Smoking large amounts of marijuana for a long period of time can cause the opposite effect that those who smoke it tend to seek, since a study has just determined that this damages the brain’s pleasure center, responsible for the sensations of pleasure and reward .
Scientists know that drug abuse can wreak havoc on the dopamine system , a main ingredient in the brain’s reward system. People who abuse alcohol and cocaine, for example, produce much less dopamine in their brain than those who do not. Now, this study, carried out by the National Institute on Drug Abuse in Bethesda (USA) wanted to find out if this same effect occurs in those who smoke large amounts of marijuana .
To do this, they worked with metlfenidate, a stimulant that increases the amount of dopamine in the brain, which was distributed among 24 heavy marijuana smokers (with an average of 5 joints a day, 5 days a week for 10 years) and 24 people in the control group.
Brain imaging revealed that both groups produced extra dopamine after taking the drug; But while the control group experienced an increase in heart rate and blood pressure readings and reported feeling restless, the marijuana users did not, it did not affect them . Their responses were so weak that researchers even wondered if methylphenidate was out of date (which it wasn’t).
This lack of physical response suggests that marijuana abusers may have damaged the brain’s reward circuitry. Your brain, despite producing the same amount of dopamine as those who do not take drugs, your brain does not know what to do with it , producing a kind of “disconnection”.
The study has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
