The Impact of Drugs on Human Health

Substance Abuse

Substance abuse is also known as drug abuse. A person is defined with having a condition when they are involved in overuse of a substance where it negatively affects their day to day lives. Ingestion of these drugs can alter users’ personalities. Drugs can have an effect on one’s social, physical, and psychological health. Individuals who take part in drug abuse sometimes participate in criminal and antisocial behaviors. Counselors are responsible for the psychological recovery of their patients. This is a constant occurring problem in our society. In the United States alone, we spend over $67 billion due to substance abuse. This cost includes, crime, foster care, and other finances. Working with drug addicts can be challenging. Understanding substance abuse is important when providing accurate treatment because it is important to know the history of drugs, be able understand drug users, and know about the different effective treatments.

History of Drugs in America

Drugs have been abused for over hundreds of years. The terrible effects of drugs have been occurring for the same amount of time. One of the first people to believe that alcohol addiction had to do with the alcohol itself and not the individual, was one of our Founding Fathers, Benjamin Rush. In early times, people with addictions were seen as criminals. People struggling with addictions were treated with intense prayer. Later in history these people were put in mental institutions. Even though this may not have been the greatest places for these individuals but this was the first time in history that people start to see addiction as an illness.

The New York State inebriate asylum of 1864, was the first institution to just treat alcohol abuse as a mental health condition. They later added other drug abuses cases which led to more developing sober community groups. In 1935, Dr. Bob Smith and Bill Wilson created Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). This was a new approach to rehabilitation. People would meet and share their experiences with other recovering alcoholics and have a support group. This method of rehabilitation was so powerful and is still being used today.

Amphetamines

First blended in 1887, the stimulant amphetamine ended up well known in 1920s in the therapeutic network, where it was utilized for raising pulse, growing the nasal sections, and invigorating the focal sensory system. Misuse of the medication started in the 1930s, when it was advertised under the name Benzedrine and sold in an over-the-counter inhaler. In World War II, amphetamines were broadly disseminated to warriors to battle weariness and enhance both state of mind and perseverance, and after the war doctors started to endorse amphetamines to battle misery. As legitimate utilization of amphetamines expanded, a bootleg market developed. Normal clients of unlawful amphetamines included truck drivers on long drives and competitors searching for better execution. Students nicknamed the medication as ‘pep pills’ and utilized them to help in their studies.

In 1962 a crackdown on San Francisco drug stores which sold injectable amphetamines attracted national consideration regarding the issue of amphetamine ‘mainlining.’ and prompted the rise of underground offices called ‘speed labs’. Amphetamine use started to decrease during the 1970s, because of expanded open attention to its threats, and additionally FDA planning of the drug. There was also a respite not long after in amphetamine abuse (crack took over) however beginning in the mid 1990’s, methamphetamine became the overwhelming focus – beginning in America’s heartlands. This drug was recreated and was then famed of precious stone methamphetamine, a smokable type of methamphetamine ordinarily referred to as ‘ice’, and expanded in the United States.

Cocaine

Cocaine is gotten from the coca plant local to the Andean good countries of South America. Cocaine was first introduced to the medical field in the 1880s. In 1883, Dr. Theodor Aschenbrandt, a German armed force doctor, recommended cocaine to Bavarian officers amid preparing to help diminish fatigue. In July, 1884, Sigmund Freud distributed Uber Coca, a psalm of acclaim to the medication which, alongside ‘Vin Mariani,’ a coca wine made by a Corsican physicist, helped lead to the medication’s advancement in Europe. In 1886 John Pemberton of Atlanta, Georgia started to showcase ‘Coca-Cola,’ a syrup got from coca leaves and African kola nuts.

In 1914, the Harrison Narcotic Act banned cocaine in the United States and use declined all through the 1940s through the 1960s. During the 1970s cocaine recovered prevalence as a recreational medication and was glamorized in the U.S. famous media. Articles from the time announced cocaine as non-addictive. The medication was seen as innocuous until the 1985 development of split.

Cocaine utilization crested in the United States 1982 with 10.4 million clients. The 1998 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse announced that cocaine was utilized by 3.8 million Americans. Starting at 1999, Colombia remained the world’s driving maker of cocaine, creating seventy five percent of the world’s yearly yield.

Crack

Crack rocks are a free-based type of cocaine made by cooking cocaine powder, water, and heating soft drink until the point when it frames a strong that can be separated and sold in individual ‘rocks.’ Crack cocaine initially showed up in vast urban communities, for example, LA, Miami, and NY around 1985. Where cocaine was costly to buy, break could be purchased at moderate costs and ended up predominant in common laborers and poorer neighborhoods.

In 1986 and 1988, as the general population excitement encompassing break expanded, Congress forced required condemning laws which significantly expanded the punishments for having or trafficking in split, which was seen to be a considerably more difficult issue than powder cocaine. In 1994 the United States Sentencing Commission started considering the impacts of these varying punishments, and found that the harsher sentences for rocks were forced basically on dark residents. The insights for those indicted for powder cocaine offenses were considerably more racially blended. In 1995 the US Sentencing Commission prescribed taking out this uniqueness in an answer to Congress; anyway both Congress and the Clinton organization dismissed the proposal.

LSD

LSD was coincidentally found and ingested by Dr. Albert Hofmann, a Swiss scientist working for Sandoz Laboratories, who ended up setting out on the primary LSD ‘trip’ in history in 1943. Not long after Hofmann’s underlying experimentation with LSD, he gave tests of the medication to specialists at the University of Zurich for further testing into conceivable employments. During the 1950s, the U.S. military and CIA inquired about LSD as a conceivable ‘truth tranquilize,’ which could be utilized for indoctrinating or actuating detainees to talk. In any case, after military enthusiasm for LSD wound down for different medications, the mental network started to research and issue covers the medication’s conceivable helpful capacities for insane, epileptic, and discouraged patients.

LSD began to decline in the 1980s but the medication made a resurgence during the 1990s, especially in the rave subculture. It is regularly made in secret labs in Northern California, and it is trusted that a set number of scientific experts fabricate about all accessible LSD, despite the fact that at an intensity right around 90% weaker than the average portion of the 1960s.

Marijuana

Marijuana development started in the United States around 1600 with the Jamestown pilgrims, who started developing the cannabis sativa or hemp plant for its strangely solid fiber that was utilized to make rope, sails, and garments. Until after the Civil War, weed was a wellspring of significant income for the United States. Amid the nineteenth century pot estates prospered in Mississippi, Georgia, California, South Carolina, Nebraska, New York, and Kentucky. Likewise amid this period, smoking hashish, a more grounded arrangement of marijuana got from the dried pitch of the plant, was well known all through France and to a lesser degree in the US.

Current household marijuana development patterns are towards indoor generation because of law implementation endeavors to reduce outside development. The larger part of remote cannabis is provided by trafficking associations in Mexico, in spite of the fact that nations in the Far East, for example, Thailand and Cambodia, likewise supply the United States.

Drug Users

When it comes to who may be more prone to drug use, there’s no discrimination. According to Stevens, in respect to age, gender, ethnicity, income, religion, geography, or occupation, everyone at some risk for substance abuse. People are using drugs excessively as young as 12. In 2011, 61,533 adolescents from 12-17 years of age, reportedly engage in alcohol binging a day.

Counseling

Counseling is important through the processes of rehabilitation. Individuals who suffer of drug addictions can be suffering financially, socially, physically, and emotionally. A substance abuse counselor is a mental health counselor who specializes in treating patients who have a dependency on drugs. Counseling these addicts, and others who fear future addiction, a substance abuse counselor job is to work with the individuals to become healthier, self-serving people and overcome their dependencies. The road to recovery may include working the client’s family and other loved ones.

It is essential that these clients yet counselors that are more than qualified to handle their extreme cases. It is important that these counselors incorporate the social cognitive theory into their work. The social cognitive theory says that people’s behaviors are based off of their experiences (personal, behavioral, and environment). This is crucial to understand so that counselors are not judgmental and take into consideration when observing and treating a client.

Getting a degree in counseling is not necessarily easy but people can go into drug counseling as soon as their first semester of graduate school and sometimes even earlier through interning as an undergrad the problem with this is that there needs to be more training in specifically substance abuse counseling. In the study done by Chandler, Balkin, and Perepiczka, these researchers found that students who did not take courses on substance abuse in depth, did not comprehend the urgency for these individuals to seek immediate counseling. In the same article, they expressed that child welfare workers said that they were more confident with working on these cases after they took a substance abuse course.

Counselors are always looking for new ways to attend to their clients. Religion has been a topic of discussion when it comes to counseling those who struggle from drug dependency. Counselors can tend to a client’s religion and spirituality by recognizing the role of the religion in the belief system by creating goals that are consistent with these religions. Counselors maybe hesitate to using religion because of the fear of imposing one’s values, it may conflict with the counselors own believes, and fear of negative reaction from the client on the topic.

Counselors who work with people who struggle with drug dependency, or at a high risk for burnout. This can be due to low working wages, of lack of motivation of the client, relapse criminality homelessness and other health problems that the client can be experiencing. It is important that burn out not get to the counselors because it could affect those they’re treating. For example, those who have a more positive relationship with their counselors may engage and less substance abuse.