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Facts About Substance Abuse

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What new information did you learn?
I really learned a lot about substance abuse in this course and also during my readings. I always looked at substance abuse as someone who just uses drugs to get high. I never really thought about it being a brain disease. According to NIDA, “Addiction is similar to chronic diseases” while observing the brain and the heart addiction and heart diseases produce observational changes in the function of human organs. While all this information wasn’t too new to me I just really never gave it any thought. I learned how people become addicted to drugs due to the drugs altering their Dopamine which is a brain chemical which also affects the neurons in the brain. I understand what Neurons are and how they communicate …show more content…
Some people drink or abuse drugs as a way to cope with the daily stress and tension from school or work, or to cope with other problems such as marital distress or even physical illness. Alcohol and drugs may become a substitute for satisfying personal relationships, challenging work or self-fulfillment. Some uses alcohol and drugs as a way to compensate for feelings of guilt, shyness or low self-esteem. When drinking or drug use becomes a means for coping with life's problems it can turn into addiction. Unfortunately alcohol and some drugs have become more socially acceptable, and this makes it even easier for people to experiment at younger ages. In addition, alcohol and drugs are readily accessible to many of today's youth, which further increases the likelihood that they will use substances at some time”. This article I feel said it all most of the time these are the reasons that people gets into substance abuse (Fit.edu, …show more content…
It seems as if substance abuse is very popular amongst our youth because they see so much of it. The rappers Plays a great role in substance abuse for our children. We see R and B artists like Lil Wayne and Snoopy Dog who thinks it’s cool to come out on stage smoking marijuana. Our children are watching, if we can come together as a society and include these people they look at as role model we can make substance abuse more preventable for our youth. Substance abuse needs to be also explaining to our youth that it’s a brain disease. I sure most children were taught as I was that anyone who uses drugs was because it was their own choice. Which is somewhat true but they also need to know the real effect abusing a substance can have on anyone

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