runner_man said:
That article is the online version Ansraver. No cropping or editing.
oh really? you bullshitter! i've posted the full article below. see what i bolded that this asshole left out? if it doesn't bold, it's the last sentence of the sixth paragraph which reads, "On average, the addicts used an average of four grams a week and said they had been high on 19 of the 30 days before the study began." he conveniently left that part out. you'll see why in a minute.
that sentence basically discredits the whole article and study. we will go over this article. just to let you know, one of my many degrees is a masters in public health from BU which makes me more than qualified in reading studies and picking out the bias and confounding variables.
In reading any study or review from an article, you need to pick out all the confounding bias. you start with who is doing the study and who is paying for it. we don't know, but i would guess either the government, the pharms, or some anti-drug organization. nevertheless, let's look at this bogus article a little closer.
This article's existence is obviously to scare the hell out of the avg joe who uses no illicit drugs, for political reasons with the pharms and for further funding the war on drugs IMO. look at the subjects in this study. they picked 22 people who have used meth for over 10 years which is not too unusual. what is totally unusual is that these people have been using it at 4 grams every week for 10 years straight! that means these people are almost dead or walking zombies! that's equivalent to someone smoking 4 packs of cigs everyday for 10 years or someone drinking 1.5 liter of 80proof alcohol everyday for 10 years IMPO. you don't need any mri or tests to show that anyone abusing any drugs legal or not at those incredibly high amounts and long length of time to show major bodily damage. do any of you know anyone using 4 grams of meth every week for even a year let alone 10 years? how about a couple months? where did they find these people? were they found in the hospital, insane asylum, or street gutter? these people are at the extreme 1% end of even the most hardcore drug ABUSERS. they are not representative of recreational drug USERS. further, most likely these participants are involved in other legal or illegal drugs, are malnourished, and have been lacking sleep for a decade. how can you blame it on the meth only? total BS! and this runnerman knows exactly what he did when he edited out the most important sentence in the article to make it look like people who casually used meth for 10 years suffers major brain damage. if you really wanted to prove that, they should have done a study involving ADD kids on ritalin/adderall for 10 years and see the damage of daily amphetamine use w/o the other confounding variables of a suicidal hardcore drug abuser. of course the pharms would never allow that kind of study for monetary and political reasons.
i called out your bullshit runnerman. go back to bb.com with the rest of your hypocrites! you're an insult to bluelight being here. you offer nothing but false anti-drug propaganda to fit your agenda. bluelight is pro-drug and we believe in the legalization of recreational drugs. part of the mission of bluelight is to educate and advocate harm reduction when using drugs. We are not here to try to spread misinformation and to use scare tactics. this is what the government does which only hurts and kills people. Legalizing drugs would save our country billions, save lives from "dirty" drugs, increase tax revenues, stop drug related crimes, increase safe drug education and give adults back our freedom and liberties!
now runnerman, get the FVCK out of here! you are full of shit!
This Is Your Brain on Meth: A 'Forest Fire' of Damage
July 20/2004
By SANDRA BLAKESLEE
New York Times
People who do not want to wait for old age to shrink their brains and bring on memory loss now have a quicker alternative - abuse methamphetamine for a decade or so and watch the brain cells vanish into the night.
The first high-resolution M.R.I. study of methamphetamine addicts shows "a forest fire of brain damage," said Dr. Paul Thompson, an expert on brain mapping at the University of California, Los Angeles. "We expected some brain changes but didn't expect so much tissue to be destroyed."
The image, published in the June 30 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience, shows the brain's surface and deeper limbic system. Red areas show the greatest tissue loss.
The limbic region, involved in drug craving, reward, mood and emotion, lost 11 percent of its tissue. "The cells are dead and gone," Dr. Thompson said. Addicts were depressed, anxious and unable to concentrate.
The brain's center for making new memories, the hippocampus, lost 8 percent of its tissue, comparable to the brain deficits in early Alzheimer's. The methamphetamine addicts fared significantly worse on memory tests than healthy people the same age.
The study examined 22 people in their 30's who had used methamphetamine for 10 years, mostly by smoking it, and 21 controls matched for age. On average, the addicts used an average of four grams a week and said they had been high on 19 of the 30 days before the study began.
Methamphetamine is an addictive stimulant made in clandestine laboratories nationwide. When taken by mouth, snorted, injected or smoked, it produces intense pleasure by releasing the brain's reward chemical, dopamine. With chronic use, the brains that overstimulate dopamine and another brain chemical, serotonin, are permanently compromised.
The study held one other surprise, Dr. Thompson said: white matter, composed of nerve fibers that connect different areas, was severely inflamed, making the addicts' brains 10 percent larger than normal. "This was shocking," he said. But there was one piece of good news: the white matter was not dead. With abstinence, it might recover.
Link
On average, the addicts used an average of four grams a week and said they had been high on 19 of the 30 days before the study began.