Club Drugs (Ecstasy & Methamphetamine) Can Cause Permanent Brain Damage

They're Just as Dangerous as a Traumatic Brain Injury

Just how safe are club drugs? Not very, say researchers. In fact, they compare the damage that club drugs cause with having a traumatic brain injury. Both traumatic brain injuries and club drugs can lead to memory loss, cell death, and both can cause irreversible brain damage.

Researchers at the University of Florida recently detailed their findings in a recent press release. Most of the current crop of club drugs are some type of methamphetamine, including the commonly known drugs, Ecstasy or speed. They conducted a five-year study to determine what effects, if any, these drugs might cause.

The researchers determined that both methamphetamine use and traumatic brain injuries causes the same type of damage to the cell structures and protein fluctuations in the brain. Over 30,000 different proteins are found in the human brain. Methamphetamine use and traumatic brain injuries alter about 12 percent of these proteins.

Since the damage caused by methamphetamine use and traumatic brain injuries is so similar, researchers theorize that the same, or very similar, process is at work, regardless of which of the two factors caused the process to begin.

While many methamphetamine users think that these drugs wear off just like alcohol or aspirin, they may be wrong, said the researchers. Based upon the data they studied, researchers believe that the damage caused by methamphetamine use is "not readily reversible." Whether or not the damage can ever be reversed would need to be the subject of a different study.

"Using methamphetamine is like inflicting a traumatic brain injury on yourself. We found that a lot of brain cells are being injured by these drugs. That's alarming to society now. People don't seem to take club drugs as seriously as drugs such as heroin or cocaine," said Firas Kobeissy, a postdoctoral associate in the College of Medicine department of psychiatry