Stop toxic effects: make the connections.

Drug users crave drugs of abuse because of the way drugs work in the brain. But these drugs are toxic to the human body, too. Read about some of the ways that drugs of abuse affect the body. Then pick up a pencil and connect each effect, from the list on the right, to the relevant body part on the diagram, at left.

1. Inhalants may cause arms and legs to tremble uncontrollably. This is because inhalants may destroy the protective coating, called myelin, on nerve cells. Because they can't receive messages normally, muscles shake.

2. With steroid use, bone growth may stop--no matter how old the user! This is because the fake hormones signal the brain that the abuser has reached adulthood. Steroid abusers may never reach their adult height.

3. Marijuana and cigarette smokers pull sticky tar into their lungs with every puff. Tar coats the delicate air sacs in the lungs. The results can include coughing, mucous, shortness of breath, emphysema, and cancer.

4. When the chemical fumes from inhalants replace the oxygen in the lungs, suffocation and death can result. Prolonged use of inhalants can also cause irregular and rapid heart rhythms and lead to heart failure and death.

5. Poisons from steroids can collect in the liven Blood-filled cysts may result. If the cysts burst, dangerous internal bleeding is the result.

6. The carbon monoxide in cigarette smoke weakens the heart, leaving the smoker at risk for heart attack.

7. On MDMA (ecstasy), the body can't control its own temperature. Abusers risk kidney failure--and death--when they run out of sweat and become dehydrated.

8. Cocaine and other stimulants (amphetamines, methamphetamines) can cause heart failure and death. This is because they constrict blood vessels, reducing the flow of blood and oxygen to the heart.