Drug Abuse: Review of The Consequences

Many people are familiar with the term drug abuse. Either they have family members or friends who use, maybe they use drugs themselves. It is a major issue around the world, and leaves the users as its prime victim. Drugs leave addicts with psychological effects, even after being cleaned. They ruin the lives of many individuals and may never fully recover. Not only does it affect them, but affects their loved ones also.

Many understand and are taught the consequences from an early age that drugs are bad, but why do some still start? For most people, the decision to take drugs is voluntary. It differs from person to person, but in general they take drugs to feel good, to feel better, to do better, curiosity and social pressure. A friends involvement with drugs is a very strong indicator of why and how an individual starts, however there are many other causes of why they start and there is not always an exact factor linked with drug use. No one knows exactly how many times a person can use a drug without changing their brains and getting them addicted, for everyone is different. It also depends on the severity of the drugs. Addictions come in many forms and it is a person's desperate desire to do whatever they need to, to satisfy their specific craving. When challenged without it, they tend to suffer from severe symptoms such as depression, withdrawal, and perturbation. A lot of people don't understand why or how some certain individuals get addicted while others don't get addicted. According to National Institute on Drug Abuse (2018), the more risk factors an individual has, the greater chances of them having a take on drug addiction (p. 2). For example, the genes that an individual was born with, the gender, the environment they grow up in, and the critical developmental stages in that person's life (NIH, 2018, p. 2-3). Most people don't wake up and think of how they are going to ruin their lives, rather they wake up looking forward to nothing, depressed, stressed, angry, and in need of something to take the their emotional pain away. The United States has a lot of people suffering from addiction, ¨of people needing treatment, yielding a combined total of 7.1 million people¨ (Woodward, 1996, p. 1).

Drug abuse has a lot of consequences, some that could have permanent impacts and lead to emotional pain. They put everything they have in jeopardy, such as their jobs, relationship with family and close friends, to satisfy their selfish addictions first. It happens to the point, where there is no forgiveness left for them. Not only does it have those kind of consequences but legal ones as well. Getting caught with drugs can have an individual incarcerated for decades. The most common legal actions for addicts is large fines, long period of time in jail, probation, a record that makes it hard to find a job, drivers license revoked, a lot of community service and restrictions on living in certain locations (Ggalliani, 2018). This could all very well cause financial trouble where an individual gets into severe debt, loses a relationship with their significant other, get their house taken away by the bank and their vehicle impounded. If the addict gets fired from their job or gets arrested as a result of their drug use, the financial problems just build up. This could all lead to the consequence of being homeless, but wont stop an individual from using. There is a big guarantee that the individual will still find their way to drugs. Usually breaking the law by stealing, and lying to those who care about them. All of this adds up to severe emotional pain, such as depression, suicidal thoughts and anxiety. An individual could have all of these long term effects, even after getting cleaned. Being clean doesn't take away an arrest record, financial problems or family problems. It only gets an individual to stop using it from causing more harm to themselves. Yes these emotional issues could be treated, but these type of emotional situations are known to reoccur multiple times, as study shows, it returns at regular intervals, and each time it could be worse (Breuer, 1995).

Drugs also have severe effects on the physical body. It causes severe harm to an individual's health that can last for years or even forever. Drugs have the power to damage almost every organ and system in a body. Some of the harmful damages happen to the cardiovascular system, respiratory system, kidneys, liver and gastrointestinal organs (Alta Mira, 2019). All of these body damages can cause severe body pain, and ¨chronic physical pain is debilitating and can cause disability, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder¨ (Parry, 2008, p. 1). Body physical pain can most certainly cause emotional pain, triggering to psychological effects. Even after getting cleaned, you can still suffer from these damages, and also cause a weak immune system. Having a weak immune system isn't appealing at all, having a high chance of getting sick all the time would interrupt with an individual's daily schedule. This could cause extreme frustration, anxiety and anger (Johnston, 1995). Drugs also frequently cause overdoses, in which the body starts giving up and an individual has to be resuscitated. It is severely harmful, the body can't handle the dose, most don't care about surviving either. It also can also change an individual's physical appearance for the worse. Making the skin scabby and break out from acne, to changing the texture of the hair, ruining the teeth and overall making someone look older. (JTT, 2019). These could be appearance changes that could last forever, causing stress, and feeling like they are not themselves anymore. They may never recognize themselves anymore, feeling like they have a whole different identity.

Drugs are so hard to overcome because they cause a neurotransmitter called dopamine to be released in large quantities, triggering an extreme sensation of pleasure or euphoria. In other words, drugs overstimulate the part of the brain that naturally produces pleasure and rewards a person for doing something positive, like socializing or hugging a loved one (Alta Mira. 2019, p. 4). Over time, this can cause permanent changes to the brain, and the person will not know how to feel pleasure anymore since the brain will produce less dopamine. The effects could last for a very long time with symptoms such a memory loss, dead brains cells that will never regenerate and impaired thinking.

Addiction is a very difficult disease for drug abusers to overcome due to the psychological effects it has. One case scenario is, an addict watching a close buddy they have grown so close to, lose their life after overdosing. Such tragic incidents can have such a psychological effects on a person, causing them to continue on, not caring if they are next. On top of that, their brain impairment may cause them to have different unusual thoughts that could trigger them to take take more. Studies have shown that ¨after 100 days of no longer using a drug, the brain has still not fully recovered¨ (Alta Mira, 2019, p. 4-5).

Getting cleaned is a very difficult task but there is hope for those who try. Even to those that still face or faced difficulties that could follow them for years. Such as the relationship losts, trauma, dropping out of school and all of the other poor choices caused by drug addiction. They will always be ¨a drug addict.¨ and may never gain trust from those they broke. It will always be difficult and may never fully forever recover, for relapsing is a very common thing. Addicts will always have the voice in the back of their head, telling them they could save themselves from their emotional pain by returning back to the drugs. (Keys, 2006). Everyone faces problems sometime in their lifetime, but adjusting for addicts could be tough, for they always turned to something as an alternative. Coping with problems without something being there to “save” them can very well play with their mind.

Picking up a drug one time, can cost an individual a very high price. A price that can forever ruin their life, and trigger psychological problems for short term, long term and even forever. Not all the psychological issues are from the drugs itself but the direct result of the drug abuse issues. There could be a battle in an individual's head, that will never be fought off. Being clean won't exactly solve all the psychological problems that are left, but instead prevent more from occurring.