Here’s what caffeine, weed, alcohol, and 6 other common drugs do to your brain

When you take a puff of this, the world becomes a colorful kaleidoscope of moving patterns and waves of sound. When you take a sip of that, your muscles relax so much that they feel like jelly. We know that different drugs make us see the world in very different ways, and that their after-effects aren’t always as good as the effects they have right away. So what do these drugs do to the brain to make people feel this way?

Marijuana

When the active ingredient in marijuana, THC, hits the brain, it makes brain cells release dopamine, which makes you feel good. Dopamine is part of the brain’s reward system. It is the same chemical that makes us feel good when we eat or have sex.

When drugs overstimulate the reward system, it makes people feel happy. This is also why too much use can sometimes be a problem: The more often you do something that makes you happy, the less you may enjoy other things that make you happy.

Mysterious Mushrooms

A recent study found that the main psychoactive ingredient in shrooms, called psilocybin, seems to stop normal brain activity and instead start making new connections between different parts of the brain.

These new connections may be what people mean when they say they “hear colors” or “see sounds.” They may also explain why shrooms can help with depression. Of course, we need to do more research. And shrooms can be bad for your health. They can cause unpleasant hallucinations and make you feel more anxious.

Alcohol

Like other drugs, alcohol changes the way the brain works by changing the levels of neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters are chemical messengers that send signals that control how we think and act.

Alcohol slows down our thinking, breathing, and heart rate by stopping what are called “excitatory” messengers, which normally give us more energy. But it makes our “inhibitory” messages louder, which are usually the ones that help to calm things down. It also boosts the feel-good dopamine in our brains.

Heroin

Heroin is turned into morphine by the brain. Morphine binds to molecules on cells in the brain and body called opioid receptors, which change how we feel pain and rewards. This is why a lot of people feel a rush of happiness when they inject the drug.

Because the brain stem, which is the main control center of the body, also has opioid receptors, an overdose of heroin can slow or stop breathing, which can cause brain damage, coma, or death.

Prescription painkillers with opiates

Recent research has shed light on a possible link between heroin and opiate painkillers like Vicodin and OxyContin, which is a scary possibility. People who used opiates were 40 times more likely to use heroin, according to a CDC report that came out in July. The report says that the way opiates and heroin work in the brain is one reason why people who abuse opiates may be more likely to abuse heroin in the future.

Caffeine

Caffeine is the drug that people use most often to get high. Caffeine can give us a short-term mood boost because it speeds up the central nervous system. But this can also make us more irritable and anxious because it raises our adrenaline levels.

Caffeine also keeps us awake because it acts like a molecule in the brain called adenosine and takes over a part of the complex process our brains use to put us to sleep at night.

LSD

LSD is a hallucinogen, the same thing as magic mushrooms. Most of the time, hallucinogens affect the part of the brain that controls our mood, thoughts, and perceptions. They also affect other parts of the brain that control how we react to stress. Some people who have taken these drugs have talked about long “trips” in which they did everything from float in the air to see their own deaths.

Short-term effects of LSD can include being impulsive, going from feeling happy to feeling sad quickly, feeling dizzy, and having your heart rate go up.

Flakka

Researchers don’t know exactly how flakka affects the brain or how addictive it is because it is so new. For now, the only evidence they have is that it is chemically similar to cocaine and amphetamines.

These drugs make our bodies make more of two chemicals: dopamine, which makes us feel good, and norepinephrine, which speeds up our heart rate and keeps us alert. Like most other drugs, flakka has a down side. This feeling makes people want to use the drug again to get rid of the bad feeling, which can start a cycle of use that can lead to abuse. Too much use has been linked to feeling very anxious, paranoid, having hallucinations, and acting violently.

Ecstasy

Ecstasy, also called MDMA, speeds up the activity of at least three neurotransmitters, including dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin, which are important for keeping our mood stable. Serotonin levels going up may explain why MDMA users often feel happier, but this same serotonin drop is probably also a big part of why the comedown can last for days.

Research shows that taking 10 to 20 pills of MDMA in one weekend or two pills every weekend for years is bad for the brain. Two recent studies that compared people who used drugs often to people who used drugs rarely or never found that people who used drugs often did worse on memory and learning tests. One of these studies also used PET scans to find that these parts of the brain were less active in people who used drugs often.

Cocaine

Whether cocaine is snorted, smoked, or injected, it quickly gets into the bloodstream and reaches the brain. Once it gets there, it makes the person feel very happy, or “high,” by flooding the brain with the feel-good chemical dopamine. Because the feeling of pleasure is so strong, some lab animals will choose cocaine over food until they die of hunger.

Key memory centers are in the part of the brain that is most affected by cocaine. This may help explain some of its addictive qualities. When mice are given cocaine over and over again, the cells in a part of the brain that helps with decision-making and self-control change in many ways. The more often they get the drug, the more likely they are to get it again if they have the chance.