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Other Than Releasing Chemicals Such as Dopamine Into the Body, What Else Do Drugs Do?

Question by Bryan: Other than releasing chemicals such as dopamine into the body, what else do drugs do?
Dopamine is the pleasure hormone, but drugs do more than just give pleasure. Cannabis, for increase, relaxes muscles and relieves nausea, while morphine kills pain. Both drugs interact with neurons to release more dopamine, but the two drugs have different properties.

What else do these drugs do to the body?

Best answer:

Answer by DJ Dent
Heroin is converted into morphine when it enters the brain. Its users experience a rush of euphoria, but with the side effects of “dry mouth, a warm flushing of the skin, heaviness of the extremities, and clouded mental functioning. Following this initial euphoria, the user goes “on the nod,” an alternately wakeful and drowsy state.”
However, the more you use heroin, the better the tolerance, which means you have to use more heroin to achieve the desired result of euphoria.
Heroin can lead to fatal overdose, miscarriages, and can open you to infectious diseases.If you use it long enough, you may develop collapsed veins, abscesses, and liver or kidney disease, and its toxic chemicals clog blood vessels, which can result in damage to vital organs like your heart, lungs, and brain.
Heroin addicts experience withdraw, which is always nasty, for the body becomes dependent on the drug. Without it, the person experiences symptoms that can include “restlessness, muscle and bone pain, insomnia, diarrhea and vomiting, cold flashes with goose bumps (“cold turkey”), and kicking movements (“kicking the habit”). Users also experience severe craving for the drug during withdrawal, which can precipitate continued abuse and/or relapse.” Some patients, when going through withdraw, do not survive. My chemistry teacher in high school had to help people go through detox during the Vietnam war. Too often, the addicts would be found dead, slumped against the wall or crumpled on the floor in a puddle of their own feces, vomit, and blood.

As for marijuana:
“Short-term effects of marijuana use include euphoria, distorted perceptions, memory impairment, and difficulty thinking and solving problems.” – NIDA
You cannot overdose on it, and it drains your ambition, and makes you stupid and lazy, but it is not nearly as harmful as morphine/heroin.

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