Drugs aren’t just for the young. A recent report in the Scientific American shows that many baby boomers are continuing to use recreational drugs into their golden years. In other words, it’s not a habit they left behind in the experimentation of the psychedelic ‘60s and ‘70s, and it could lead to serious health effects later in life.
The professional journal Neuropsychopharmacology states, “Many aging baby boomers, long accustomed to using illicit drugs for recreation and medicinals of all kinds for treating whatever ails them, will carry their love affair with drugs into old age. Medicine is only beginning to appreciate the consequences.”
The term “baby boomers” encompasses the generation born between 1946 and 1964, a group that makes up 29 percent of the US population today. While there are many distinctive characteristics attributed to this group, they certainly became known for their significantly higher use of illicit drugs than that of preceding generations.
While this was of concern, many experts believed that baby boomers would eventually outgrow their use of recreational drugs as they aged and took on more responsibility. However, as time as passed, there is little evidence of that happening.
Gayathri J. Dowling, Susan R. B. Weiss and Timothy P. Condon, the professionals behind the Neuropsychopharmacology piece, cite hospital data that record the number of people aged 55 and older who sought emergency-room treatment and mentioned using various drugs. The number of cocaine mentions rose from 1,400 in 1995 to almost 5,000 in 2002, an increase of 240 percent. Similarly, mentions of heroin increased from 1,300 to 3,400 (160 percent), marijuana from 300 to 1,700 (467 percent) and amphetamine from 70 to 560 (700 percent).
It seems like an inconceivable amount of growth in such a short time, but data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health supports those figures. In 2002 some 2.7 percent of adults between 50 and 59 admitted to illicit drug use at least once in the preceding year. By 2005 that number had increased significantly to 4.4 percent. The investigators attribute the rise to the aging baby boomers, as well as to enhanced longevity coupled with people’s tendency to retain their long-held patterns of drug use as they grow older.
This continued drug use is predicted to have a variety of negative effects. Drugs affect elderly brains and bodies differently. The same cocaine a person took or pot he or she smoked will not produce the same effect as that person ages. A person’s neurotransmitters process dopamine, serotonin and glutamate differently with age. The ability of receptors to bind dopamine, for instance, declines with age, and those declines often lead to some loss of motor and cognitive functioning. Cocaine users and the elderly exhibit similar brain changes, so seniors who use cocaine could be compounding the damage. Aging also leads to changes in metabolic rates, affecting the speed at which a drug is absorbed, distributed, metabolized and eliminated.
Drug Addiction Help at The Canyon
The number of adults aged 50 and older treated for drug abuse will rise from 1.7 million in 2000 and 2001 to 4.4 million in 2020. If you or someone you love needs treatment for drug addiction, call The Canyon at the toll-free number on our homepage. Someone is there to take your call 24 hours a day and answer any questions you have about treatment, financing or insurance.
