Stimulants are one of the most commonly abused drugs in the United States. This drug class includes drugs like amphetamines, methylphenidate, anorectic stimulants, and drugs like Provigil, as well as illicit street drugs like methamphetamine. Most are used to treat attention disorders, narcolepsy, weight gain, etc., but millions of Americans abuse them. In fact, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 1.3 percent of the adult population, or 3.7 million adult Americans abused a stimulant prescription in the year 2020. A further 2.5 million people abused methamphetamine, with an estimated 1.6 million struggling with methamphetamine use disorder. Yet stimulants can have significant and permanent effects on the body. Stimulant-induced psychosis is one of those issues, and occurs during or shortly after ingesting stimulants, or quitting them.
Understanding how stimulant-induced psychosis works and what the risks are can help you to make better choices around stimulant drugs.
Stimulant abuse can cause psychosis by changing hormone and chemical ratios in the brain, literally creating symptoms of psychosis. In this case, the psychosis typically goes away within 3-18 months following the final dose of stimulants.
On the other hand, stimulants can also trigger underlying mental health problems, bringing a disorder you already had to the forefront. For example, individuals with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other mood disorders are significantly vulnerable to substance abuse. At the same time, abusing those drugs can worsen symptoms and result in permanent psychosis, which was triggered by the substance use.
This means that if you start to experience psychosis during stimulant abuse, it may be because of the drugs or it may be because the drugs triggered a pre-existing disorder which was not previously active.
For this reason, it’s a good idea to discuss your concerns, your family mental health history, and any diagnoses you have with your doctor when getting a prescription. If you have a risk of schizophrenia or mood disorder diagnosis, your doctor may opt for a medication with fewest possible risks. On the other hand, if you have no family history of schizophrenia or psychosis, your risks are likely extremely small and you can safely take prescription stimulants.
It’s important to note that at prescription doses, stimulants rarely cause psychosis. However, they do cause psychosis. An estimated 0.1% of patients starting amphetamine treatment for ADD or ADHD report symptoms of psychosis beginning within a few weeks of starting treatment. Yet, when you go to recreational use, those numbers skyrocket to 18%. For methamphetamine users, those rates can be as high as 70%.
Therefore, there’s risk of psychosis even with prescription stimulant use. However, risks are significantly higher as you increase the dose.
If you’ve been prescribed stimulants and you’re concerned, talk to your doctor. It’s always important to report any unusual side effects including psychosis, to your doctor – because they will take you off the medication and try something else. However, on average, prescription stimulants are safe to use as-directed.
There are many types of stimulants, however, most interact with the brain in broadly the same ways. For example, most increase levels of serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine in the brain. These go on to regulate the brain, enhancing attention span, increasing motivation to do things, and improving ability to sleep. In high doses, they can also cause intense highs and feeling good. But, in high doses, the brain will actually re-regulate its own production to adapt to those high levels of chemicals. The brain may even stop producing those neurotransmitters. High levels of dopamine and serotonin can also damage the receptors, meaning that you can no longer properly regulate and use those transmitters without giving the brain time to heal.
That can go on to result in significant side effects, including psychosis, depression, paranoia, feelings of hostility, insomnia, mood swings, and an inability to concentrate. And, those symptoms will likely keep coming back, to the point where you actually have to use to feel normal.
Most importantly, the longer and heavier substance abuse is, the worse those symptoms will get. Eventually, psychosis can get to the point of failing to recognize reality around symptoms.
Stimulant-induced psychosis can be difficult to impossible to tell from any other type of psychosis. For this reason, you cannot get a diagnosis for a psychotic disorder without quitting substance abuse for a period of at least 3 months. However, psychosis typically includes:
Those symptoms typically map to mood swings, significant personal decline, and cognitive decline. Someone might behave in ways that seem completely irrational and illogical, because their brain isn’t functioning as it should.
There’s a persistent myth that once you start abusing meth or another stimulant, you’re permanently damaged. That isn’t the case. In fact, most people recover fully from psychosis after a period of about 2 years after quitting stimulant abuse. That won’t be true if psychosis results from an underlying mental health disorder. However, studies show that subjects return to normal brain activity within 2 years of quitting. In fact, most healing is done within the first three months – meaning that the worst of the symptoms will go away during early recovery. However, you may need medication to manage psychosis for several years following stimulant abuse. That’s okay, millions of Americans have problems with psychosis and medication allows them to live very normal lives.
If you or a loved one is struggling with a substance use disorder, it’s important to get help. The sooner you quit, the lower the risks of developing permanent damage. And, the sooner you quit, the faster you can heal and get back to your life.
Asana Recovery is located in Orange County, California. and offers detox, residential, and outpatient addiction treatment services in our modern and comfortable addiction treatment facilities. Please contact us today to speak with one of our experienced addiction treatment team if you have any questions about our programs.
© Copyright 2024 Asana Recovery™
| All Rights Reserved | Privacy Policy
Asana Recovery | Headquarters | 1730 Pomona Ave Suite 3, Costa Mesa, CA 92627, United States
Asana Recovery
We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers).
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs. There may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to