HELP FOR ADDICTS- Addiction is a disease - rehabilitation and medicines

 A parent can remind the addict that marijuana can be habit-forming, cause listlessness with prolonged use, and temporarily alter vision enough to make driving extremely dangerous. And, of course, too, it may lead to possible arrest and conviction of a felony, barring the individual from the practice of many professions and from obtaining a passport. Barbiturates, it can be explained, can be as addictive as heroin. Strong doses of amphetamines are dangerous, too, and even hippies have been known to post signs warning that "Speed Kills.

“A child tempted by drugs or already experimenting with them is not a hopeless case by any means. And with wise rather than hysterical action on the part of parents, there is a good chance he may "turn off" rather than "turn on." Where, if needed, can a parent turn for help? A good place to start is with the family physician. In most communities help is also available through psychiatric clinics and outpatient services. Virtually every major city has a center that will refer a parent to the best agency for a particular problem. 

Hospitals, child-guidance centers, voluntary health and social organizations, and many law enforcement agencies which are anxious to protect rather than prosecute, unless prosecution is absolutely essential, can tell parents what to do.

HELP FOR ADDICTS Addiction is a disease. It is not an easy one to overcome-but it is curable in many instances. In fact, as authorities point out, many addicts, when they reach the age of 30 or 35, often suddenly lose the need for heroin, for example. They withdraw on their own and never go back to the habit. Why this maturing-out process, as it is known, occurs is a mystery; addicts themselves are unable to explain it. "Our problem," says one authority "is to keep them from dying of heroin addiction before they get to be 30 or 35 and to replace their 10-year to 15-year period of drug abuse with years of useful activity.

 There are three major approaches to treatment in the United States. One is civil commitment, used in some states, with emphasis on education, job rehabilitation, and careful follow-up. Another is a methadone maintenance program which substitutes the milder drug methadone for heroin and includes schooling, job training, and other rehabilitative activities. There are also group therapy programs, typified by organizations such as Synanon and Day Top, which are regarded by many authorities as promising. 

Drug use and rescue measures - heroin and it effects on health

SUSPECTING DRUG USE Rehabilitation of a chronic drug user can be a long, hard process. Prevention and intervention-turning youngsters off when they start turning themselves on-are problems of parental concern.

How can a parent begin to suspect that a child may be taking drugs? It's important to note any unusual changes from normal behavior. If a child who has always been friendly and outgoing suddenly becomes withdrawn and hostile, something is wrong though it may not necessarily be drug use. 

Some experts suggest that a youngster who keeps to himself for long periods in his room or in the bathroom, who is often on the phone and who is called by persons who will not identify themselves to parents, may be taking drugs. Other possible indications include a sharp slide in school grades, disappearance of clothing and personal belongings and thievery at home (used to pay for drugs), alienation from old friends, and taking up with strange companions. There are physical indications.

Person smoking marijuana has a strong odor of burnt leaves on both his breath and clothes which persists for hours after use of the drug. Marijuana dilates the pupils of the eyes and sometimes reddens and inflames the eyes. Other symptoms include sleepiness, lack of coordination, wandering mind, increased appetite, and craving for sweets. There may be a tendency to laugh and giggle excessively. 

If a person is high on LSD or another hallucinogen, the symptoms are almost unmistakable: severe hallucinations, incoherent speech, cold hands and feet, strong body odor, laughing and crying jags, vomiting. Symptoms of amphetamine usage include aggressive behavior, rapid speech, giggling and silliness, confusion of thinking, extreme fatigue, shakiness, loss of appetite.

Those for the barbiturates are stupor, dullness, blurred speech, drunk appearance, vomiting. If pills are found on children who deny they are illicit drugs, the pills can be identified by a druggist or physician. If cigarette papers and possibly small seeds are found in clothing pockets, they may well indicate marijuana usage. When a child is sniffing glue or drinking cough medicine containing narcotics for kicks, he may have a dreamy blank expression and a drunk about that, the seriousness of the situation justifies the invasion.

There should take effort then to find out whether the child has only experimented a drug regularly. In discussing drugs with a child, the parent can, and should, use an intelligent, reasonable approach. It is far more likely to be successful than an authoritative pronouncement. A youngster can be reminded that LSD usage is extremely dangerous risk-taking; that it has caused hundreds of victims to end up in mental institutions or to suffer injuries such as three University of California at Santa Barbara students suffered when, on an LSD trip, they stared 50 long at the sun while holding a "religious conversion" that they never again will be able to read. A youngster resists any argument that marijuana is as addictive or is dangerous as heroin. 

HOW VALID ARE THE REASONS FOR DRUG TAKING?

HOW VALID ARE THE REASONS FOR DRUG TAKING?drug medicines, 

Youngsters today defend their use of drugs on the grounds of alcohol. Their thrust to anxious parents is:  answer to this as any has been made by Dr. of the National Institute of Mental Health.  Points out, it is pale. In the first place, the use of alcohol, persons above 21 is not against the law. Secondly, alcohol as a crutch by some people does nothing to other chemical means of 'copping out. 

Drinking and alcoholism are currently subjects of in research. Thirdly, the acceptability of moderate social drinking assumes that adults are mature enough to make mature decisions as to their behavior. And, finally, there is the irrefutable fact that the fresh young years of personality growth and development are dangerously inappropriate for any chemical means of confounding reality. "As authorities well recognize, neither laws nor awareness of the medical facts can themselves secure drug abuse prevention. 

Nor can we stop people from using alcohol or cigarettes as support or as a bandage for their psychic wounds. Ours is a drug-oriented culture. From aspirin to sleeping pills, from tranquilizers to the 'pill,' Americans of all ages are ingesting drugs in greater variety and number than ever before. "It is not so much the phenomenon of use, however, but the misuse and abuse of drugs that bears close investigation. 

Why do people choose to distort or to ward off reality through chemical means? Perhaps we deal with deep-rooted feelings of alienation.

 Alienation among the young has been characterized as 'rebellion without cause ... rejection without a program ... refusal of what is without a vision of what should be.' As scientists we are left to probe whatever reasons can be found for this sad anomaly.

Sedatives and drug addiction - Medicines and rehabilitation

SEDATIVES

Sedatives constitute a large family of compounds with relaxing effects on the nervous system. Dating back to 1846, the barbiturates are the best known.

 Many barbiturates with different types of action are available. Some, such as pentobarbital and secobarbital, are fast-starting and short- acting, exerting their effects quickly but for a relatively short period. Others, phenobarbital, amobarbital, and butabarbital, are slow-starting but long-acting. Most often abused are the short-acting compounds, commonly called goofballs and barbs. In normal, medically prescribed doses, barbiturates mildly slow the heart rate and breathing, lower blood pressure, and mildly depress nerve activity.

In larger doses, they may cause confusion, slurred speech, and staggering, deep sleep-symptoms much like those of alcoholic inebriation. Sedatives not only produce tolerance so that increasingly greater doses are needed to achieve the same results; they also produce physical dependence.

Their abrupt withdrawal can lead to cramps, nausea, delirium and convulsions, and, in some cases, sudden death. Withdrawal must be carried out in a hospital over a period of weeks with gradual reduction of dosage. It isn't only large dosage that can be fatal. Even a small dose may produce slowing of reaction and some distortion of vision. Barbiturates Drugs are a major cause of automobile accidents. 

The combination of barbiturates and alcohol is especially dangerous; the two substances have a synergistic effect in which each greatly increases the effects of the other. Barbiturates are frequently implicated in suicides, but they also cause many accidental deaths which only appear to be suicides.

 A major problem with barbiturates is that a user may react more strongly at one time than another; and with a strong reaction, there may be some confusion about how many pills have been taken and the user may groggily go on to take more, sometimes a fatal over dosage. 

Drug addiction and stimulant drugs - effects on

STIMULANT DRUGS 

Amphetamines-stimulants for the central nervous system-were first introduced in the 1920's. Best known for their ability to combat fatigue and sleepiness, they have many medical uses.

Under some circumstances, they may be employed as an aid in weight reduction because of their appetite-suppressing effect. They are sometimes used in the treatment of mild mental depression. In some children-who tend to be overactive and irritable, behavior problems in school and at home--the amphetamines have what seems to be a paradoxical effect: though basically stimulants, in these children they have a valuable calmative effect. 

Stimulants have been widely abused. There has been a heavy illegal traffic in such agents as Benzedrine, Dexedrine, and Methedrine, commonly called pep pills, bennies, and speed.

While these drugs produce no physical dependence, a tolerance to them does develop and increasingly large doses are required to achieve the same results. Their effects are many: increased heart rate, elevated blood pressure, palpitations, dilation of the pupils, dry mouth, sweating, headache, diarrhea, paleness. 

The drugs stimulate the release of norepinephrine, a neurohormone ordinarily stored in nerve endings. Norepinephrine be- comes concentrated in higher brain centers. When seriously abused, the stimulants can produce exhaustion and temporary psychosis which may require hospitalization.

 When used for long periods for "kicks" or for staying awake, the drugs have another danger: they may lead people to try to do things beyond their physical capacity, leaving them seriously exhausted at best and, at worst, leading them into serious and even fatal accidents. "Speeding," the injection of Methedrine into a vein, has still other dangers. An unaccustomed high dose can kill. 

And injections may lead to critical serum hepatitis. Heavy chronic users of stimulant drugs tend to become irritable and unstable and, like other chronic drug users, may suffer social, intellectual, and emotional breakdown. In our heavily medicated society, the abuse of stimulants is not limited to young people and thrill seekers. 

Many otherwise intelligent persons get on a kind of pill-go-round, using sedatives to calm themselves down and fall asleep and stimulants to wake themselves up and keep going. 

Marijuana and its effects on health and work related issues

MARIJUANA

This is a drug found in the flowering tops and leaves of a hemp plant which grows in mild climates in countries around the world. Known variously as pot, tea, grass, weed, Mary Jane, hash, and kif, marijuana is smoked in short cigarettes or pipe-full made up of the leaves and flowers of the plant.

The smoke has an odor resembling burnt rope or dried grass. Marijuana produces certain clear-cut physical reactions: increase in heartbeat, lowering of body temperature, reddening of the eyes. In addition, the drug affects blood sugar levels, stimulates appetite, and tends to dehydrate the body. 

The effects on emotions and senses vary considerably not only with the quantity and strength of the drug used but also with the circum- stances, including the social setting and the expectations of the user, beginning about fifteen minutes after inhalation of the smoke and for as long as four hours, some users feel excited, some depressed, some experience no mood change.

Often, the sense of time and distance becomes distorted so that a minute may seem as long as an hour, a nearby object may seem far off. The drug affects ability to perform any task requiring clear thinking and good reflexes. Marijuana is an extremely controversial drug. There is a prevailing belief that it is harmless, but some investigators are convinced it is not. 

A recent survey of 2,700 doctors and other professionals in mental health practice disclosed that they had seen 1,887 patients with adverse reactions to marijuana in a period of eighteen months.

As some scientists note, "The very unpredictability of marijuana on different individuals and on the same individual at different times and under different conditions increases the risk to the user." Much still remains to be learned about the long-term effects and possible dangers of marijuana; and aided now by the recent synthesis of the drug's active ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol, and investigations are being carried out. 

Only very recently has hashish, a drug known for centuries, become a major element in what has been called "America's drug subculture." Both hashish and marijuana come from the same plant. While marijuana is made from the tops and leaves, hashish is the dried resin of the plant. Hashish is often sold in chunks about one-inch square and one- quarter-inch thick and looks much like a clod of dirt. It has little taste -a hint of the household spice thyme.

 Users may put a tiny pebble of it in a pipe or sprinkle a few crumbs of it onto a cookie. Reactions are varied. Some users feel nothing but a slight drowsiness. At the other extreme, some go into panic and scream that they are losing their minds. Some authorities report that if there is a psychological disability, the drug tends to aggravate it and that large doses can cause the same kind of psychotic breakdown as LSD can produce. No one really knows the long-term effects of the drug. Users claim that there will be no permanent effects upon body or mind.

On the other hand, doctors in countries with long histories of hashish usage suggest that the user will become lethargic, apathetic. As this is written, plans are being formulated for the first United States scientific studies of hashish.

Drug addiction releif and benefits on sensory organs

There may be a sharpening of other senses-taste, smell, hearing, touch. And often various sensory impressions may appear to merge, so that colors, for example, may seem to have taste. Users report many other strange experiences, including simultaneous opposite emotions, being at once happy and sad, elated and depressed, tense and relaxed. 

At different times, there may be different effects for the same individual. Responses cannot be predicted, which is why users often describe their experiences as "good trips" and "bad trips." Some LSD users believe that since LSD heightens their senses, it makes them more creative. But this is not supported by the paintings, writings, and other creative efforts of drug users i in fact, in many cases, the works produced after drug use am poorer than before. How LSD works in the body is not yet thoroughly understood.

There is some evidence that it affects the amounts or levels of certain chemicals in the brain and changes brain electrical activity. Experiments with animals suggest that the drug may block a normal filtering process in the brain which then becomes flooded with myriad un screened sights and sounds. The dangerous effects of LSD are many. Hospitals report that some users, in a panic over their inability to cut off the effects of the drug, fear they are losing their minds. 

Some become paranoiac, developing in- creasing suspicions that people are out to harm them and control their thinking. Weeks and even months after LSD use has been stopped, some people have recurrences of the same experiences they had while using the drug and fear they are going insane.

Accidental deaths have been reported-instances of users walking in front of moving cars, convinced they were impervious to harm, and even leaping out of high windows because of a conviction they could fly. Medical experts report that the overwhelming fears and worries that may accompany an LSD experience can sometimes be disturbing enough to produce acute and even long-lasting mental illness.

Changes in chromosomes-the tiny threads in the nucleus of all cells which carry genetic information and guide reproduction-have raised concern. The changes found are actual breaks in the chromosomes, and the fear is that this may lead to birth defects in children of users.