14 DAY TRIAL // Drugs have become a real issue nowadays. How do we define drugs? Well, the term covers an extended aria of substances that affect a person's mental and physical state. Using drugs can and will modify your way of perceiving reality, your way of acting and communicating with the others.
Is dependence a probability? No, it is a certainty. After a while of taking drugs, physical and psychological addiction installs and you start believing that the entire world revolves around your daily dosage. It's strange how a small cigarette or bag of powder can become the most important thing in the world. Well, at least in your world.
Why do people consume drugs?
People consume drugs in different ways. Some use them once, twice or for a short period of time. Let's name this category of persons the experimenters. A part of this group passes from the experimental phase to a regular, controlled use. These are the recreational experimenters. Few of them start having the feeling that only another dose can get them through the day. This type of consumers won't resist much without drugs. They form the category of addicts. It's important though to be made a distinction between the experimenters and the addicts because their motives might be entirely different.
Youth's first contact with drugs is usually an experimental one. Most of the times, such experiments take place within a group of friends (the majority of young men/ women who ever tried taking a drug started this way). Those who use drugs for the first time are often guided by an experienced person, one who has taken drugs before.
The reasons set forth by the young men or women who ever experiment an illegal drug were:
- They're easy to acquire and if a few friends tried it, why wouldn't they try it too? - Due to a lack of activity - Driven by curiosity; it seems interesting enough; why not give it a try? - Desiring to fit in - As a form of protest against parents or teachers; disobeying them might be fun..
Still, none of these reasons demonstrates that the young men that experimentally consume drugs automatically have major social or psychological problems. There are different reasons that drive youth into risking or doing dangerous things they shouldn't been doing like shoplifting, driving with an excessive speed and racing in traffic, joining a gang and having unprotected sexual contacts. Taking chances, living life to the edge, exceeding the boundaries set by adults, they are all constituents of youth's growing up process. People that work with youth must take these facts into consideration and help them make the right decisions by giving healthy alternatives for spending their spear time in a less destructive way.
A misguided teenager could become an addict. From this point on, recovery will be extremely hard to achieve. Addicts tend to justify their desperate need for drugs invoking reasons that try to diminish their disastrous effects. They say that drugs are able to make a physical or psychological disorder disappear or that the use of drugs helps them forget all the worries caused by poverty and unemployment. Taking drugs is their refuge from an apparently insecure and hostile world.
As you can see from those mentioned earlier, it all depends on the emotional and social situation of the affected person. Not to think that a teenager with a great social status will not use drugs. On the contrary, it's been proven that rich kids have almost made a habit out of "getting high", but I think their reason would be the fact that drugs are "stylish". But what if you'd discover that a member of your family is addicted to such substances? Would you find the right way to act and react? How about if you would be tempted by drugs?? Would you resist the temptation or would curiosity win? If I may be permitted an advice: consider the effects but also the risks involved. Think about it.