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Methamphetamine is very powerful and changes how your brain works. No matter how meth is used (smoked, snorted, eaten, or injected) or how small an amount is taken, it ends up in the bloodstream and affects your whole brain.
The regions in the brain that are most affected are those that contain dopamine. Dopamine is a chemical nerve cell communicator that is responsible for your feelings of pleasure. When something pleasurable happens, like riding a rollercoaster, dopamine is released. The dopamine is relayed to other nerve cells and then recycled back to the original nerve cell for later use. Because meth acts just like dopamine, it fools the nerve cell into thinking meth is a natural dopamine. So the nerve cell takes meth in and releases large amounts of dopamine. That's why a meth user feels an extra sense of pleasure for a short period�before the effect stops.
Meth causes the body to make less dopamine and to make the receptors of the nerve cells shut down, not allowing dopamine to enter. That's when a person “crashes” and feels the need to take meth again to feel pleasure. A person who continues to take meth has difficulty feeling pleasure from anything, even winning a lottery or going on a hot date.
