Drug Abuse - Legal and Street Drugs

“Better living through chemicals.” this is a saying I hear quite often. What an odd saying, especially if those chemicals are illegal drugs.

The three most popular drugs are legal substances, perhaps setting the stage for some to continue the road to abuse. These substances are alcohol, tobacco and caffeine. However, not everyone that takes these drugs become addicted to them. 

Addiction has to do with individual brain chemistry. What the body becomes adjusted to, in some people the body can begin to demand. For caffeine addicts, they find that when they don’t drink coffee they are besieged with headaches, and have mood swings that can go from depression quickly into anger.

Drug crisis

The drug crisis in America seems right now to be focused on crack-cocaine. Once a trendy powdered drug of the 1970’s, Cocaine was costing back then $200.00 a gram. 

Cocaine has now evolved into crack-cocaine and is trafficked out of two major cities; Los Angeles and Miami. The drug on the streets today cost about $20.00 a gram making it available for anyone with lunch money in their pockets.

Ecstasy, pot, bennies, LSD, crack cocaine, heroin, speed, inhalants, steroids, prescription drugs…whether street drugs or legally prescribed, drug abuse is prevalent in our society. In the year 2004, 19.1 million Americans used illicit drugs or abused prescribed narcotics and tranquilizers.

Illegal drugs as well as prescription drugs can wreck havoc on your body and your mind. Depending on what type of drug is chosen, the addict can experience: hallucinations, liver and kidney problems, heart problems, loss of hair and teeth, anorexia, bulimia, depression, fits of rage, dementia, blindness even loss of life.

Prescription drug abuse

Prescription drugs abuse can cause heart problems, liver and kidney disease, seizures and death.

Most high school students have admitted to trying their parent’s or their friend’s prescription drugs after the age of twelve. Many of these students admitted getting addicted to prescription drugs and then seeking out street drugs after the prescription drugs were no longer easy for them to obtain.

One author, Joel Fort, M.D. says it best in his book The Addicted Society:

“We drink, smoke, swallow, inhale, snort, and inject millions of gallons, bottles, pounds, ounces, cartons, packages, glasses, cigarettes, syringes, capsules, and pills of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, sedatives, tranquilizers, stimulants, narcotics, psychedelic-hallucinogens, and miscellaneous mind-altering, psychoactive, psychotropic, consciousness-changing chemical substances.”

Most people understand that drug abuse can kill you, but what some fail to understand is that long-term use of either street or prescription drugs can also kill you slowly inside without you even realizing it until to late.

Heart disease, liver failure, brain disorders, clinical depression and other health issues can take away your energy, lower your immune system and leave you vulnerable to catch the latest virus. Drugs steal necessary nutrients away from your body, and if you inject your drugs, you are opening yourself up for the very real possibility of contracting AIDS. And drug abuse can lead you down a life of crime.

Drug rehab

Society has had to change in order to keep up in the drug war, because it is clear, this war is not one we are not ahead of. There is now rampant  drug testing, both in the workplace and at school. There are community programs D.A.R.E.  Just Say No, and other outreaches that go into the schools and try to connect with the kids before the kids check out of life.

Residential rehabilitation programs exist for addicts. Support groups,  detox clinics, recovery centers and other programs are all geared towards helping the addict get clean. But the first step the addict takes has to take, has to be of his own choosing. The addict has to want to get help or drug intervention means will fail.