Chapter 1
Why people use Drugs.
Some People use drugs or alcohol for recreation, seeking pleasure, because their friends do, or because their parents tell them not to. Others get started with doctor's prescriptions, coffee, or their first aspirin tablet. There is another category of drug users; those who want relief from pain or suffering. Alternatively, because they have holes in their personality or are emotionally empty or void of feelings. Others even are seeking inner truth. For adolescents, research points to four motives for drug use:
1. To expand their awareness and as a way of coping with their problems.
2. Out of curiosity, that is, to gain an understanding of what it is like to use drugs.
3. For thrill-seeking and as a way to become part of the "in-group."
4. To get high and to reach a higher state of consciousness or spirituality.
Adolescents whose friends are heavy users are more likely to use drugs or alcohol. For many adolescents and teenagers, smoking and drinking stands for culturally acceptable ways for rebelliousness and maturity. Here, I would like to point out something important concerning the fourth motive as mentioned above, concerning the heightened state of consciousness or spirituality. Drugs increase sensitivity, not consciousness or spirituality. Drugs cause a change in perception, in the subjective state (self-perceived happiness or satisfaction with life) not a change in being, which is, incidentally, what religion wishes. As I mentioned in the beginning, some people smoke for recreational purposes (to have fun, to have a good time, pleasure-seeking), but by using drugs in this way they can cover their psychological needs in the meantime (deep psychological needs that most times people are not self-aware of). Consequently, the inhibitions go and addiction sets in. Thus, doing drugs for recreational use to begin with, more often than not, leads to addiction, and thus the drugs become, instead of something fun to begin with, eventually necessary to survive, to endure, to cope with life, even one's self.
Once someone has started using drugs, their tolerance of the drug increases and this leads to more use. Tolerance is when the body is used to a drug, that is, one becomes immunised to the effects, so that with regular use, increasingly higher doses of the drug are needed to achieve similar effects. This explains why withdrawal leads to profound distress and craving, a disease that is out of control. Although the consequences of withdrawal can be severe, the wanting and craving will decline after the drug use has stopped. The expectation of rewards from drug-taking is powerful. Indeed, the learnt expectations may be more powerful than the biological properties of the substance. Drug taking is seen as adaptive since it is the individual's way of coping with stresses. Importantly, once drug use has ceased, the craving, with the right psychological support, becomes replaced by the idea that withdrawal effects must be replaced by the idea that withdrawal effects must be understood in terms of the user's expectations of the consequences of withdrawal. This is based on Thorndike's Law of Effect: Which, briefly, states that behaviours followed by favourable consequences become more likely and behaviours followed by unfavourable consequences become less likely. Based on the Thorndike's above famous theory we can see why the "reward" from taking drugs leads to a behaviour, which is typified by dependency. Drugs have a relaxing and calming effect, which can be very easily sought after continuously. This again reiterates Thorndike's premise: if drug use did not have this pleasurable feeling, including temporary nullifying of stress and anxiety, then there is no favourable result of taking drugs, hence no need or desperation to use them. We shall see other common (and not) reasons for why people take to drugs in the ensuing chapters.
