...Recreational Drugs Tiwander Aleck COMM/156 March 4, 2012 Instructor: Cheryl Mason Recreational Drugs We are risking our lives without knowing it! Any substance with pharmacologic effects used for satisfaction or personal pleasure rather than for medicinal purposes, is called recreational drug use. Examine this, individuals young and old have answered the question whether, recreation drugs are good for you. They have answered this question by suffering the consequences of misusing recreational drug. Society needs to be aware that recreational drugs such as Cocaine, Alcohol, and marijuana have contributed to health problems, criminal activity and addiction. Awareness of the effects of these drugs, without a doubt needs to be addressed in the United States, to help lower the negative statistics recreational drugs have caused, which will give individuals a chance before they decide to participate or misuse recreational drugs. Alcohol is one of the most used recreational drugs today. Alcohol can cause a variety of feelings such as relaxation, happiness, drunkenness and sleepiness. Any consumption of alcohol goes directly into the bloodstream and physically affects are body and mind. Alcohol is mainly used for sociability; it is very common for binge drinkers to abuse alcohol, and result with the disease of alcoholism. It is estimated by (National Institution of Justice U.S. Department of Justice, 2007) that more than half the people that...
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...Recreational Drugs We are risking our lives without knowing it! Any substance with pharmacologic effects used for satisfaction or personal pleasure rather than for medicinal purposes, is called recreational drug use. Examine this, individuals young and old have answered the question whether, recreation drugs are good for you. They have answered this question by suffering the consequences of misusing recreational drug. Society needs to be aware that recreational drugs such as Cocaine, Alcohol, and marijuana have contributed to health problems, criminal activity and addiction. Awareness of the effects of these drugs, without a doubt needs to be addressed in the United States, to help lower the negative statistics recreational drugs have caused, which will give individuals a chance before they decide to participate or misuse recreational drugs. Alcohol is one of the most used recreational drugs today. Alcohol can cause a variety of feelings such as relaxation, happiness, drunkenness and sleepiness. Any consumption of alcohol goes directly into the bloodstream and physically affects are body and mind. Alcohol is mainly used for sociability; it is very common for binge drinkers to abuse alcohol, and result with the disease of alcoholism. It is estimated by (National Institution of Justice U.S. Department of Justice, 2007) that more than half the people that are arrested in the U.S. test positive for alcohol. When alcohol is misused, it can lead to addiction. When an individual...
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...How do Drugs and Alcohol Affect You Sarah Tate Kaplan University-Omaha CJ411 Drugs and Alcohol May 15, 2012 Kerry Neumann Drugs and alcohol can cause short and long term damage to the human body. People that abuse drugs and alcohol may not be aware of the damage they are doing to their bodies. There are also psychological effects that drugs and alcohol can do to the human mind. These psychological effects can and may be permanent depending on the drug used and prolonged use of drugs and alcohol. Here we will concentrate on alcohol, amphetamines, and ecstasy. These vary in type of drug, addiction potential, and damage they can cause to the body and mind. Alcohol is a depressant and considered to mildly addictive. If abused for a prolonged period of time alcohol can become more addictive and the user may actually need the alcohol to function in life. Alcohol abuse may cause damage to the human body with prolonged use and abuse. Some of the damage alcohol may cause includes “slurred speech, lack of coordination, unsteady gait, memory impairment, and stupor, as well as behavioral changes shortly after alcohol ingestion, including aggressive behavior, mood volatility, impaired functioning”,(Roberts, P.,p.4-5.,n.d.). Alcohol consumption over a prolonged period of time may also cause psychological addiction, this happens over a period of time, not overnight, with continued drinking. Alcohol consumption over a prolonged period of time can cause liver damage, known as cirrhosis...
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...People that do drugs or drink heavily can pass out and wake up in some random place and don’t know how they got there. They also probably have a bottle of beer in their hands or some marijuana. That is addiction. Millions of people are addicts to different things like alcohol, drugs and other things. They get drunk or high and lose control, and poof, next thing they know they are laying in the middle of the road or in an ambulance. Addiction can majorly affect your health. Addiction is the uncontrollable use of a mind- altering substance or behavior that harms your physical, mental and spiritual health. Health is balancing our physical, mental and spiritual health using the four daily requirements: food, rest, exercise and elimination. Physical health is any biological function related to the 12 body systems. That means eating healthy, exercising, resting and eliminating. Addiction can affect your physical health by affecting the 12 body systems. Addiction to drugs (mainly alcohol) can lead to Cirrhosis of the Liver-which is when the liver dries up and can’t function properly. I learned this when we talked about Mickey Mantle who was an addict and he had Cirrhosis and he died from it. Addiction can affect your physical health by possibly giving you alcohol poisoning (only if you are addicted to alcohol and if you drink a lot of it). You might get really drunk and get alcohol poisoning and almost die. Oh believe me it’s possible, it has happened before. It has happened quite...
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...most commonly used psychoactive drugs on a daily basis by young teens to mature adults, abused more often than not, and can cause serious side effects both short term and long term are known as stimulants and depressants. Lets look closer to not only how these drugs effect our behavior but more importantly their biological effects towards the human body. Depressants, and their true implications of abuse. Alcohol, Barbiturates, and opiates such as morphine and heroine all relax neural activity and slow body functions categorizing them into the depressants. People who use these drugs are likely to experience temporary pleasure along with anxiety relief, these short term fixes are what lead to addiction because of the need and craving for the drugs effect. Biological effects while using depressants consist of slow neural processing, memory disruption, and reduced self awareness and control. For example, “ In one experiment, those who consumed alcohol were doubly likely to be caught mind-wandering during a reading task, yet were less likely to notice that they zoned out” (Sayette et al., 2009), this along with other effects are the results of abuse. Adverse effects such as the loss of self awareness are just the beginning, for instance “alcohol abuse can lead to alcohol dependence resulting in not only shrinking the brain, but putting you at risk for lung, brain, and liver damage”(Casa,2003; Wuerich2001). Opiates and barbiturates just like alcohol depress neural functions, lead to...
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...Legal and Illegal Drugs Gladys Vazquez Rasmussen College The war on drugs started in 1971 by President Nixon, but the fight didn’t start there (NPR, 2012). In 1914 the US enacted the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act, which was the starting point to make drugs illegal, but the classification of drugs was more of a social problem rather than a social issue (Brecher, 2006). Drugs can be defined as ANY substance other than food or water that when taken into the body alters its functioning in some way (College, 2011). Cocaine, Heroin, Crack, and Alcohol are not the only drugs that alter the body that can be considered a drug. Caffeinated soda, coffee, diet pills, tobacco, prescription medication, and more all affect the body and alter the mind in a negative way. Going back in time when Christopher Columbus founded America, we wer e introduced to our very first drug known as tobacco (Cushman, 2011). That’s 520 years ago and still an issue in society. Smoking is set to kill 6.5 million people in 2015 and 8.3 million humans in 2030, with the biggest rise in low-and middle-income countries (National Cancer Institute at the National Institues of Health). Each day about 13,500 people worldwide die from smoking-related diseases (National Cancer Institute at the National Institues of Health). Yet it is a legal substance that alters the mind and body, amazing how that works. Alcohol is another substance that is very harmful and alters the mind and body. Some will argue that used as a...
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...Abstract: all drugs affect the mind but psychoactive drugs are a specific type of drug that is specifically made to affect the brain’s chemistry in order to correct an imbalance or abnormality. They have many medicinal uses, beneficial to humans, yet people use them recreationally. Former athletes used them primarily for medicinal uses but most soon fell into addiction or abused them on others. They have various effects on us as humans, creating altered states of consciousness that causes us to even forget what we are doing and hurt ourselves. Fortunately, there are rehabilitation centers and drug organizations that help spread awareness and provide drug abuse help. In January 2012, Former NFL Darren Sharper filed a worker’s compensation claim in California that described health problems including sleep, in which he was given prescription Ambien, a brand name of Zolpidem used to treat insomnia, by his doctor. He was a frequent user, going through 70 pills in 65 days in January 2014 ("Darren Sharper case spotlights sleep drug's dark side", 2014). January 12, 2014, he was found with 20 pills when arrested by Los Angeles officers as a suspect for two rape cases. He is also suspect for at least 4 other cases in various states throughout the United States. Sharper is not the only person who has turned to Zolpidem for sleep treatment. In fact, he is one of the growing numbers of former and current NFL players who use Zolpidem, even to the point of addiction, just to help them...
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...care of your body from the inside out is necessary to achieve a healthy life. There can be many factors that contribute to your health status. Our bodies can be an important tool for learning and growth. Not only do we need to take care of our bodies, we need to take care of our mind-body connection as well. We only get one body in our lifetime so it’s important to take care of it to our best ability. The models of behavior when using the model for health and disease promotion say that health behaviors are actions that a person will take in order to maintain and or improve their health. As stated in the text Straub, 2014, p. 197 “A health-enhancing behavior or habit can occur on a continuum, some health behaviors can have both a positive and a negative impact on health” (Schoenborn and others, 2004). At some point John is faced with the pre-contemplation stage. This stage is when John does not see a problem with his abuse of drugs and alcohol. Next is contemplation. The contemplation stage is when John does finally acknowledge that he has a problem tries to understand it, seek the cause of it and then thinks about the possible solutions for it....
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...countless adolescences drugs and alcohol are the first things that are experimenting with. The most popular drug of choice among adolescences is marijuana. Teens don’t see this drug as a real “drug”. Many believe that marijuana is consisted an acceptable drug, to try because it comes from the earth. Accord to some research it does not have addictive component’s. Adolescence tends to build relationships with drugs based of using for recreational use, peer pressure, and as an escape from everyday life (Feldman, 2011). Marijuana can be consisted a gateway drug; mean that it can lead to the use of more addictive drugs. “Addictive drugs are drugs that produce a biological or psychological dependence in users” (Feldman, 2011, p.372). Addictive drugs cause the body to be unable to function because the body begins to crave for the drug. Being additive to drugs changes your physical appearance and also causes damage to your nervous system (Feldman, 2011). Alcohol is also a popular thing for adolescence to experiment with. Most people would think it would be hard for adolescence to have access to alcohol, however it is not. Adolescences who have parents who drink have easy access to alcohol at all times. Most parents don’t keep track of how much alcohol is kept in their house. Some adolescence has older friends or cousins who are willing to purchase alcohol for them. The reasons that teens experiment with alcohol can be the same reason that teens experiment with drugs, which is because...
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...repeating cycle. Awakening people during REM sleep yields predictable “dreamlike” reports that are mostly of ordinary events. Freud’s view that dreams can be traced back to erotic wishes is giving way to newer theories, for example, that dreams help us process information and fix it in memory or that dreams erupt from neural activity. Studies of hypnosis indicate that, although hypnotic procedures may facilitate recall, the hypnotist’s beliefs frequently work their way into subjects’ recollections. Hypnosis can be at least temporarily therapeutic and has the potential of bringing significant pain relief. Hypnosis may be an extension both of normal principles of social influence and of everyday splits in consciousness. Psychoactive drugs also alter consciousness. Depressants act by depressing neural functioning. Although their effects are pleasurable, they impair memory and self-awareness and may have other physical consequences. Stimulants act at the synapses by influencing the brain’s neurotransmitters. Their effects depend on dosage and the user’s personality and expectations. Hallucinogens can distort judgment of time and can alter sensations and perceptions. A number of those who survive a brush with death later recall visionary experiences. Some scientists point out that such near-death experiences closely parallel reports of hallucinations. CHAPTER GUIDE ➤ Exercise: Fact or Falsehood? Consciousness and...
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...Alcohol, Tobacco, and Other Drugs The use of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs has been going on for many years legally and illegally. According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, about 66% of people from the age of 12 or older reported in 2014 that they drank alcohol in the past 12 months, with 6.4% meeting the criteria for an alcohol use disorder (NIDA). A major cause of death in today’s time is drunk driving, about 5 thousand people die under the age of 21(NIDA). Among that same population, approximately 25.2% were also users of tobacco of some sort (NIDA). The use of other drugs, prescription and illegal, is at 10.2% (NIDA). One of the major causes of death is a result of alcohol. Ethyl alcohol or ethanol, better known as alcohol, is produced by the fermentation yeast (NIDA). It is a nervous system depressant which can be found many different beverages such as wine, beer, and other hard liquors. Depending on the amount consumed, it will have different effects on the body also depending on the persons weight, metabolism, amount of food eaten beforehand or during, and how fast the alcohol is consumed. The consumption of alcohol while consuming illicit drugs is very dangerous. With alcohol being a depressant and the drug (if it is a depressant) will make the depressant effect more intense will lead to memory loss, coma, or even death. On the other hand, if the drug is a stimulant it can alter your judgment of how intoxicated you really are since they have...
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... and the physiological theory. Each theory is different because of what they focus on and how the subject is analyzed and different explanations for human behavior. Each theory has been expanded over time by many different scholars and experts. Each added their own thoughts on the theories. Cognitive Theory The cognitive theory mainly focuses on memory, thinking, and problem solving and how it relates to behavior (Psychology and Society, n.d). Those thought processes affect behaviors in many ways because actions are almost always an afterthought. A person thinks about what they are going to do and then do it or not. For example, a person is taking a test in school and they don’t know the subject matter. There is a question that they absolutely don’t know the answer to. The student will have several thoughts. The first thought would be to guess the answer and hope they get it right. The second thought would be to look over at the paper of a fellow classmate. The student chooses to look at the paper of a classmate and gets caught. The student knew that cheating was wrong but still weighed the options and chose to do it anyway. The cognitive theory influences psychology today by allowing a “sight” into the mind of a subject. Until this theory was developed many people did not know why a person did the actions that they did. The mind is one of the major focuses in psychology. The mind can tell a lot about person and what they would or would not do and why. Behaviorism ...
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... milk or maybe juice. One that is always of popular demand at a party or club is alcohol. Beer, cocktails, shots of vodka are all things that adults (and sometimes not adults) drink to have a good time. While it may have a temporary effect on the consumer, they will most likely soon after discover that those ten shots of whiskey were not a good idea. Alcohol and its abuse can affect the user, their brain and the people around them. Chemistry being considered, the brain is strongly affected by alcohol abusers and frequent drinkers. When someone speaks of drugs and drug use, alcohol may not be the first substance to come to mind. It is a very strong drug indeed....
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...Drugs have an interesting history that many people may not even know. During the 1600’s, Jamestown settlers were the first to grow the first drug that we now know as marijuana. Europeans were major contributors that were involved with planting flowers, sugar and mostly important tobacco. French began to explore their new substances and expanded the wealth, using expensive travels by ships and spread it with different cultures like the Spanish, Portuguese and British. Pierre Pomet was considered to be the French official, when referring to drugs. Pierre seeked every possible opportunity and introduced methods where his work actually became appealing. Pomet ran a well-renown and fashionable apothecary store in Paris, and was appointed chief druggist to Louis XIV “(O’Sullivan, 2014).Myths were told all the time, but not everyone really believed them or paid any attention to them. A man named Christopher Columbus during the late 1400’s, developed new trade routes for those drug trafficking owners and dealers. Everyone knew Christopher as the man who discovered America and other conspiracies. He was a famous explorer during the time and everyone decided to take advantage of Columbus’s trade routes to India and China. The Chinese community often associated with the French and Dutch traders. Colonists from Europe believe that sooner or later traders were going to get caught distributing illegal substances. As centuries passed by, ships became more durable and bigger which benefited...
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...Arguments of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Arguments of Alcohol and Drug Abuse “If drinking is causing problems with your life, you have a drinking problem” says Smith, Melinda, MA, with helpguide.org. With the holidays upon us, this is a common argument between individuals with family members, law enforcement officers, hospitals and mores. Many feel that since drinking has been around since the dawning of time it can be controlled by choice. If you ask that question to someone that has lost their job, family, home or way of life due to them being unable to control their drinking, they would argue differently. Alcohol and Drug addiction is not just a choice but a disease that affects everyone around them including family and loved ones. Addiction is a family disease not just an individual says Hara Marano, “The first step”. Although one can never be cured of addiction, there is help to learn how to live life without the use of drinking or using drugs. It’s up to the individual to want to get that help. Addiction by definition is the use of any chemical substance to alter states of body or mind for other than medically warranted purposes. It doesn't matter whether its beer, hard liquor, or a glass of wine, addiction doesn't choose its vessel, it all becomes harmful. In the medical field, it’s becoming increasingly common to hear someone argue that they aren't addicted to the medicine because it’s prescribed, but if it’s not taken as it is supposed to be or if you begin to...
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