In this Wednesday’s edition (22) of the Medical Correspondent board, of Novo Dia, the neurosurgeon Fernando Gomes talked about the drop in drug use among high school students in the United States – the biggest drop in 46 years, according to a survey.
The study carried out by the University of Michigan pointed out that, in 2021, the percentage of young people who had already used an illicit drug in addition to marijuana – a product legalized for recreational use in some US states – dropped by 25%. The drop is the biggest since 1975, when the survey began. “These drops are an unintended consequence of the pandemic,” said professor and scientist Richard Miech, who led the work.
“Among the various ‘interruptions’ that adolescents have had throughout the pandemic are the interruption of access to drugs, the interruption of using drugs away from their parents and the interruption of social pressure from peers to consume drugs”, he highlighted.
For Fernando Gomes, stimulating the use of narcotics in the brain – both for young people and adults – causes a change in perceptions, interfering with the functioning of the organ, since neurotransmitters start to receive “direct influence” from the substance consumed.
“If I interfere with the communication between neurons, momentarily, while the substance circulates in the body, you can imagine that the person has changes”, he said.
Gomes pointed out that the human brain is usually “ready” at the age of 21 and, therefore, the use of any product that causes interference in the organ is “extremely harmful”, leaving the user, in most cases, without control of the consequences. .
“The best thing is to have a healthy life, far from it all, so that our entire organism can develop in the best possible way”
The neurosurgeon compared the use of drugs to that of drugs prescribed by doctors for the treatment of diseases, stating that the use of drugs when the patient does not have any type of disease can also cause dependence and an imbalance in the body itself in relation to the delivery of neurotransmitters. to the cells of the human body.
Regarding the consequences, Gomes pointed out that drugs can bring problems for life, such as a predisposition to anxiety and depression, in addition to other “practical” effects when a person is under the influence of a substance.
“If an individual is not mature enough and he abuses alcohol and cocaine, for example, and takes a car and ‘hugs’ a pole, we have a definitive interference for the rest of his life.”
“We don’t have control and we can’t control the organism in such a perfect way as to say: ‘this is just a recreational use, then go back to your normal life’. There is a fragile system that is under development and any interference could be definitive,” he concluded.
Source: CNN Brasil
