The eyes are your window to the world. Eyes express the way you feel. A downcast eye reflects a bad mood or a bad day at the office. A sparkling eye means achievement of some kind. The same goes for substance abuse. The way your eyes look can tell a lot about what you may have been binging on the night before.
Right from the size of the pupils, to the color of the whites of the eyes; all can tell the tale of whether or not you were high the night before. This article throws some light on what do eyes look like when you are high and how much illegal substance you may have consumed.
What Do Eyes Look Like When You Are High?
The ingredient present in Ecstasy or Cocaine, which is not only relaxing and makes you feel good, but also keeps you awake, works adversely on the neurotransmitters in the brain and also alters the physiological processes taking place in the body. These also include the changes taking place in the eyes after a shot.
When you are high, the pupils may constrict or dilate depending on the drug used. Drugs like marijuana or cocaine dilate the pupils; whereas heroin constricts the pupils(1). A definite change in the pupil size is an indicator of the drug consumption(2), but that is not always the case as there are certain medical conditions that also dilate the eyes or constrict the pupils according to many studies(3).
The physicians look for additional indicators like hyperhidrosis, which along with pupil size can indicate whether the individual has been high(4). However, it is the eyes which give a clear signal as to whether an individual has been sober or not. In fact, the German police actually checks pupils of youngsters to check whether they are high or not. They use what resemble 3D eyeglasses to check the eyes of the person suspected to be high. These eyeglasses scan the pupils and give information if an individual is high on drugs or alcohol or not. Additionally, if an individual is high on cocaine or any other drug will have nonreactive or minimally reactive pupils to light. This reaction of the pupils stays for much longer than the actual drug in the body.
The bottom line; however, of all the studies suggest that it is possible to know if an individual is high by looking at the pupils, but it is impossible to know which drug he or she has consumed for getting high.
Conclusion
To summarize, by looking at the eyes one can tell whether an individual has been high (5). This is because the neurotransmitter in the brain gets affected by the ingredients present in the drugs. While certain drugs dilate pupils, certain drugs constrict the pupils when a person is high (5). Reactivity of the pupils of the light is also delayed in individuals who are high on drugs. Police departments are now using various ways to check the eyes to identify whether an individual is high on drugs. Thus, it is the eyes that can tell a tale as to whether you are high or not.
