Question: how does drugs affect the brain

Malgorzata Dabrowska answered on 20 Nov 2020:

Hello brandonbattams,

Each drug is very carefully designed to specifically target the issue the creator wanted. Mainly drugs can act by blocking some processes or boosting them, depends on which effect we want to achieve. Some drugs are not crossing the brain-blood-barier (BBB) and some of them have this ability. The one which can do it are more dangerous for our organism, because of the side effects. It all really depends on the drug you are interested in. Some of them can protect our brain from neurodegeneration and some are damaging neurons. But if you are asking about the illegal substances: no matter which one, they are all damaging neurons. And the longer they are being used the more damages they are causing. You also have to remember, that we don’t have the ability to brain regeneration. Neurogenesis is extremely slow in the adult brain and not enough to replaced damaged neurons. There is also the aspect of addiction, which is very harmful for the brain. Even if the person will win with the addiction, will be struggling for the rest of his/her life with its after-effects. It is all because the brain developed a specific path, where it remembers forever how it was during the addiction period. Even the smallest piece of substance can activate this path again, what will lead to coming back to the addiction.