Question about cocaine recovery

[hopealwayz]

Last night at work I was having a discussion with a friend about the brain recovering from cocaine. I read in a few places that the brain can completely recover in a year. But he told me that things will never be the same and that is contradicting what I read somewhere about complete healing. Will moods and depression/anxiety/irritability decrease within a year or will the brain ever go back to 'normal'? If anyone has any insight on this, please let me know.

Hope

[Sad no more]

I don't know but I sure would like to. this is a very interesting question.. Never knew the brain could redeem itself.. I'll go on to the internet and see what I can find out u do the same..cuz I wanna know toooo

[servicejunkie]

I know that most most depression and some other problems due to a lack of seratonin and dopamine will get better around 9 months. When we clean up, our brains are totally depleated of these two chemicals, which control mood and lead to depression. It will take around 9 months give or take for them to be fully replinished. Chemically speaking, things do get better. I really don't believe things will "never be the same", but once we are addicts, we always seem to suffer from some kind of obsession/compulsion which will always be with us to some degree. I guess this could be due to something dammaged in the brain, but then again, what do I know, I'm not a doctor!!

[Sad no more]

I went on the internet like I said I would hopealwayz and this is what I found

A growing body of evidence indicates that chronic cocaine administration can produce profound and long-lasting changes in brain neurochemical and neuroendocrine systems. At the behavioral level, evidence is accumulating that chronic use of cocaine compromises the neural mechanisms that mediate positive reinforcement. This is illustrated, for example, by findings that cocaine acutely facilitates the rewarding effects of intracranial self-stimulation, while withdrawal after chronic use leads to an impairment in the rewarding efficacy of electrical brain stimulation (Markou and Koob 1991). Findings such as these have given rise to the view that compulsive drug-seeking behavior associated with cocaine (and other drugs of abuse) may be the result of adaptive processes within the central nervous system that oppose the acute reinforcing actions of drugs, leading both to a "blunting" of mechanisms that mediate positive reinforcement and the emergence of affective changes during withdrawal that may motivate continued use of the drug (for example, anxiety, dysphoria, and depression) during withdrawal (Koob and Bloom 1988; Koob I found this athttp://www.cocaine.org/cocabrain/index.html check it out...

[namommy]

A few years ago, I had to get an MRI of the brain, looking for a pituitary tumor. When the films came back, there were bright white spots in the brain that the Dr. called 'Foci'. He said that these are spots of cells in the brain that show up brighter with the contrast dye because they are in a sense 'dead'. he told me this was a result of years of drug use. (he knows my history). I had been clean about 5 years at the time.

As far as 'things will never be the same', I can put it to you this way.

If you take a cucumber and put it in brine, it becomes a pickle. If you take the pickle out of the brine, it will NEVER turn into a cucumber again.

In essence, we've been pickled.

[Gooch]

the pickle analogy works well ...

not to say that we cannot "recover" from many aspects of the effects of the drugs, however the nature of addiction, the obsessive, compulsive disorder never seems to completely go away. Most of the addicts I know with years of recovery working a program tell me that we grow more and more accustomed to, first recognizing the obsession and not acting on it, and secondly not entertaining the obsessions as they come up.

That is to say that we can learn to avoid the compulsive activities, and then eventually recognize and dismiss the obsessive thinking.

as for permanent brain damage, in my own experience, I have too many variables resulting from environmental factors and head trauma to conclusively determine anything one way or the other.

Plus I was a paste eater.

[namommy]

Originally Posted by Gooch

Plus I was a paste eater.

Sooo that explains it.

[val]

I used cocaine for many years and was once told that I would never go back to being the same as I was before the abuse. THANK GOD isnt that what recovery is all about, change. I am six years clean now and it just keeps getting better.

[Imagine]

I agree with val, recovery is all about addressing and changing a life of abuseing ourselfs. As for me, I've accepted that parts of my brain and body is damaged for the rest of my life, I'm also greatful that it does not mean my life is over. Thanks to the NA program I started to live my life in 1996 after 26 years of trying to avoild it, and just hanging around until it's over. Way in the world would I want to go back to that way of thinking. It does keep getting better and it starts with accepting our past, forgiving ourselfs, and letting go...........Love and Peace, Addict name Jerome.

[Time2Surrender]

i have been wondering the same thing after being addicted to crack for 17 years.i believe the brain damage is irreversible.but,i think being clean is much better then to keep using and destroy more brain cells.

[Gooch]

From what I understand about brain physiology, we are blessed with spare cells, that can jump in to take up the slack of many of the ones we fried. I'm no rocket surgeon, but 13 years of keepin my head out of the oven, and I get by pretty well.

[Godswillnotmine]

I am a recently recovered cocaine user in all sense of the words, I have a question and possibly already answered but, my memory short-term, and long-term are shot in the a**. I mean even worse than my worst pot smoking days, please help
I suffer from CRS (can't remember s***). Theresa

[dixielove]

My memory is suffering too. But I have heard that it does get better with time. I read somewhere that it takes about a year.

[hopealwayz]

How long does it take for serotonin levels to balance out?