It is crystal clear: drugs blow away your mind!

Literally.

A new research at UT Southwestern Medical Center reveals that higher rates of amphetamine and cocaine useD by young adults increase significantly their risk of stroke, with amphetamine linked to a greater danger.

The research focused on over 8,300 stroke patients, aged 18 to 44, from over 500 Texas hospitals in the period 2000 - 2003.

The approach found an increased abuse of drugs, particularly methamphetamines, which are synthesized in illegal drug labs or illegally imported.

Amphetamines are drugs prescribed for various conditions and sometimes employed illegally as drugs or as performance enhancers but methamphetamines (meth) are much more powerful, with a longer and more harmful effect to the central nervous system than the amphetamines.

"Using amphetamines or cocaine significantly increases an individual's risk for a stroke," said lead author Dr. Arthur Westover, an instructor of psychiatry at UT Southwestern.

"If we decrease the number of people who are using these substances, then we likely can decrease the number of strokes in this younger population. The implication is that it's preventable."

Strokes mean a sudden interruption in the brain's blood supply, correlated to the damages to brain centers due to the lack of oxygen.

The majority of the strokes are ischemic, provoked by a blockage of brain arteries but the hemorrhagic strokes emerge when brain blood vessel bursts.

The data revealed that amphetamine-abusing youth is five times more likely to experience a hemorrhagic stroke than non-abusers.

Cocaine doubles the risk of either a hemorrhagic or an ischemic stroke.

Over 14 % of hemorrhagic strokes and 14 % of ischemic strokes were inflicted by drug abuse, including also the cannabis (marijuana) and tobacco.

"Basically, speed kills," said Dr. Robert Haley, the study's senior author and chief of epidemiology at UT Southwestern.

"And meth seems to be increasing as the preferred drug of abuse among the youngest population - people who don't always know its dangers, often thinking it's fairly safe."

"This is the first study large enough to confirm the link that meth kills by causing strokes. We hope that our findings will lead to getting the word out to young people who are tempted to use meth, explaining that the drug is extremely dangerous and can kill them."