Someone who has become addicted to a drug, whether it be illicit drugs, prescribed drugs or alcohol, what is important to recognize is that they have a real problem that they may not know how to correct. Addiction isn't a moral or shameful flaw of that person but a chemical change in their brain and it's structure. A person takes a certain drug that changes how the brain processes the drug. This change causes the person to feel a certain way, which is often rewarding so when the drug effect wears off they may seek out that rewarding feeling again and again. The brain is trying to adjust and the brain's structure begins changing. Let me make an example: Cocaine blocks dopamine from being recycled via reuptake, the excess dopamine has a rewarding feeling and the brain changes it's structure to deal with the excess (growth in neurons and dendrites). After so much structural change being with the drug causes very unpleasant withdrawal and its rewarding to use the drug again ... now we have an addiction.
An addiction gets out of control and someone has to intervene. An addict will never be cured of the disease. Instead, the addict has to recognize there is a problem and want to change it. Knowing what triggers the craving for a drug, stresses that make the drug appealing and so on and so forth, are the kind of thing an addict would have to take control of. This topic was interesting to me since I have limited knowledge of addiction but have always felt that addicts can be helped. My curiosity spiked when I was a Loss Prevention Manager. Part of my job was to stop theft and I caught lots of shoplifters, most of which were just trying to be cool, some were homeless, others were part of a theft ring organized crime and there were those who were clearly on drugs. Those on drugs were always easier to catch but when we had them in the office it was truly sad. It didn't happen all the time but every once in awhile they would express how they felt despaired and hopeless. They really didn't know what else to do. Some had family that had disowned them and others had slipped through the system.
I don't know the answer, but awareness cannot stop at the education system. Do not depend on the schools to teach your children about drugs. Addiction and drug abuse requires active parents, friends and family members to teach our children. Below is a clip on Alcohol on your brain, I thought it would be beneficial for college students to be aware of its effects.
3 comments:
awesome post! you know I actually forgot about drug awareness week haha, that's soooo true! oh my gosh, and yeah all the stats I believe it, at my high school there would be dealers all over the place and cops wouldn't do nothing, and they would smoke in areas where no one would see so yeah i believe. An addiction is not shameful, I agree with you. However, to the addict, there's kind of this feeling that would over power them, because a small part might actually feel a sense of guilt and shame for allowing something to get out of hand be it drugs, food, money, sex whatever it is and that feeling is what drives them to be in a state of denial to protect themselves mentally and physically. Drugs do alter the brain, personalities, and everything else you mentioned, but drugs are not the only way a person can get addicted to something and damaging the brain or physical body. Like Food, a person can eat, eat, eat ,eat,eat food serves as an addiction to those who have security problems, emotional instability problems,maybe something traumatic happened and instead of turning to drugs they turn to food as a way of feeling relief, well...too much food damages the physical body, and can do some damage to the brain as well.
but yeah I can go on and on haha, excellent post I really enjoyed it, it had me thinking about my high school days.
You took me back to elementary with the whole drug awareness week. Its interesting yet so sad that those statistics show that young children are using or have used drugs so early in life. They are however in an age were peer pressure is at its fullest and they probably do it to fit in or just to try it. Good info! :)
My husband works at an elementary school and he was telling me the other day that speakers come in and make the children aware of drugs. I feel that they don't even know what drugs are until they are exposed to them at school. They have the children make posters and they use things such as baby powder for cocaine. I think that is ridiculous.
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