Abusing drugs or alcohol in any capacity can lead to an addiction and understanding the various ways you can become addicted is important. There are three major ways drugs are taken: snorting, smoking, or injecting. Each of these methods are highly addicting. But which is the worst? Understanding this can help you gauge the dangers you or your friends are in if you are using drugs.
Fastest Way To Addiction
Snorting, smoking, or injecting: Which gets you addicted the quickest? A recent study from the University of Montreal has found that the way an individual snorts, injects, or swallows a drug could increase the risk of addiction. Different types of drugs react and move differently in our bodies. This is what pharmacokinetics is all about: studying the speed at which a drug enters our bloodstream; how quickly it travels throughout our body and to our brain; how fast it is broken down and metabolized; and finally how it gets excreted.
Researchers have found that smoking or intravenously injecting a drug intravenously are is the fastest ways for it to travel to the brain. For example, those who inject cocaine reach their peak high in about 1 to 5 minutes. By contrast, those who snort cocaine reach their peak high in about 15 to 20 minutes. And the researchers of this study concluded that the faster a drug travels to the brain, the faster you can become addicted.
Smoking Is The Quickest, Followed By Injection
Now that we know that smoking or injecting are the fastest ways to get addicted and the fastest ways for drugs to travel to your brain, we can break it down a little further. Studies have shown that smoking is the quickest way for a drug to enter the brain.
Think of cigarettes: Their addictive nature is heavily tied into the fact that they are smoked. When a person smokes a cigarette, they are inhaling nicotine into the lungs. The lungs then absorb that into the blood, which quickly travels to the brain.
After smoking, the quickest ways to get addicted include (in descending order: Injection, followed by snorting, and ingestion. Think of the delay that might occur when you drink alcohol: it can take several minutes, as opposed to seconds, to cause changes in your brain.
Another example of this occurs when consuming cannabis baked in a brownie. Your high will occur more slowly and last longer than if you smoked it.
Consumption Rate Also Matters
Speed isn’t the only important factor in addiction: drug consumption rate can also be used to predict its addictive properties. How fast a drug reaches the brain and how fast brain levels rise and fall while intoxicated also influences addiction.
In one study, mice were split into two different groups. The first group were injected with cocaine about every five seconds. This is roughly the equivalent of how fast cocaine travels to the human brain when smoked. The second group of mice were given cocaine once every 90 seconds. This roughly equates to how fast it takes if a human were to snort cocaine.
The group of mice that were given cocaine rapidly developed an obsessive addiction to the cocaine. So not only does the manner in which drugs are consumed affect us (ie: how fast they travel to the brain), how often a drug is consumed plays a large role to determining addiction as well.
Recovery Is Only A Phone Call Away
Maybe you have developed a drug or alcohol addiction due to certain circumstances in your life. But you can be stronger and tougher than your addiction. Your body needs rest and wants to be healthy and revitalized. Imagine yourself free from your addiction. What can you gain if you lose your addiction? Only you know the answer to that. Contact us at DrugRehab.org to learn more. Act today and start a new life.
