Karen Ravn
]]>Drug addiction is the compulsive use of drugs, to the extreme point where the user has no other choice but to continue to use them. A drug addict might address his beloved drug in De Quincey’s words, “thou hast the keys of Paradise, oh, just, subtle, and mighty opium!” An addict’s paradise is an inferno in disguise.
The demon of drug abuse has engulfed the entire world. It has clutched the youth of society in its deadly jaws.
The range of addictive drugs or substances and widely abused drugs include Alcohol, Anabolic steroids, Analgetics, Barbiturates, Buprenorphine, Butorphanol, Chloral hydrate, trichloroethanol & derivatives, Cocaine, Codeine, Dextroproxyp, Dextromethorphan, Ethchlorvynol, Fentanyl & its analogs, Gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB), Glutethimide, Heroin (Diacetylmorphine), Hydrocodone, Hydromorphone (Dilaudid), Ketamine, Laxatives, Levo-alpha-acetylmethadol (LAAM), Meperidine, Meprobamate, Methamphetamine & other Amphetamines, Methaqualone & related sedative-hypnotics, Methadone, Methcathinone, Morphine, Nicotine, Oxycodone, Opium, Xanax, Paraldehyde (Paral), Phencyclidine (PCP), and Flunitrazepam (Rohypnol).
Drugs have dragged the addicts to the deep dungeons of oblivion. The whole international community that is direly worried about the problem of drug abuse, has given a loud and clear call to medical institutes and organizations to liberate the victims of drug addiction.
Psychological experts and researchers are always raking their minds to know why people fall prey to drugs. Their studies have divulged that drugs and intoxicants are used to forget or negate the frustrations of life, failures in life, dejected love affairs, depression, or sometimes for fun or adventure.
“Thank the Lord, there’s a ray of hope!” Doctors and researchers have been able to invent some treatments for drug addiction.
Standard drug addiction treatment may include behavioral therapy, medications, or a combination of both. Medication therapy includes medical treatment to beat drug addiction. Behavioral therapy consists of counseling, cognitive therapy, or psychotherapy. The third method, the combination of both, is proving to be the most effective treatment for addiction recovery.
In medication therapy, for instance, addiction treatment like methadone, LAAM, and naltrexone are helpful for opium addicted people. Nicotine replacement therapy, nicotine patches, gum, nasal spray and bupropion are quite effective for people addicted to nicotine. Antidepressants, mood stabilizers, or neuroleptics, are helpful for treatment of mental disorders such as depression, anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder, or psychosis.
As drug addiction is a chronic disorder, theres no effective short-term treatment for it. It requires a long-term treatment to beat drug addiction.
Finally, strong will power plays a key role in addiction treatment and addiction recovery. Psychotherapists can play an important role in building up the patients’ will to beat drug addiction.
Martin H. Fischer says, “There is only one reason why men become addicted to drugs, they are weak men. Only strong men are cured, and they cure themselves.”
Paul MacIver writes articles on various topics including addiction. For more info on Drug Addiction Treatment visit the Addiction Recovery Guide
]]>MORE than a million Australians have tried ecstasy and the so-called party drug has become the nation’s second most popular illegal drug after marijuana, a federally funded study has found.
In a report released at a national drugs conference on the Gold Coast, University of Queensland senior researcher Greg Fowler said about 1.2million Australians aged 14 and over had tried ecstasy.
According to the latest available statistics, more than 550,000 people used ecstasy in 2004.
Recent studies have estimated that more than five million Australians have tried marijuana.
The ecstasy study, funded under the federal Government’s National Drugs Strategy, found regular use of the drug had increased drastically in the past 15 years. The proportion of Australians who have tried ecstasy had risen from 3.1 per cent in 1993 to 7.5 per cent in 2004.
Mr Fowler said the use of ecstasy had moved beyond nightclubs and the rave party scene to private venues.
“The way that people are using ecstasy has changed,” Mr Fowler told The Australian.
Couples, he said, were increasingly using the drug to enhance their sex lives.
The study found ecstasy consumers tended to be young, white, well-educated and middle class. They were less likely to be involved in criminal activity or to contact the drug treatment system than users of other illicit drugs.
However, they were more likely to be involved in crime than the general population.
Mr Fowler and his research team conducted in-depth interviews with ecstasy consumers, suppliers, police and health officers. Key benefits of the drug identified by consumers included enhanced closeness, bonding and empathy, enhanced communication, talkativeness and sociability and enhanced mood.
Risks reported by users included depression, dependence on the drug and damage to brain functioning.
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime has estimated that 7098kg of ecstasy was seized by law enforcement officers worldwide in 2002, of which 722kg - about 10 per cent - was seized in Australia.
“Based on these data, Australia is believed to be one of the highest per capita ecstasy consuming countries in the world,” the report said.
The report added the data needed to be treated with caution as reporting requirements varied considerably around the world.
]]>Addiction is a chronic, relapsing disease, characterized by compulsive drug seeking and use, and by neurochemical and molecular changes in the brain. Heroin also produces profound degrees of tolerance and physical dependence, which are also powerful motivating factors for compulsive use and abuse. As with abusers of any addictive drug, heroin abusers gradually spend more and more time and energy obtaining and using the drug. Once they are addicted, the heroin abusers’ primary purpose in life becomes seeking and using drugs. The drugs literally change their brains.
Physical dependence develops with higher doses of the drug. With physical dependence, the body adapts to the presence of the drug and withdrawal symptoms occur if use is reduced abruptly. Withdrawal may occur within a few hours after the last time the drug is taken. Symptoms of withdrawal include restlessness, muscle and bone pain, insomnia, diarrhea, vomiting, cold flashes with goose bumps (”cold turkey”), and leg movements. Major withdrawal symptoms peak between 24 and 48 hours after the last dose of heroin and subside after about a week. However, some people have shown persistent withdrawal signs for many months. Heroin withdrawal is never fatal to otherwise healthy adults, but it can cause death to the fetus of a pregnant addict.
At some point during continuous heroin use, a person can become addicted to the drug. Sometimes addicted individuals will endure many of the withdrawal symptoms to reduce their tolerance for the drug so that they can again experience the rush.
Physical dependence and the emergence of withdrawal symptoms were once believed to be the key features of heroin addiction. We now know this may not be the case entirely, since craving and relapse can occur weeks and months after withdrawal symptoms are long gone. We also know that patients with chronic pain who need opiates to function (sometimes over extended periods) have few if any problems leaving opiates after their pain is resolved by other means. This may be because the patient in pain is simply seeking relief of pain and not the rush sought by the addict.
]]>The physical disasters that follow the continued use of intoxicating beverages are sad enough, and terrible enough; but the surely attendant mental, moral and spiritual disasters are sadder and more terrible still. If you disturb the healthy condition of the brain, which is the physical organ through which the mind acts, you disturb the mind. It will not have the same clearness of perception as before; nor have the same rational control over the impulses and passions.
Heavenly order in the body.
In order to understand a subject clearly, certain general laws, or principles, must be seen and admitted. And here we assume, as a general truth, that health in the human body is normal heavenly order on the physical plane of life, and that any disturbance of that order exposes the man to destructive influences, which are evil and infernal in their character. Above the natural and physical plane, and resting upon it, while man lives in this world, is the mental and spiritual plane, or degree of life. This degree is in heavenly order when the reason is clear, and the appetites and passions under its wise control. But, if, through any cause, this fine equipoise is disturbed, or lost, then a way is opened for the influx of more subtle evil influences than such as invade the body, because they have power to act upon the reason and the passions, obscuring the one and inflaming the others.
We know how surely the loss of bodily health results in mental disturbance. If the seat of disease be remote from the brain, the disturbance is usually slight; but it increases as the trouble comes nearer and nearer to that organ, and shows itself in multiform ways according to character, temperament or inherited disposition; but almost always in a predominance of what is evil instead of good. There will be fretfulness, or ill-nature, or selfish exactions, or mental obscurity, or unreasoning demands, or, it may be, vicious and cruel propensities, where, when the brain was undisturbed by disease, reason held rule with patience and loving kindness. If the disease which has attacked the brain goes on increasing, the mental disease which follows as a consequence of organic disturbance or deterioration, will have increased also, until insanity may be established in some one or more of its many sad and varied forms.
Insanity.
It is, therefore, a very serious thing for a man to take into his body any substance which, on reaching that wonderfully delicate organ the brain, sets up therein a diseased action; for, diseased mental action is sure to follow. A fever is a fever, whether it be light or intensely burning; and so any disturbance of the mind’s rational equipoise is insanity, whether it be in the simplest form of temporary obscurity, or in the midnight of a totally darkened intellect.
We are not writing in the interest of any special theory, nor in the spirit of partisanship; but with an earnest desire to make the truth appear. You must not accept anything simply because we say it, but because he sees it to be true. Now, as to this matter of insanity, let him think calmly. The word is one that gives us a shock; and, as we hear it, we almost involuntarily thank God for the good gift of a well-balanced mind. What, if from any cause this beautiful equipoise should be disturbed and the mind lose its power to think clearly, or to hold the lower passions in due control? Shall we exceed the truth if we say that the man in whom this takes place is insane just in the degree that he has lost his rational self-control; and that he is restored when he regains that control?
In this view, the question as to the hurtfulness of alcoholic drinks assumes a new and graver aspect. Do they disturb the brain when they come in contact with its substance; and deteriorate it if the contact be long continued? Fact, observation, experience and scientific investigation all emphatically say yes; and we know that if the brain be disordered the mind, will be disordered, likewise; and a disordered mind is an insane mind. Clearly, then, in the degree that a man impairs or hurts his brain temporarily or continuously in that degree his mind is unbalanced; in that degree he is not a truly rational and sane man.
We are holding your thought just here that you may have time to think, and to look at the question in the light of reason and common sense. So far as he does this, will he be able to feel the force of such evidence as we shall educe in what follows, and to comprehend its true meaning.
Other substances besides alcohol act injuriously on the brain; but there is none that compares with this in the extent, variety and diabolical aspect of the mental aberrations which follow its use. We are not speaking thoughtlessly or wildly; but simply uttering a truth well-known to every man of observation, and which every man, and especially those who take this substance in any form, should, lay deeply to heart. Why it is that such awful and destructive forms of insanity should follow, as they do, the use of alcohol it is not for us to say. That they do follow it, we know, and we hold, up the fact in solemn warning.
Another consideration, which should have weight with every one, is this, that no man can tell what may be the character of the legacy he has received from his ancestors. He may have an inheritance of latent evil forces, transmitted through many generations, which only await some favoring opportunity to spring into life and action. So long as he maintains a rational self-control, and the healthy order of his life be not disturbed, they may continue quiescent; but if his brain loses its equipoise, or is hurt or impaired, then a diseased psychical condition may be induced and the latent evil forces be quickened into life.
Drug Rehab For The Addicts
Drug rehab is the best place to cure the addiction for any kind of drugs. Drug rehab helps in building courage, strength and finds optimism in life.
Addiction or obsession to drugs is an after-effect symptom, which a person develops as a result of an eccentric dependence on a particular prescription or even the non-prescription drug just in order to alleviate ache after an injury or an accident. The intake of mostly all the pain killers result in a habit formation. But in this case, the addicts crave for the remedy.
Drug obsession can also take place at the time when an individual wishes to mistreat her or his body through taking prohibited and illegal drugs. Individuals with drug obsessions do not have a wish to use drugs but rather a compelling weakness, which forces them and puts them into the drug addiction. Numerous genetic factors as well as the history of excess drug use also plays major role in patient’s difficulties.
However, dependence on any kind of drug is a matter of serious concern. One may need to take on more than a single means to overcome the drug addiction. Few might be fortunate enough to triumph over this addiction fast but the rest keep struggling for a longer period.
The existence of drug rehab programs are getting quite common which are either for those individuals who need assistance to stop the intake of drugs or for those individuals who have hit the rock bottom and are in dire need of help. Drug rehab programs help the people with building courage, strength, and finding optimism to take charge of their lives. The drug rehab is an essential part of the procedure for recovering from the addictions to alcohol, drugs, and even co occurring mayhems.
In addition to breaking off the drug addiction and stabilizing the psychological disorders, drug rehab treatment assists individuals instituting a foundation of revival to function at their work places and in families and communities.
In the drug rehab treatment, individuals learn about the addiction, recuperation, and the dangers of deterioration while simultaneously confronting the misunderstandings regarding self, others and their surroundings and environments. A drug rehab center makes essential lifestyle alterations, deal with feelings, build up tools for coping, and learn helpful skills in successful abstinence. The drug rehab center also educates individuals to recognize the forewarning signs for the drug and the alcohol relapse as well as design effectual strategies for putting off a relapse.
The drug rehab programs use various strategies to help people with alcohol and drug addictions. One of the main strategies that is applied is the twelve step program in which the drug rehab centers provides outpatient and inpatient services. The outpatient services are quite common nowadays as they are cheaper and affordable. Basically, the outpatient drug rehab services are for those people whose lives are in extreme danger.
For majority of people, an inpatient inhabited drug rehab program is one of the most excellent options in order to get successful recovery. Research shows that the inpatient drug rehab is counted as one of the most successful types of care particularly for those individuals who have experienced numerous unsuccessful efforts at recovery via outpatient treatment. Those people who suffer from alcohol or drug abuse heavily for many years might experience more difficulty in giving up. An individual under this category might be excellently served by attending a long term inpatient drug and alcohol rehab program.
Article Source: http://articles-mart.com
Stephen De Mur is author of this article on Drug Rehab Center. Find more information about Drug Rehab Center here.
]]>GetToughonDrugs was mainly started because of the “Talking with your kids about drugs” booklet which was distributed to all Australian homes recently. The National Drugs Campaign’s aim is to reduce the young people who use illicit drugs by increasing their knowledge about the negative and dangerous consequences of drug use.
Blogging is new to me, but I decided to start one in an effort to get the message across to even more people.
The combined effort of the main site, the forum and blog will hopefully stop at least one young person taking that first step to a downhill slide
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