Amphetamines are a highly addictive drug that has proven to be both a blessing and a curse to modern medicine. It is healing qualities make it very effective in other aspects, but it is addictive qualities make it one of the most dangerous of all drugs to take. The abuse of such a drug has its extreme detrimental effects to the brain as well as to the body, and thus many addict experience many health problems. The abuse of such substances not only affects the addict, but the families as well causing it to create a rift in the family dynamic. Because of this family rift, many addicts turn to the church for guidance.
This begs the question as what is the role of the church in regards to addictions and the recovery process. The answer to that can be reflected in the paper. Description In 1932, amphetamine first emerged as an over-the-counter drug. Amphetamine was widely embraced by military personnel, politicians, pilots, physicians, writers, students, and professors (Moore, 2010). Amphetamines are chemicals that alter the way the body works and can make the body work faster than usual. This drug stimulates the central nervous system that increases the alertness and wakefulness.
Amphetamines are known to come in different colors, shapes, and sizes. Tablet or capsules version of amphetamines are known to be legal. The legal amphetamine consists of dextroamphetamine, levoamphetamine, methylphenidate, and lisdexamfetamine (Waters, 2014). The illegal version of amphetamine is usually packaged in plastic bags, small balloons, or aluminum foil into a crushed like form. The color of the crushed amphetamine has a strong smell and a bitter taste, which have a color that ranges from white to brown. Amphetamines can also be orange or dark purple (Waters, 2014).
Between the legal and illegal amphetamines, the legal amphetamines are just as dangerous as the street amphetamines. Usually the amphetamines that are sold on the streets tend to be the same amphetamines that are prescribed by the doctor. A physical and psychological dependence occurs when taking legal amphetamines. When individuals take amphetamines for a long period of time it leads them to metal disorders of addiction (Waters, 2014). Amphetamines are stimulants that have biochemical effects very comparable to those of the natural hormone adrenaline.
Amphetamines have the ability to make users to feel more alert and somewhat thrilled (Moore, 2010). Many individuals use amphetamines for medical purposes and not to abuse the drug. Amphetamine abuse has many government restrictions that may interfere with their availability as effective medical therapies. Amphetamines are synthetic drugs that developed in chemical laboratories. Ephedra is a plant with amphetamine-like properties that has been around for 5000 years (Moore, 2010). The uses and abuses of Amphetamine have not changed over the years.
The low doses of amphetamine usually help with focusing attention, increasing blood pressure, inducing weight loss, and relieve depression. Amphetamine also helps relieves and induce other issues. The large dose of amphetamine consists of 20-50 mg of D-amphetamine daily or more than 30 mg of mixed amphetamine salts (Moore, 2010). Higher doses of amphetamine help with relaxing alertness induced by low doses of amphetamine. The effects that once were seen in 1920s and 1930s with low doses of amphetamines are now an effective treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in adults and children.
Behavioral aberrations, toxicity, and drug abuse are led by high doses of amphetamine. Attention and focus improvement of amphetamine have researchers having second thoughts. Other treatments of amphetamines include narcolepsy, obesity, and ADHD (Waters, 2014). Amphetamine is a manufactured chemical with naturally occurring substances, phenethylamine, an amino acid in come wines and cheeses. Amphetamine differs from phenethylamine because amphetamine has an attachment of a methyl (CH3) group attached to its side chain, which prevents degradation of amphetamine by the enzyme monoamine oxidase during digestion (Moore, 2013).
Amphetamine can enter the bloodstream for long periods of time. When the methyl group attachment is attached it can be on either the right or life side of the chain. On the left side chain the compound is called levoamphetamine and on the right side the compound is called dextro-amphetamine. There is a greater biological activity than the L-form (Moore, 2013). Stimulants touch the brain’s communication system and raise the levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine. Emotions, cognition, feelings of pleasure, and movement are affected by dopamine.
Feels of euphoria can be caused by increased brain stimulation related to amphetamines. Drug abusers tend to have euphoric effects that attributed to amphetamines. The root is considered the craving for euphoria that cause of the abuse potential of psychostimulant drugs (Moore, 2013). Addiction Addiction is well-defined as a compulsive drug use in spite of the negative consequences. The addicted individual has goals narrow by recovering from drugs, failure in life roles, risk of incarceration, and medical illness.
The central problem in addiction treatment is the risk of relapse, often precipitated by drug-associated cues (Hyman, 2014). The treatment of addiction could consist of locking an addicted individual away in a protective environment until withdrawal symptoms were comfortably behind them. There are memory disorders that involve memory loss because the brain can remember too much or can be too powerful. Pathological learning shows the advances in understanding the role of dopamine by reward-related learning. Addiction still represents a pathological usurpation of the neutral mechanisms (Hyman, 2014).
Dopamine Action Dopamine is required for natural stimuli, which includes food, opportunities for mating, and for addictive drugs to produce reward. A common currency for the valuation of diverse rewards by the brain is the circuitry. The most recognizable difference between natural goal objects and latter is the natural goal objects is need for food and addictive drugs while the latter has no ability to serve a biological need. Dopamine is released in the nucleus accumbens and other forebrain structures by both the addictive drugs and the natural rewards (Hyman, 2014).
The effects of natural rewards are imitated by addictive drugs and can therefore shape behavior. Addictive drugs tend to have a modest advantage over natural stimuli to produce a far greater level of dopamine release and more prolonged stimulation. Dopamine is known to act as a hedonic signal, which is a signaling pleasure but it appears to promoted reward-related learning and binding the hedonic properties of a goal instead (Hyman, 2014). It is also concluded that dopamine release is not the internal representation of an object’s hedonic properties.
Prediction can be improved by having dopamine released and shape stimulus-reward learning and the behavioral response to reward-related stimuli. Cellular and Molecular Mechanisms The molecular and cellular mechanisms of addiction at the behavioral level has three aspects, which includes (a) how repeated episodes of dopamine release consolidate drug taking behavior into compulsive use, (b) risk of relapse from a drug-free state can persist for years, and (c) how drug-related cues come to control behavior (Hyman, 2014).
Changing synaptic strength has one of the best characterized candidate mechanisms, which consists of associative and synapse specific that has long-term potentiation and depression. The long-term depression and potentiation has important candidate mechanisms for the drug-induced alterations of neural circuit function that are posited to occur with addiction (Hyman, 2014). The mechanism occurs in the nucleus accumbens and other targets of mesolimbic dopamine neurons as a consequence of drug administration, which plays a significant role in the development of addiction.
The Brain In the United States, drug abuse is an epidemic that crosses racial, socioeconomic, and age barriers. The primary target for the effects of drugs occurs in the central nervous system. The detection of drug-related complications can be played by a diagnostic imaging. There are two clinical features that are associated with the central nervous system complications. The first feature is multiple drugs of abuse, which consists of cocaine, alcohol, and amphetamines.
The second feature is the different types of medications therapies that are potentially neurotoxic, such as immunosuppressants, nitrous oxide, and the total parenteral nutrition (Tamrazi & Almast, 2012). A potential enhance vulnerability of these individuals to the neurotoxic actions of the amphetamine is suggested by a high coincidence of substituted amphetamine abuse in individuals with HIV and chronic stress exposure. Amphetamines are substrates for carriers linked with the uptake of the biogenic amines dopamine (DA), norepinephrine (NE), and serotonin (5-HT) (Kehr et al. 2011).
The dopamine and the serotonin release from storage vesicles, avoid the uptake into vesicles, and making them more freely available for inverse transport. Both dopamine and the serotonin are promoted by amphetamines. An increased neurotransmission of dopamine occurs by the acute action of the amphetamines. Amphetamines are also increased because of the release of glutamate. Glutamate possibly contributes to the neurotoxicity profiles of these drugs (Kehr et al. , 2011).
