9 Things You Should Know About Addiction To Stimulants | Addiction & Recovery articles | Emotional & Mental Health center

Stimulants are drugs that speed brain-body communication up, generally leading users to feel more alert, energetic, confident, and talkative. Taken in higher doses, that can also lead to problems like anxiety, jitteriness, heart palpitations, and headaches.

What do you need to know about stimulants? If you're not familiar with the term, the first thing you should know is that numerous different substances fall into this category, starting with one at least 64 percent of Americans use every day — the caffeine you get from your coffee.

1. Stimulants include street drugs, caffeine, nicotine, and some prescription medications

"Hard" (and illegal) drugs like cocaine, methamphetamine, khat, betel nut, and ice fall under this heading, but so do caffeine and the nicotine you get from tobacco. Many prescription drugs are stimulants, and they'd include ADHD and nacrolepsy medications like methylphenidate (Ritalin), dextroamphetamine (Dexedrine), and Adderall. Weight loss medications like Bontril, Preludin, and Fastin are stimulants, too.

While it's possible to become addicted to caffeine (something called "caffeine use disorder") and around 14 percent of Americans are addicted to cigarette smoking, the term "stimulant addiction" is mostly used to refer to illegal and prescription stimulants. It's important to note that prescription stimulants may be offered for legitimate medical purposes, but those who have prescriptions can also come to abuse them. Furthermore, these same drugs are certainly found on the black market, too.

2. Many people start using stimulants to boost performance or concentration

People who experiment with stimulants like Ritalin or speed might not do so for "recreational" reasons — to have fun, in other words. Addictions to prescription or amphetamine-type stimulants often start off with a desire to boost performance at work, school, or in sport. Such use is especially common among students with a heavy workload, who think they can increase their concentration and stay awake for longer by taking these drugs.

3. People use stimulants in different ways

Some people who become addicted to stimulants use them daily, while others go through periods of heavy use ("binges") and then have periods during which they don't use. Smoking and injecting stimulants leads to addiction most quickly, while snorting (cocaine, for instance) and taking tablets (like Ritalin) tends to progress to addiction more slowly.

4. Stimulant users and abusers build up a tolerance

This means that they'll no longer get the same effect from the same dose of their chosen stimulant with continued use, so they'll either have to use more, use more often, or switch to stronger stimulants to attain the same effect.

5. How can you recognize stimulant use?

People under the influence of stimulants may be rather talkative without making an awful lot of sense, and appear on edge and hyperactive. Many become irritable, and paranoia and aggression are not uncommon, either. After the effects of a stimulant like cocaine or amphetamine wear off, the person experiences a nasty "crash", during which they may feel depressed, anxious, and lethargic.

While stimulants are an incredibly broad category, be aware that overdoses of certain stimulants can lead to fever, shaking, seizures, coma, and even death.

6. Combining stimulants with other drugs is especially dangerous

Using amphetamines together with some antidepressants can lead to anything from dangerously high blood pressure and irregular heartbeats, to stroke and even heart failure. Adding alcohol or marijuana to amphetamines increases the risk of overdose, and the same goes for benzos. Combining speed and ice puts people at risk of strokes.

7. The physical consequences of stimulant abuse

While intoxicated, stimulant abusers may have high blood pressure, sweat a lot, have dilated pupils, and can feel nauseous or vomit. Some people will experience muscle weakness, breathing difficulties, chest pain, or confusion. Someone under the influence of stimulants may have a faster or slower heartbeat.

8. People quitting stimulants will experience withdrawal

During the withdrawal stage, stimulant addicts can experience symptoms like extreme fatigue, nasty dreams, and dysfunctional sleep. Physical dependence wears off quite quickly, but the psychological aspects of an addiction can linger for a long time, putting recovering addicts at risk of relapsing.

9. Help is available to overcome stimulant addictions

Addiction is, as a chronic brain disease, extremely hard to overcome by definition — and former addicts are always at risk of going back to stimulants. If you or someone you know wants to quit using stimulants, know that addicts are much more likely to stay off the drugs in the long term if they receive help. Cognitive behavioral therapy, whether individually or in a group setting, has been shown to help in many cases. This is because the therapy can encourage people to stay on their new path as well as teaching them new approaches to the underlying issues that may have led them to abuse stimulants in the first place. Many people also benefit from so-called contingency management, in which they receive small rewards for staying clean. Think of the chips you get to celebrate sobriety milestones in 12-step programs.

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