Drugs and Abuse
So we have a definition a a drug: a substance that can change the way you feel, can be abused, its user can become addicted, and its single or continued use can have a negative impact on the user, society, health, career, and anyone with whom he or she has a relation. Yet we also state that a drug is neither good nor bad. Well how could a drug be bad, it is simply a chemical that exists in nature or can be synthesized in some laboratory. Left to themselves, plants (poppies, cannabis, peyote), fungi (psilocybin), byproducts of metabolism (beer, mead, wine), and other "drugs" pretty much mind their own business, so to speak. Where's the harm? In truth it is potential for harm, it's risk. The greater the potential harm in using a particular drug, the greater the risk. The risk is what human beings take when they use the drug. It is at this interface of using, if you will, together with a person's biological makeup, propensity for risk-taking, and environmental factors that either support or inhibit the use of a drug that harm enters the picture. Using drugs is risky. When someone uses a drug after experiencing negative consequences from previous use of the drug it is no longer use, it is abuse.
Let's
take one substance of the many that we humans do abuse and look at the effects
of the abuse. The abuse of this drug in 1995 cost the people of the United
States $166,543,000,000 in hospital bills, lost earnings, judicial related
expense, property damage, medical and other health related expenditures (the
total cost in 1995 for all other studied drugs was 109,832 million dollars).
In the same year this abuse resulted in 1,371,000 short -term hospital stays.
In 1992 it was estimated that 13,760,000 people (7.41% of the U.S. population)
abused and/or were dependant on the drug. Much of this is long term abuse
because during the years from 1987 through 1996 an estimated 1,092,770 persons
died due to abuse of the drug. That mortality figure includes both users of
the drug and people who died because someone else used the drug. Despite these
numbers, most of the people who were abusing the drug would have been surprised
to be told they might have a problem. Surprised because, as with any drug,
the person who is abusing the drug is often the last to recognize the problem.
In
the case of the statistics above, the drug we were presenting data about is
alcohol. Alcohol happens to be a legal drug which has regulated distribution
in this country. Just for amusement let's consider the criteria for a drug
being placed on Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act. To make it to
Schedule I (highest restrictions and controls) a drug must have a high potential
for abuse and have no currently accepted medical use in treatment within the
United States. If this were some parallel universe just one quantum second
removed from the one we know, where alcohol had just been discovered in the
last twenty years, we could anticipate the inhabitants of the parallel United
States placing it on their Schedule I list of drugs due to its lack of medical
use and its overwhelming potential for abuse. Back in the known universe there
are drugs on Schedule I that have an arguably better track record, money and
mortality-wise than does alcohol, but these still aren't substances that can
be abused without considerable risk.
So it's not the substance that really matters, although using some drugs entails greater risk than using others. It doesn't even matter whether a drug is legal or not, although using an illegal substance necessarily entails certain risks not truly related to the drug. It is really simple, the risk and potential harm associated with a drug is in the use of the drug. If you don't use it you are not at risk (except for the other jerk in the next room or in that car behind you). Some can be used in moderation when they are used responsibly. Some can never be used without a great deal of risk. Most are in that continuum between those points. Risk is assessed by the potential problems associated with using a particular drug combined with the difficulty of ceasing use of a drug when it begins to cause you problems (or causes anyone else problems for that matter) compounded by your inability to recognize that your problems are resulting from your drug use. So is that guy or girl drinking a beer a druggie? Well they are definitely drinking (using) a drug but whether or not he or she is abusing the drug depends on the factors in what we just discussed. We would tend to think a "druggie," if you must name call, is a person who abuses a drug. But that's our opinion. Know thyself and thy poison is good advice. If you want to know more about various drugs check out the Used & Abused section of the site. If you find yourself questioning your or a friend's current substance use try But is it a Problem. Get informed before you make another choice.
