Issues behind Addictive Drug Use
Issues behind Addictive Drug Use
Issues Behind Addictive Drug Use
Prior to beginning work on this discussion, read the required chapters from the text and review the required articles for this week. Humans have engaged in psychoactive drug use, sometimes in formal (ceremonial) settings and sometimes recreationally, since before recorded history. It has only been in the last century or so that abuse and addiction have become large-scale problems. Using the literature and your own insights into these issues, formulate an argument as to why the problem has reached its current scale. In your discussion, evaluate the employment of psychoactive drugs from the aspects of a risk-benefits analysis and ethical considerations such as the risk of addiction versus the cost of punitive action. Also explain purely pharmacological issues such as pharmacokinetics and routes of drug administration and dose. If needed, include factors such as supply, cultural attitudes to drug use, and the context of drug use.
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The development process of drug addiction resembles the learning experiences. An individual takes drugs and experiences their psychoactive effects that are enormously reinforcing. Persons use different methods to introduce psychoactive drugs into the bloodstream, such as inhalation, intravenously, and intranasally. Once these drugs enter the bloodstream, they stimulate the secretion of pleasure hormones, such as dopamine, hence facilitating euphoric sensations (Tart, 2000). Consequently, an individual repeats the behavior to get the good feelings. Accordingly, the brain starts to respond in a manner that implies that taking the drug is important for the individuals’ survival, thereby causing an addiction. The condition makes it difficult for the addicts to stop taking the drugs as they experience withdrawal symptoms. The viewpoint implies that the rewarding effects alone are not responsible for the addiction problem. Thus, it becomes difficult for an individual to stop consuming the psychotic drugs as she or she cannot undertake any activity without consuming the drug. Consequently, the addicts end up spending a significant amount of their resources on the drugs…………….
APA 348 words