Why Do People Take Drugs? - Essay Sample

Many people do not comprehend why other people get addicted and abuse drugs. Most individuals mistakenly think that those who take drugs lack moral principles and could stop using drugs by merely choosing to. Drug addiction can be considered as a disease, and quitting is for good intentions and strong will. Drugs alter the brains in a manner that makes it hard to quit, even to those willing to quit. Fortunately, researchers have established why people take drugs and how the drugs alter the brain and have found alternative treatment methods which can assist the addicts to recover and live productive lives.

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Most of the youths of the age between fourteen years to twenty-four years do take drugs. This is the period in life where there is a lot of transition, and usually, people take drugs to change some aspects of their lives. Particularly the youths, they think that taking drugs will offer a solution, but the eventuality is that a solution is not offered rather the drugs become the problem. Difficult as it may look like to face the challenges of life, the consequences of using drugs are always worse than the challenges the person is trying to solve by taking drugs. According to Sznitman., Zlotnick, and HarelFisch, 2016, 424, young people take drugs so that they may fit in, to relieve boredom, to rebel, to experiment, to seem grown-up, and to escape or relax.

The self-pronounced explanations for which youths use drugs, particularly cannabis, may be especially imperative to understand when clarifying the etiology of substance usage and abuse as well as when advancing behavior change. There are four types of drug use motivations that have been hypothetically recognized, and empirically upheld individuals: social, enhancement, adapting, and conformity (Hanson & Gutheil, 2004, 367). Uses of drugs due to social motives include taking drugs to have fun with friends, and it is commonly embraced. Enhancement taking of drugs motives incorporate reasons, for example, getting high or encountering excitement and such inspirations are related to the frequent use of cannabis as well as the use of other drugs.

A minority of youths take drugs to cope (e.g., to forget and disregard about problems and issues affecting them), and these people are most likely to take drugs alone. Conformity reasons incorporate taking of drugs to fit in with a friendly gathering and are related to lower recurrence and amount of drug use. These reported relationships between drug use motivations and practices are put together for the most part concerning cross-sectional research; in any case, Hanson and Gutheil, 2004, 370, demonstrated that both cannabis and other drug use motivations were tentatively identified with behavior one year later.

Empirical research has not reliably differentiated motivations for the utilization of different substances, for example, cannabis. Accessible evidence proposes explanations behind cannabis use are like those for alcohol use, including social, enhancement, coping, and conformity motivations. An extra explanation behind using cannabis has been portrayed as changing perceptions or mind expansion. Repeating the pattern depicted for alcohol and other drug motivations and use, found in cross-sectional research that using cannabis for social, enhancement, coping, and expansion aims were prescient of cannabis taking; conformity motives were not prognostic of use within the presence of covariates. When contrasting motivations for alcohol and cannabis taking, social inspirations are more significant for alcohol than for cannabis use, enhancement inspirations amongst the female only and expansion inspirations are more significant for cannabis than for alcohol and coping and conformity inspirations did not vary for the other drugs. MacGregor, 2017, 32, likewise identified encouraging activities (e.g., concentration) and dealing with the impacts of different drugs (for instance, to improve or simplify the effects of other drugs) as the extra purpose for drug use. Differentiating substance-specific explanations behind the use and how they are related to use and abuse will take into consideration for stricter tests of the significance of hidden purposes behind use as markers of risk among young people.

One of the most clear indicators of failure to get out of drug use and the continued difficulties in old age is symptoms of substance use disorders, that incorporate overdependence (i.e., increased tolerance and sustained recurrent use regardless of negative outcomes) and abuse (i.e., using in dangerous ways prompting issues with ordinary functioning). These disorders are related with an array of morbidity and mortality matters (Tazzyman et al., 2017, 749; Bradshaw, 2016, 30) and furthermore bring about considerable expenses to society ( Simpson et al., 2018, 212). The risk of encountering an AUD in the previous years is roughly 10% for grown-ups in developed countries (Dines, 2015, 416), and the risk for MUD is about 1.5% among American grown-ups (Tait et al., 2016, 11). Albeit significant advances have been made in regards to family-related and psychopathological risk factors for adulthood substance use disorders (i Rodriguez, 2015, 471), studies describing the long-term broad-based forecast of adulthood AUD and MUD stays inadequate (MacGregor, 2017, 53). Understanding which people are most probable to advance AUD and MUD is a significant concentration for aversion and intervention programs.

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