
Methamphetamine is a stimulant used recreationally across the United States, usually as an upper to increase energy, cause sensations of euphoria, and to help people stay awake. At the same time, it’s highly addictive and with significant interactions across the central nervous system, can cause unwanted side-effects and long-term and sometimes permanent damage.
An estimated 1.8 million Americans are addicted to meth, with many being unable to control use despite those negative side-effects. As a result, most people can easily spot someone who uses meth frequently with weight loss, a haggard appearance, “tweaking”, paranoia, and failing personal hygiene being hallmarks of the drug. For those who smoke, that also includes blackened and rotting teeth.
At the same time, those visible effects of meth on the brain and the body are only the surface level of what meth does to you. The drug can cause long-term damage that, for some of us, never goes away, and the longer you use, the worse it gets.
Long-term Effects of Meth Use on the Brain
Meth affects the chemistry of the brain, including how the brain communicates. This means that neural pathways are impaired, the hormones and neurotransmitters that send signals across the brain and body can be impaired, and hormones that are normally created during “reward” situations like serotonin can be present in high values, resulting in the brain desensitizing to them.
Cognitive Impairment
Meth impairs your brain’s ability to send signals along neural pathways. This means that memory can be significantly impacted. Heavy meth users frequently see decreases in ability to learn new information or to recall old information, even if they previously knew it very well.
Meth users score lower on recall tasks, digit recognition, color tests, verbal recall, recognition, and other tasks. In addition, meth users score lower on motor skills tasks, with unpredictable motor reflexes and muscle response.
Does that recover? Usually after about 2 years after quitting meth.
Emotional Side-effects
Methamphetamine floods the brain with serotonin, resulting in feelings of power, ecstasy, and “feeling good”. It’s an upper because it makes you feel good and high energy. At the same time, that desensitizes the brain to normal production of those same chemicals. As a result, normal life can feel boring, under stimulating, and unrewarding. Long-term meth users often experience emotional blunting, where nothing but more meth will make them feel good.
That, in turn, can result in chronic depression, meaning you experience anxiety, depression, and paranoia as a norm. Your brain is no longer capable of responding in a healthy fashion to normal stimuli, so everything feels bad. That can result in suicidal thoughts and feelings, in depression, and in significant anxiety and worry.
Psychological Side-effects
Methamphetamine is well-known for causing symptoms of psychosis. Often, that’s associated with serotonin reuptake and inhibition, because people with too much serotonin present in the brain can have significant problems with psychosis. However, it’s also linked to the central nervous system and GABA receptors, which can cause feelings of skin crawling, itching, twitching, and paranoia.
As a result, individuals who take meth over the long-term can experience significant psychosis including hallucinations, delusions, and inability to trust anything that is said to them. These symptoms almost always set in after using methamphetamine, so some users eventually start using more to avoid symptoms of it altogether, resulting in tweaking and worsening symptoms.
Neurological Damage
Methamphetamine use can actually damage the brain, resulting in deterioration of neural pathways and shrinkage of some areas of the brain. In some cases, brain cells including dopamine pathway metabolism can actually die off, meaning that it will not recover, even after significant abstinence. For most, the brain will make a significant recovery over about the first two years after abstinence, after which ongoing damage may still persist. That long-term damage can result in reduced motor skills, increased risk of Parkinsons disease, reduced ability to control and manage anger, and reduced ability to feel motivated.
Faster Aging
Chronic meth use is linked to accelerated brain aging, resulting in increased risk of cognitive decline, Parkinsons, and other age-related disorders. Aging here includes damage such as increased white-matter volume, lesions on the brain, and inability to repair. While this can also be called “damage” it does not typically recover after quitting methamphetamine and is very similar to the effect of simply aging.
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Long-Term Effects of Meth Use on the Body

Meth is a stimulant that can have significant side-effects on the body. The longer and more heavily you use, the more likely you are to experience those significant side-effects. In addition, while most will heal over time after you quit, others, like tooth loss, won’t recover.
Cardiovascular Issues
Methamphetamine is a stimulant that puts significant pressure on your heart and blood pressure. As a result, people who chronically use meth can start to experience significant heart problems including increased risk of heart attack and stroke. Many people who abuse meth over the longer term also have high blood pressure, irregular heartbeat, and a high risk of heart muscle disease.
Dental Problems
“Meth Mouth” is a well-known problem that often relates to smoking meth, poor oral hygiene, and high consumption of sugary drinks. This tooth decay is not present in all forms of meth abuse but is very common and is impossible to reverse. Here, smoking dries the mouth, resulting in gum disease, high acid content in the mouth, and an inability of the body to remove the acid of sugars from the enamel. As a result, many meth users suffer from significant tooth loss and decay.
Skin Problems
Methamphetamine interacts with the central nervous system, causing nerve sensations and psychosis. The result is that many people pick at their skin and scratch, resulting in lesions and scars. In addition, meth reduces your body’s ability to heal by reducing the immune system and the hemoglobin response, meaning that skin heals more slowly or not at all.
Weight Loss
Most people who use meth eventually lose weight because meth suppresses the appetite, sometimes for days at a time. At the same time, it speeds up the heart and increases energy levels, meaning that most people using meth are surviving on nothing but sugary beverages. Eventually, most people using meth lose a significant amount of weight, which can look similar to an extreme illness.
Immune Issues
Poor nutrition, high levels of stress to the body, and poor hygiene result in reduced immune system and increased vulnerability to infections, including bacteria, colds, COVID, and skin infections. People who use meth a lot are very often sick and this may take a long time after quitting to fix itself.
Organ Damage
Long-term meth use increases stress on the liver, kidneys, heart, and gastrointestinal tract. As a result, most people who use long-term will experience organ damage. In some cases, damage to kidneys will repair itself and fairly quickly. In others, heart damage and gastrointestinal damage can be permanent. The sooner you get help with quitting meth, the less likely you are to have permanent side-effects and organ damage.
Addiction
Regularly using a drug will result in chemical dependence and then addiction. This is partially a physical reaction and partially a mental reaction. In most cases, it means experiencing physical cravings and withdrawal effects like sweating, fever, and tremors alongside intense feelings of mental depression and hopelessness. That can result in people who are chemically addicted using more of the drug just to stay functional – resulting in worsening mental reliance and behavioral addiction. In every case, addiction will require detox assistance and mental health help to minimize risks of relapse and overdose after tolerance decreases.
Do You Heal from Meth Use?
While many of the side-effects of using meth are long-term, you can recover from most of them. Some will be permanent. For example, liver damage is usually permanent, as is heart damage, brain aging is usually permanent, etc. However, many of the side-effects of long-term meth use will recover after about 2 years. After about 18 months, most of the side-effects you have left will be permanent. Still, you can recover much of your health, your ability to experience emotions, and your mental health. The sooner you quit, the more likely that is, and the better outcomes will be.
If you or a loved one is struggling with methamphetamine usage, it’s important to talk to your doctor, get help, and get started on your path to recovery before things get worse. Good luck.