What happens if you snort bath salt

Circuits in the reward system use dopamine to teach the brain to repeat actions we find pleasurable. Drugs take control of this system, releasing large amounts of dopamine — first in response to the drug but later mainly in response to other cues associated with the drug, like when you see people you use drugs with, or plases where you use drugs.

The result is an intensive motivation to seek the drug. These drugs raise levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin. Learn more about how the brain works and what happens when a person uses drugs. And, check out how the brain responds to natural rewards and to drugs.

These reports show people who use bath salts have needed help for heart problems such as racing heart, high blood pressure, and chest pains and symptoms like paranoia, hallucinations, and panic attacks. They might also have dehydration, breakdown of muscle tissue attached to bones, and kidney failure. Read more about the link between viral infections and drug use. Intoxication from several man-made cathinones, including MDPV, mephedrone, methedrone, and butylone, has caused death among some people who have used bath salts.

Snorting or needle injection of bath salts seems to cause the most harm. Learn more about drug overdoses in youth. Another danger of "bath salts" is that they might contain other ingredients that cause their own harmful effects. Bath salts are sold as a white or off-white powder, mostly in small plastic or foil packages. The drugs are usually snorted sniffed up a nostril. They also can be swallowed, smoked, or mixed with a liquid and injected with a syringe.

Bath salts contain manmade chemicals that increase brain and central nervous system activity in much the same way as drugs like amphetamines or MDMA ecstasy.

Bath salts can cause users to have an out-of-body experience, elated mood, or feel delirious. He said Louisiana leads with the greatest number of cases at , or 48 percent of the U. Rick Gellar, medical director for the California Poison Control System, said the first call about the substances came in Oct.

But he warned: "The only way this won't become a problem in California is if federal regulatory agencies get ahead of the curve. This is a brand new thing. In the Midwest, the Missouri Poison Center at Cardinal Glennon Children's Medical Center received at least 12 calls in the first two weeks of January about teenagers and young adults abusing such chemicals, said Julie Weber, the center's director.

The center received eight calls about the powders all of last year. Richard Sanders, a general practitioner working in Covington, La. Dickie Sanders missed major arteries when he cut his throat. As he continued to have visions, his physician father tried to calm him. But the elder Sanders said that as he slept, his son went into another room and shot himself. It just made him crazy," said Sanders.

Doctors and clinicians at U. It is noteworthy that, even though we are barely two months into , there have been calls related to "bath salts" to poison control centers so far this year. This number already exceeds the calls received by poison control centers for all of In response to this emerging threat, several states, including Hawaii, Michigan, Louisiana, Kentucky, and North Dakota, have introduced legislation to ban these products, which are incidentally labeled as "not fit for human consumption.

We will continue to monitor the situation and promote research on the extent, pharmacology, and consequences of "bath salts" abuse. In the meantime, I would like to urge parents, teachers, and the public at large to be aware of the potential dangers associated with the use of these drugs and to exercise a judicious level of vigilance that will help us deal with this problem most effectively.