Schoolboy's death was an accident says new inquest
from the UK
THE parents of a Tonbridge schoolboy who died after hanging himself
with his school tie proved this week it was an accident after classmates
revealed he had previously played a choking game.
There were tears of relief from the parents of 12-year-old Judd
pupil William Lippell Stanesby when a second inquest found he had not
committed suicide.
CHOKED: William Lippell Stanesby
Parents David Stanesby and Sabrina Lippell, from Tunbridge Wells,
never believed their son had wanted to take his own life, insisting he
had died accidentally while playing a game in which people choke
themselves until they faint.
Mr Stanesby said the game, known to have claimed at least 11
other young lives nationwide, was "considered in some teenage circles to
have cult-like status".
An open verdict was recorded at an inquest in September due to a lack of evidence.
The rare second inquest was called after critical information was
provided by fellow Judd pupils who revealed William had talked about
and even attempted the chilling prank.
Classmates told their teacher William had spoken about the
"highly dangerous game" in which youngsters restricted air to their
brain by constricting their necks with hands or a tie.
The coroner recorded a verdict of misadventure.
So a misadventure, or here in the states we would call it "they made a mistake by calling this a suicide! So many of our kids are dying and their deaths are being labeled a "suicide" by uneducated coroners. Time has come for education, if you are an ER Nurse, ER doctor, an Emergency worker in the field or that Coroner that does the autopsy, look for other clues as to whether this child was actually playing the "choking game" , know the differences. Don't just automatically think suicide, many of these incidents are accidental. Parents need closure and need to know.
Levi Draher came back from the dead. Other players were not so lucky.
Levi Draher was clinically dead.He is a survivor Angel
A great article that explains the beginnings of our Ed4Ed4all mission: Levi Draher, he is our Wednesday Angel of the week, a Survivor Angel, here for a reason to help others, read his story.
By Craig MalisowThursday, Apr 19 2007
The 15-year-old's body is positioned with the knees on a stack of
mattresses, the torso slumped forward with the neck pressed into a black
nylon cord he had tied between two bed bunk posts. He's in an empty
bedroom in his company barracks at the Marine Military Academy in Harlingen. The proud red MMA crest is emblazoned on his gold T-shirt. His shorts are red; his feet are bare.
A few yards away, through the open door to the bathroom connecting
two bedrooms, Levi's roommate sits studying at a desk. The company's
recent wave of low grades has put them on restriction and cost them
tonight's Halloween
party. If Levi had made any noise before the nylon sling clamped his
carotid, his roommate wouldn't have been able to hear through his
headphones.
Levi's mother, Carrie, is down the hall chatting with the drill instructor's wife. They're talking about next week's annual Marine Corps Ball. As a "company mom," Carrie is involved in the planning.
Carrie walks down the hall to Levi's room and sees her son's roommate
through the open door. She knocks loud enough to snap him from his
music.
"Where's Draher?" she asks.
The roommate turns to the bathroom, thinking Levi's in the shower.
Hearing nothing, they walk through the bathroom and see the body. They
rush forward, pull Levi from the sling and onto the floor. The roommate
flies out the door.
It's Halloween; this is a joke, Carrie thinks.
"Stop it!" she tells her son. "It's not funny!"
Something's making her strong, because she grabs her only son by his
cold blue arm and pulls his 160-pound body nearly upright. But his torso
tumbles into her, followed a split second later by his head, which
snaps forward and crashes into a desk, and the two crumple to the floor.
Carrie puts her ear to his chest, his lips. No heartbeat, no breath.
She can't find a pulse. She draws what feels like the first breath she's
taken since she saw the body and screams. With the next breath, she
catches herself before the scream. She hears a word. Share.
Without thinking, Carrie puts her mouth over Levi's and shares her air.
Now the drill instructor's wife and the company kids rush into the room.
One drops down and compresses Levi's chest. Levi makes a gurgling
sound. When the medics arrive, Levi's seizing, his back arching off the
ground. The medics try to intubate, but his jaw is welded shut, so they
use the bag. It takes five adults to load his writhing body onto the
backboard.
In the ambulance, Carrie is in the front seat, looking in the back.
The tube connecting the breathing bag to Levi's mouth is clouded with
blood. The medic at Levi's side sees Carrie's expression. He bit his
tongue, the medic says.
While Carrie's at the hospital, waiting to hear from the doctors
working on her boy, investigators are talking to the kids in Levi's
company. What the hell is this, the investigators want to know. To the
kids, it's obvious. Levi made himself pass out to get high. Some of the
kids would do it to each other after taps, when they should be asleep.
By the dim light of the bathroom sink or the glowing flames from a
puddle of hand sanitizer they'd light on fire, they'd take machine-gun
breaths and wait for the crushing bear hug from behind. Thing is, after
they'd pass out, they'd get back up. That's how the choking game is
played.
Their names and ages are listed on the Web site: Brandon J. Myers, 12, Missouri Elizabeth Pryor, 13, Georgia Isaiah Mitchell, 9, Indiana Casey Richards, 10, Ohio
These kids, and dozens more on the list, have killed themselves
playing the choking game. Their carotid arteries have been squeezed to
strangulation by the thumbs of friends. They have tied utility cords and
scarves and ropes around their necks and to the tops of doors. They
have bent over and hyperventilated to the point of hypocapnia, lowering
the carbon dioxide in their blood. They have done this for a high that
can be counted in seconds.
These names are on the Web site for GASP, Games Adolescents Shouldn't Play. It's a campaign launched by Sharron Grant of Ontario, Canada, whose 12-year-old son, Jesse, strangled himself with a computer cord while playing the choking game in 2005.
However, research is murky when it comes to how many kids die each
year from playing the choking game. Grant's group has tallied 337
children's deaths worldwide since 1934. Those numbers also show a marked
increase in U.S. deaths in the past few years. According to GASP, 30
kids died playing the game in 2004, 68 in 2005 and 81 in 2006. The group
has recorded 18 deaths so far for 2007.
But Mark Lepore, assistant professor of counseling psychology at Pittsburgh's Chatham College,
believes 1,800 people in the United States have died playing the game
in the past ten years. The majority were children and teens. However,
Lepore acknowledges that "it's really hard to make an accurate
determination" as to exactly how many deaths can be attributed to the
choking game. (Deaths attributed to the choking game are not to be
confused with those attributed to autoerotic asphyxiation, in which
masturbation and asphyxia are combined in the quest for a more powerful
orgasm, and which typically involves older practitioners.)
The list of names on GASP's site grows every month, and Texas is not immune.
On March 7, 2007, Huntsville high school sophomore Blake Sandel died playing the game. His mother told The Huntsville Item that, on the day Blake died, he and his brother had plans to go to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. Blake slipped into his bedroom to change clothes, and he never came out. His father found the body about 45 minutes later.
Besides Blake, the GASP site lists 14 deaths and one injury among Texas children playing the game. The average age is 13.
The Harris County Medical Examiner's Office
originally ruled one of the cases a suicide, despite the protests of
the family. That is another reason, researchers say, that true numbers
are hard to find.
In that case, a 14-year-old Spring girl named Haley Kinney
took one of the decorative scarves she liked to keep on her door and
tied one end around her neck. She looped the other end around a hinge at
the top of her bedroom door, kneeled on her beanbag and fell forward.
As she asphyxiated, her mother, baby brother and twin brother Kirby went
about their business upstairs.
When one of Haley's friends called, Kirby walked the phone downstairs
to Haley's room. Coming down the steps, Kirby says, he saw the door
creak partway open to reveal a single pale arm. He said she had a call,
but there was no response. Once outside Haley's room, Kirby couldn't get
the door to budge. He was up against the weight of his sister's dead
body. He leaned into the door and then saw it again, the pale arm. Kirby
screamed for his mom.
The way Kirby recalls it, the medics pronounced his sister dead on the scene.
"Ma'am," he remembers them telling his mom, "we need you to step away from her because she's dead." Do not scream, Carrie Draher is telling herself. Do not lose your self-control, or they will take you away from him.
It's a mercifully quick trip to the hospital. In the trauma bay, the
doctors let Carrie stand beside Levi for a few minutes. She holds his
cold blue foot. But now it's time for them to take Levi, and a doctor
leads her away. She knows where she's going. That room with the little
couch and nice lighting where no one wants to go. She's going to a room
where the only thing she can do is wait. In a moment, Heidi, the drill
instructor's wife, is with her. Carrie can't sit still. She picks up the
phone and calls family. There's been an accident. With each call, she feels more and more like she's planning a funeral.
The hospital chaplain appears at the door. She knows what that means.
In the military, the only reason the chaplain appears is to administer
the last rites.
"Is he dead?" Carrie asks. And when the chaplain says she just wanted
to see if there's anything Carrie needs, she lets it out. She closes
the door and screams.
Heidi grabs her. She tells Carrie not to block them out. The door
opens and the chaplain enters. Heidi and the chaplain ask Carrie to
pray. They lock hands at first, but then Carrie drops down, tucking her
chest to her knees, laying her head on the floor. She's never felt more
powerless. She knows she can't ask God to save Levi; that's not her
place. But she still talks to God. She asks for peace and the ability to
be strong for the family members who will soon be trickling through the
hospital doors. And when she returns to her feet, she is bolstered with
the most incredible sense of calm.
Finally stable after three hours of seizures, Levi is moved to
pediatric ICU. Carrie is allowed to touch him. He's warmer than before,
but still slightly blue. He's intubated and on life support. The doctor
takes Carrie aside for a debriefing. Levi's lungs are badly damaged. His
brain is swelling. His liver is failing. She tells Carrie that they can
push all the oxygen in the world into Levi, but if his lungs can't feed
his cells, there's nothing they can do except maintain a pulse. Carrie
knows she's being prepped for brain death. She knows what's coming next,
and she says, when the time comes, she and her husband will sign a
do-not-resuscitate order.
Now her calm is tested by a wave of doubt. Had she done the right
thing? Did she give Levi just enough breath to bring him back as a
vegetable? Did she revive a brain-dead child?
The waiting stretches through the night, into day two, and on the
morning of day three, while Carrie is sitting beside him, Levi's eyes
open. Carrie calls for the doctors while a frightened Levi shoots up and
reaches for the tube that's jammed down his throat. But Carrie tries to
reassure him.
"There was an accident," Carrie says. "You're in a hospital. And if
you just breathe with this machine that's helping you breathe, they'll
take it out."
Levi lies back down, and the doctors remove the tube.
In a raspy whisper, Levi utters his first word since Carrie found him on the floor.
"Water," he says.
Of all the different names the choking game goes by -- space monkey,
blackout, California dreaming -- perhaps the most appropriate is
“suffocation roulette.”
That was the title of a 2003 report by Israeli doctors in Annals of Emergency Medicine.
Their curious patient was a 12-year-old boy who had gone off to play
with friends, only to return disoriented, two days in a row. The boy had
told his father that he blacked out on both occasions, but he had no
memory of the time immediately preceding the blackouts. The boy said he
wasn't sniffing, smoking, drinking or shooting anything. He “denied
physical abuse by his peers.” Stymied, the doctors ran a battery of
tests. The boy finally fessed up when one doctor asked him point-blank
if he knew anything about the choking game.
“We believe that this dangerous game should be brought to the
attention of parents, physicians, educators and social service
personnel,” the physicians wrote. “Recognition of this game as a
possible cause of [passing out], together with prompt educative
intervention, might prevent adolescent morbidity and mortality.”
Yet despite the efforts of organizations like GASP, it appears that
kids are learning more about the game's fun than its danger. Critics are
quick to point to MySpace
and YouTube, where adolescent auteurs have recorded themselves playing
the game solo or with friends. The videos star laughing, normal-looking
kids, all waking up at the end, perfectly healthy. (YouTube's “code of
conduct” states that users should not post “videos showing dangerous or
illegal acts.” When asked if the choking game was a dangerous or illegal
act, a spokesman for YouTube simply referred the Houston Press to the code of conduct.)
The folks at GASP would rather kids see the video of a 15-year-old Twin Cities boy named Ryan Tucker.
That clip, on GASP's site, shows a kid who played the choking game and
woke up with severe brain damage. Ryan now looks like he was born with
cerebral palsy and spends his days in therapy, learning how to walk and
trying to launch a ball into a brightly colored set of little plastic
bowling pins.
In an article about the choking game, Julie Rosenbluth of the American Council for Drug Education
wrote, “A child playing this game could lose consciousness within a
minute and die in as little as 2–4 minutes, as the weight of their body
further constricts blood and oxygen to the brain.”
According to Rosenbluth, most kids playing the game are between 9 and
14. “Many preteens and teens participate in this lethal game out of
curiosity — not rebellion, depression or anger,” she wrote. “The game
may be played by kids who are not outwardly at-risk — students who may
do well in school and are close with their families. To many kids, the
choking game seems like a harmless way to get a rush.”
This description would have applied to Haley Kinney, the popular
14-year-old girl the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office originally
believed committed suicide in a nearly full house, leaving behind
neither a note nor a history of depression or suicidal behavior. Haley's
father, Gary Kinney,
says he was unhappy with the initial police investigation and Medical
Examiner's ruling. Seven months after he requested another investigation
and examination, Haley's manner of death was changed to “undetermined.”
Gary Kinney maintains that the ruling should be “accidental.”
Her brother says he and Haley learned of the choking game in sixth
grade. It was the last week of school, during a “free day” where the
students got to play outside on Strack Intermediate's field and gorge
themselves on ice cream. One of the kids was showing the others how good
it felt to hyperventilate and pass out. Kirby liked it immediately. He
never knew how much Haley liked it. He never thought she played it after
that week.
In seventh grade, Kirby saw the movie Life as a House, and
watched as one of the characters tried to play the choking game by
hanging himself from his closet clothes rack. To Kirby, it looked
perfectly inviting. He would wait until the house was empty and then get
the belt.
“I always seemed to land on my stomach, or something...and wake up,” he says.
Then, when it happened, when the medics were kneeling by Haley's
body, Kirby ran upstairs and punched the walls. He threw chairs. The
anger carried over into the classroom, and after the 29th time he was
written up, Kirby transferred to Klein Annex, an alternative school. He
needed to shake the stress, but he knew he could never play the choking
game anymore. He tried marijuana for the first time and was surprised to
find a familiar feeling. But his parents found out and put an end to
that. And even Kirby wondered what he was doing. Haley abhorred drugs
and would've been disappointed. He was going to have to get through this
straight. But it would be hard for Kirby, knowing that this person who
was always right there was gone.
“You're so used to her riding the bus with you every morning, and
you're so used to y'all...racing back home,” he says. “And then you just
don't have that anymore. You're walking home by yourself.”
After Haley died, Kirby says, he talked to her friends and found out
she had been playing the game with another girl on several occasions.
Space monkey, they called it. He had already known, but this news made
the original suicide ruling even harder to bear. Kirby equates suicide
with surrender, saying it is something his sister would never do. It's
when talking about the original manner of death that Kirby slips into
the present tense.
“Haley's not a failure, period,” he says. “She won't take that for an answer.”
On day five, Levi says, “I played the game.”
Investigators had been talking to him, trying to figure out what
happened. Hazing? Attempted suicide? Autoerotic asphyxiation? Levi had
been reluctant to talk. The choking game was a private thing, and he had
only done it twice before on his own. Carrie doesn't know what to
think; she's never heard of this before. So she does the research online
and finds GASP. But she's not prepared for what she sees on the list of
names. Boy, 15, Harlingen, 10/28/06. It's Levi. And she scrolls down,
and down, and down, and tries to process all the names below his. And
she looks back at her son's entry and sees something that sets it apart.
An asterisk. On this list of dead, Levi is an exception. She feels she
has to do something.
When she calls GASP, she says, “My name is Carrie Draher. My son is Boy, 15, Harlingen, 10/28/06.”
While Levi gathers his motor skills in therapy, Carrie reads
everything she can about the choking game. Parents need to know. Kids
need to be warned. They aren't listening. But maybe they'd listen to
someone who actually died playing it. At first, Carrie and her husband
are reluctant to parade Levi in front of the cameras like a freak.
Months pass, and she talks with Levi. He says he's healthy enough to
share his story with whoever will listen. Carrie and Levi now go to
schools to help deliver a choking game awareness program. In March, the
campaign landed Levi on the front page of The New York Times. From there, mother and son have gone on CNN, the Today show and Hannity, among others.
Levi loved the trip to New York, where he stayed in the Millennium Hotel. His pleasure was evident on the Today
show, where he wore his MMA jacket and a big, goofy grin. The grin has
been the subject of some discussion between mother and son. Levi is a
happy kid, and he can't contort his face into a look of solemnity on
cue, so whenever he's on camera, one might think his brain could still
use some oxygen.
When the grin is brought up during an interview, he laughs and says, “I look blazed...don't I? Don't I?”
Levi does not reflect on the experience. He has no memory of it, so
during an interview he'd rather discuss things that exist in the
present, like his MySpace page or his favorite scenes from Borat.
And as far as he's concerned, the few minutes of clinical death aren't
enough to keep him from his dream of joining the Marines.
The Drahers have a long military background, and Levi had wanted to
take on that tradition ever since he was five. He had researched
military boarding schools in Texas until he found MMA, and he knew in an
instant that's what he wanted. The Marines were the toughest. “First to
fight,” he liked to say. The tuition is steep — $25,000 a year — but
Levi's parents wanted to give him this chance.
Carrie says that MMA's administration was understanding,
compassionate and willing to welcome Levi back after the accident.
However, she wanted Levi to go to school in San Antonio until she's sure
he's fully healed. She says two private schools would not accept Levi
once administrators found out about his accident. So now Levi goes to a
public school just up the road from his home. He hates it. He misses the
military atmosphere.
He hasn't spoken with a recruiter yet, but is confident the Marines will gladly accept him because, he says, “I'm cool.” (The Press checked with the Marines and, according to a gunnery sergeant who
runs a Marine recruiting substation in Webster, an accident like the
one Levi suffered would not automatically disqualify him. Policy
dictates that doctors would have to review his medical files to
determine if there was any permanent damage.)
This afternoon, a gray-haired chauffeur in a black suit parks a black Lincoln Town Car outside the Drahers' apartment and knocks on the door. He is taking Carrie and Levi to a television studio downtown, where Geraldo Rivera
will interview them via satellite. In the front seat, Levi fidgets.
He's been on medication for ADHD since the third grade and, Carrie says,
the fidgeting got worse after the accident. Fascinated by the electric
seat adjuster, Levi floats forward and back, up and down.
In the studio, mother and son sit in tall chairs and stare into a
television camera about five yards away. Geraldo's voice is channeled
through their earpieces.
“Do you ever think about the fact that you were already on the other
side there, and but for the intervention of your mom and others, you
wouldn't have come back?” Geraldo asks. “I guess I'm pretty special to be alive,” Levi says through The Grin.
Not one to suffer fools, Geraldo says, “Are you being sincere now, or are you being a wiseguy?”
It's as if Levi had the easy part in this whole thing. He had the
luxury of passing out. As he waited to live or die, he didn't have to
suffer, like Carrie. In the Lincoln on the way home, Carrie says that,
for months after the accident, she heard wailing ambulances that weren't
there. She lived in a haunted house, where she would walk into a room
and see her son's corpse sprawled on the floor. And as she talks of this
hell she had to live through, Levi is telling the chauffeur that you
can make an explosive by mixing Mentos and Diet Coke.
Gradually, the phantom sirens faded, and Carrie wouldn't see her
son's body everywhere. But the one thing that lingers is the panic that
takes over outside a door. The hallucinations out in the open were one
thing, but she never knows what's behind the door.
Levi's recovery was remarkable. He had been discharged on day six, in time for the Marine Corps Ball. Carrie was still in awe.
“He led me out on the floor for the traditional mother-son dance,”
she recalls. “I had no idea what music was playing...I couldn't take my
eyes off his face.”
She has that memory of his face, that same old Levi with the goofy
grin who was returned to her for reasons she'll never understand. And
she has the memory of a cold blue face with blind eyes. It's something
that Levi doesn't understand now, and may not for a while, but whenever
Carrie Draher stands outside her son's door, she never knows which face
she's going to see.
MILLBRAE, Calif. (KGO) -- It goes by many names -- space monkey, Cali high, the choking game -- and it's a risky fad that appears to have claimed another young victim, a freshman from Mills High School in Millbrae.
Child advocates say we're not putting any ideas into kids' heads by doing this story -- most already know about the choking game and it's important for parents to be warned. The parents of the boy who died this past Saturday asked the I-Team to tell this story.
Phil and Elisabeth Piefer from Millbrae buried their son Friday. Dylan was just 14 years old.
"Very happy, full of life the day he died," said Dylan's mother,
Elisabeth Piefer. "He was so happy that day, he cleaned his room up, I
gave him $10 and he said, 'Thanks mom, I love you,' and that was the
last I saw of him."
This past Saturday, Dylan told his
parents he was heading to the park to meet friends. He climbed through a
hole in the fence, walked the long path to the airport property that
lines Highway 101 across from SFO. Just across the water is a popular
meeting place; they call it "the fort."
Dylan was the first one
there. His friends arrived to find him with a rope around his neck,
attached to a tree about four feet from the ground.
"He was on
his knees when they found him. There was no way that he was, you know,
he could have got up," said Dylan's uncle, Kenny Piefer. "If his friends
were there, they could have took the rope off him at least, if there
was other people there with him."
"My friend Elisabeth came
flying to my house screaming that her son was found dead over here,"
said family friend Christina Baugh.
San Mateo County sheriff's
investigators are working the case as a suicide, but the coroner told
the family it appeared to be something else.
"That a lot of children played the choking game and that's what it looked like it was," said Elisabeth Piefer.
The choking game has been around for years, but it's spreading because of online videos.
"This is like a how-to instructional video, how to do it, but be
careful, don't kill yourself 'cause then it would suck if it's my
fault," said the narrator in of these online videos.
There are
many variations -- deep breaths and pressing on the chest, a headlock,
using a rope, belt, bed sheet or curtain. The point is all the same --
cutting oxygen to the brain.
"I want to warn you, I think you lose like several billion brain cells each time you do it," said the video's narrator.
The rush comes as brain cells die. The twitching that's so common with
someone who's passed out is actually a seizure. There's also the
danger of broken bones, if no one is there to catch and a kid lands
hard.
The danger of death grows exponentially when someone does this when they're alone.
"It's definitely not safe because you don't have a lot of control over
what you're doing," says adolescent therapist Jennifer Tan.
Tan works with the Bay Area Center for Adolescents, and she has treated kids who've experimented with the choking game.
"It's maybe considered a safe way to experiment with a different state of mind because drugs aren't used," she said.
It's difficult to track just how many kids die from the choking game; they're often simply ruled a suicide.
While Dylan's investigation moves forward, his classmates and teachers
at Mills High are being offered grief counseling. They've been writing
their thoughts on a banner for him.
Even on this, the most
painful of days, Dylan's parents want you to hear their story, hoping
something good can come from such tragedy.
"And I have the
biggest hole in my heart and I hope no other parent ever, ever has to go
through this," said Dylan's mother. "It's heartbreaking over something
just so silly."
Investigators are checking reports of an adult male seen heading into the trees with Dylan just before he died.
Those instructional videos are all over the Internet, in fact, parents'
groups use them to explain the warning signs, such as marks on the
neck, bloodshot eyes, or persistent headaches. I give the full rundown in a new I-Team Blog here. If you have a tip for the I-Team, send us an e-mail here or call 1-888-40-I-TEAM.
What does playing around with risky substances do for your skin? your hair? your teeth? do I need to go on? Just watch the video of Meth users and ask yourself if it is really worth the risk or the high?
I don't know about you, I want to keep my teeth: meth eats your teeth up Meth users feel like they have "bugs" crawling all over them, hence the word "crank bugs" so they pick holes in their skin. That is where you see the scabs all over the face and body. Meth users don't sleep, for days, weeks at a time. They don't eat, that is why all these users look so bad now. Not to mention what they have done to the internal organs of the body.
Keep your teeth, Leave it alone!!!
So what the heck is meth: Educate yourself ...
Methamphetamine is a
highly addictive stimulant
that affects the
central nervous system. Although
most of the methamphetamine
used in this country comes from
foreign or domestic super-labs,
the drug is also easily made in
small clandestine laboratories,
with relatively inexpensive over-the-counter ingredients. These
factors combine to make methamphetamine a drug with high
potential for widespread abuse.
Methamphetamine is commonly
known as "speed," "meth," and
"chalk." In its smoked form, it
is often referred to as "ice,"
"crystal," "crank," and "glass." It
is a white, odorless, bitter-tasting
crystalline powder that easily
dissolves in water or alcohol.
The drug was developed early
last century from its parent drug, amphetamine, and was used
originally in nasal decongestants
and bronchial inhalers. Like
amphetamine, methamphetamine
causes increased activity and
talkativeness, decreased appetite,
and a general sense of well-being.
However, methamphetamine
differs from amphetamine in
that at comparable doses, much
higher levels of methamphetamine
get into the brain, making
it a more potent stimulant drug.
It also has longer lasting and
more harmful effects on the
central nervous system. Methamphetamine comes
in many forms and can
be smoked, snorted,
injected, or orally ingested.
The preferred method of
methamphetamine abuse varies
by geographical region and has
changed over time. Smoking
methamphetamine, which leads
to very fast uptake of the drug
in the brain, has become more
common in recent years,
amplifying methamphetamine's
addiction potential and adverse
health consequences.
The drug also alters mood in
different ways, depending on
how it is taken. Immediately
after smoking the drug or injecting
it intravenously, the user
experiences an intense rush
or "flash" that lasts only a few
minutes and is described as
extremely pleasurable. Snorting
or oral ingestion produces
euphoria - a high but not an
intense rush. Snorting produces
effects within 3 to 5 minutes, and
oral ingestion produces effects
within 15 to 20 minutes.
As with similar stimulants,
methamphetamine most often
is used in a "binge and crash"
pattern. Because the pleasurable
effects of methamphetamine
disappear even before the drug
concentration in the blood falls
significantly - users try to maintain
the high by taking more of
the drug. In some cases, abusers
indulge in a form of binging
known as a "run," foregoing
food and sleep while continuing
abuse for up to several days.
Methamphetamine vs. Cocaine
What are the long-term
effects of methamphetamine abuse?
Long-term methamphetamine
abuse has many negative
consequences, including
addiction. Addiction is a chronic,
relapsing disease, characterized
by compulsive drug seeking and
use, accompanied by functional
and molecular changes in the
brain. In addition to being
addicted to methamphetamine,
chronic abusers exhibit symptoms
that can include anxiety, confusion,
insomnia, mood disturbances,
and violent behavior.
They also can display a number
of psychotic features, including
paranoia, visual and auditory
hallucinations, and delusions
(for example, the sensation of
insects creeping under the skin).
Psychotic symptoms can sometimes
last for months or years
after methamphetamine abuse
has ceased, and stress has been
shown to precipitate spontaneous
recurrence of methamphetamine
psychosis in formerly psychotic
methamphetamine abusers.
With chronic abuse, tolerance
to methamphetamine's pleasurable
effects can develop. In an
effort to intensify the desired
effects, abusers may take higher
doses of the drug, take it more
frequently, or change their
method of drug intake. Withdrawal
from methamphetamine
occurs when a chronic abuser
stops taking the drug; symptoms
of withdrawal include depression,
anxiety, fatigue, and an
intense craving for the drug.
Chronic methamphetamine
abuse also significantly changes
the brain. Specifically, brain
imaging studies have demonstrated
alterations in the activity
of the dopamine system that are
associated with reduced motor
speed and impaired verbal
learning. Recent studies in
chronic methamphetamine abusers have also revealed
severe structural and functional
changes in areas of the brain
associated with emotion and
memory, which may account
for many of the emotional and
cognitive problems observed in
chronic methamphetamine
abusers.
Fortunately, some of the
effects of chronic methamphetamine
abuse appear to be, at
least partially, reversible. A
recent neuroimaging study
showed recovery in some brain
regions following prolonged
abstinence (2 years, but not 6
months). This was associated
with improved performance on
motor and verbal memory tests.
However, function in other
brain regions did not display
recovery even after 2 years of
abstinence, indicating that some
methamphetamine-induced
changes are very long-lasting.
Moreover, the increased risk of
stroke from the abuse of
methamphetamine can lead to
irreversible damage to the brain.
Short-term effects may include:
Increased attention and decreased fatigue
Increased activity and wakefulness
Decreased appetite
Euphoria and rush
Increased respiration
Rapid/irregular heartbeat
Hyperthermia
Long-term effects may include:
Addiction
Psychosis, including:
paranoia
hallucinations
repetitive motor activity
Changes in brain structure and function
Memory Loss
Aggressive or violent behavior
Mood disturbances
Severe dental problems
Weight loss
Great information from NIDA: http://drugabuse.gov/NIDAHome.html
The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) , a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
