide or precisely anything at all during my darkest hours. Everything was forgotten in the next second it was done, too - feeling dementia alike?

This was all psychological and reversed than I started to change my life for the better. It will take its time though... I have been fighting for 8 years with many different symptoms trying to stay alive. At least I am functioning in some way again. Major depression is not so easy to overcome.

It would be way easier, if you could speak german, because english is not my mother tongue after all.

Edit:

By the way: The IQ of somebody doesn't necesserely say how smart he is. In an interview for my current college/university for psychology my future professor told us that you simply can not meassure the real intelligence of somebody by doing tests. So even if you have lower scores it doesn't say a lot (well I don't think that much damage was done in your case - knowing a lot of people abusing drugs most "recoverred" after abstinence).

 

[Quicksilver75]

I think I've got one brain cell left... & it's only hanging on by a thread lol

 

[TheAppleCore]

Certain drugs are known to cause brain damage with heavy abuse, such as methamphetamine. Do you have any reason to believe that you're suffering from brain damage, other than feeling like you suck at sudoku?

The media would have you believe that intoxicants in general "kill brain cells", but I have my doubts.

 

[danglesmcgee]

It may actually increase iq believe it or not - research neuro-genesis, your brain can sometimes create new receptor sites in response to abuse. if given a chance.

 

[endotropic]

on adderall my IQ is 137 (weschler's official test of intelligence)
without adderall my IQ is 126 (^)

legit 99.9997th percentile IQ with dat dere frontal cortex dopamine influx. not official IQ tests i just did them online but meh, i know for a fact i'm smarter on D-amp. the only problem is i get psychosis when i forget to sleep or dose over 220mg by accident in 24hr period. that and it's fkin expensive

my pattern recognition and visualization ability is unexplainably better on adderall. it's fucked, it's like tren acetate to muscle as dextroamphetamine is to IQ. it's not that good for problem solving though, i find that if you take the wrong approach for problem solving you kinda get stuck in that loop hole for like 10-20 mins and realize after the fact. for everything else, it's a godsend. all the notable mathematicians and people in academia with 200+ publications use it lol, it's jsut no one talks about it because people think it's just for people with adhd.

I think with dexedrine and adderall (and legal amphetamines in general), you need a certain base level of IQ to experience the cognitive enhancement. if you're just extremely retarded the adderall won't really make you more intelligent, maybe you will just focus a bit better. no offense to retards with low iq

seriously, has anyone tried reading an encyclopedia on 60-90mg of adderall? you start making all these conenctions between unrelated concepts that you never would without it. it's just fucking amazing how intelligent i become on adderall. then i wake up the next morning wanting more of that "genius". then i realize i have no f***ing money to buy them because you need a prescription froom faggot doctors that won't give me one.

Amphetamines also reliably cause delusions of grandeur.

 

[sekio]

http://www.psych.upenn.edu/~mfarah/pdfs/MAS enhancement.pdf

The results did not reveal enhancement of any cognitive abilities by [amphetamine] for participants in general. [...]. Despite the lack of enhancement observed for most measures and most participants, participants nevertheless believed their performance was more enhanced by the active capsule than by placebo. We conclude that [amphetamine] has no more than small effects on cognition in healthy young adults, although users may perceive the drug as enhancing their cognition.

 

[Fractality]

I've sometimes pondered the same thing. My level of abuse is probably less significant than yours but I also feel like I'm not as sharp (at times) as I once was. Bottom line, there are way too many confounding factors to accurately say whether drug use/abuse caused any deterioration (if what you're perceiving as deterioration is even deterioration!).

 

[pino]

Why focus on IQ? If you are intelligent enough, then I would say that when solving sudokus, reading scientific articles, motivation is much more important. And most drugs do some damage in that area.

Personally I found that a holiday was much more devastating, than my drug use for my mathematical skills. I guess this has something to do with not doing it during holiday.