Anyone who uses, or has used any form of an ‘off yer face’ drug will be aware of the psychological effects withdrawals and downers can give you. Perhaps the most significant of these mind benders are our so-called ‘friends’ Charlie and Billy.

There is evidence from around the world that stimulant abuse can lead to some form of mental illness. So what’s really happening when we whiz our tits off? Well, any neurologist will tell you that it is known that there are as many firing mechanisms in the human brain per second as there are stars in the Universe. Not surprisingly then, it’s easy to imagine that after bingeing on coke or whiz its as though your brain has been through an asteroid storm.

For example German soldiers were administered amphetamines to counteract battle fatigue during World War II. After the war many soldiers complained they were suffering from delusions and other thought disorders, and generally their heads were becoming sauerkraut (pickled cabbage)! Even Adolf Hitler himself towards the end of the war was said to have received regular injections of methamphetamine, and this seems entirely consistent with his spiralling emotional turmoil and erratic behaviour in the closing phases of the war.

The British Medical Journal stated in January 1999 that there was an increased call for more research into the field of stimulant substance abuse and its link with severe mental illness. Evidence from the United States suggests that half of all patients with schizophrenia also have a substance abuse history!

Schizophrenia! Quite simply cocaine/amphetamine psychosis is more often than not a mirroring of a schizo-affective disorder or mania. In short, the neuro-transmission chemicals i.e. dopamine receptors and seratonin transmitters within the brain, which give us our sense of feelings and reality of the world around us, are being pissed about with. Even long after withdrawal an ex-stimulant user can be left a few noodles short of a full chow mein!

Symptoms such as feelings of bugs under the skin (excoriations), grinding of teeth (bruxism), which is itself, a common side effect whilst on whiz. Other common symptoms are drifting thought patterns and various delusions including; paranoia, grandeur, persecution and suspicion. Also hearing, tasting, and visual hallucinations and various other forms thought disorder affect users and ex-users. Very often, a stimulant user may temporarily have a head like a bucket of snakes and the next minute feel like Einstein.

Even if the clinical evidence doesn’t convince us, consider the "Legend of Coca". The South American Andean people have been chewing vitamin enriched coca leaves for thousands of years to increase fertility and combat altitude sickness. Their legend states "Guard its leaves with love and when you feel pain in your heart, hunger in your flesh and darkness in your mind, lift it to your mouth. You will find love for your pain, nourishment for your body and light for your mind."

The Andean forefathers went on in the Legend to foretell the warning of the White Man from the North, the Gold Seeker, who would find a way to subvert their ‘small but strong plant’. When he touches it "he will find only poison for his body and madness for the mind!" Amazingly true! Of course what they did predict was the scale of the backlash. White man has indeed succeeded in extracting the 0.5% alkaloid cocaine from the coca leaf at the end of the 19th Century. Since then all hell has broke loose!

If you are to use Coke or Whiz, bear in mind the dangers of going ‘on one’. Not only do you strip your body of essential vitamins and trace elements, screw your central nervous system, put your heart and other organs on overdrive, but primarily screw your brain up. Plus the added bonuses of dental damage and having a nose like a hosepipe (ask Daniella Westbrook!)

These days, noses can be rebuilt, teeth can be filled or false, but your brain is an amazing gift from the Gods and even Harrods don’t sell them. After all, there are already enough ways to poison our brains in day to day life without Charlie and Billy helping us on the way.

Finally on the radio not long ago came a theory that it’s reckoned that there is more madness in the world today because people don’t eat fish on a Friday anymore. Makes sense, fish has always been considered good for the brain. Omega 3 fish oils being the accepted scientific reason. Now there’s food for thought! So next time you fancy a line of Charlie or Billy and your rolling up an old ‘Ayrton Senna’ and reaching for your Sainsburys reward card, reach for the tin opener and get a tin of mackerel down yer ‘mountain goat’.

As for me, I think the world’s as mad as a box of frogs anyway!!!

Pete H ex-con/ex-user.