So You Think It’s Cool To Do Drugs?

Is it cool to die? You do not do drugs…Drugs do you!

People have been taking drugs in one form or another since the beginning of time and I suspect they always will. For whatever reasons, a lot of us are not comfortable in our own skins and heads and we feel the need to change ourselves. We want to feel better. There is nothing wrong with this pursuit of happiness as our forefathers tried to guarantee us.

What needs to be changed are the methods in which we try to improve our mental health. There are many non-drug ways to achieve a different mental state. Yoga, meditation, exercise, healthy activities are just some examples of non-drug ways to make ourselves feel better.

Until science discovers a drug that will elevate our mood beyond our current pharmacology of antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs, without harming the host, we need to Just Say No! Nancy Reagan was ridiculed for this mantra when she first proposed it but she was definitely onto something.

Although Just Say No sounds good, it is not the whole package. The mantra alone will not prevent kids from doing drugs. It must be backed up by strong parental control, diligent efforts on the part of our schools and our society in general. We must put as much effort into an anti-drug campaign as we are doing in the anti-tobacco campaign.

The War on Drugs is a joke. As long as there is big government money to be made on drugs the effort to thwart drugs will be nothing more than lip service.

It is easier to not do drugs than it is to try to stop doing drugs!

Every 20 minutes there is a drug death in this country alone

It’s estimated that one American dies every 20 minutes from a drug overdose. While you’re sitting at home watching your favorite one hour TV show, 3 Americans will have died during that same time from drugs.

Science is discovering that there is an addiction gene. Unfortunately, the discovery of this addiction comes only after you’re already addicted. It’s like playing Russian Roulette the first time you do your first hit of cocaine. Some people have actually died from their very first experiment with this drug.

Perversely, most people don’t die from their first hit so they live to go on and do more and more of the drug until ultimately their lives are ruined beyond repair or they eventually do succumb to the drug.

If they don’t die immediately, their life can be a miserable existence, existing each day, because we can’t refer to the life of an addicted person as living, but existing each day searching for their next score.

The euphoria is short-lived and the depression is immediate. Some drug addicted people will purposely overdose because they can’t tolerate the person they have become. They become disgusted with themselves for not being able to slake the unquenchable thirst they have for the drug or drugs.

Addiction is a brain disease

This is not fair to the addicted person because they have a disease. Yes, drug addiction is a brain disease. One look at a CAT scan of a so-called normal person and a drug addicted person will show you the glaring differences.

There is much research being done by NIDA (National Institute on Drug Abuse) and other organizations, trying to find ways to reprogram the brain back to a more normal state. In the mean time approximately 250,000 Americans are dying each year from this disease.

More research needs to be done in this regard. We need to help the addicted person. Jail is not the answer. Rehabs just plain don’t work. We must also spend more of our dollars on helping the mentally ill because quite often drug abuse and mental illness go hand in hand.

The drug addicted person has no more control over their disease than the cancer patient or diabetic does. Yet the person suffering from the disease of drug addiction is condemned and looked at askance. They didn’t start out to be addicted to drugs. They set out to feel better, to quash their emotional pain. Yes, some kids start doing drugs just for the fun of it. But a lot of them begin down this deadly path out of a desire to self-medicate.

Drugs will consume their entire existence. The person will no longer have control. The drugs will be in total control. The very drug that first made them feel better has now stripped them of any good feelings and they don’t know how to extricate themselves from the mess they got themselves into. Drug addicted people need our compassion.

It is easy to sit back and say well they brought it on themselves or if they had been raised better this wouldn’t happen. Most addicted people begin experimenting with drugs when they’re children. Children make mistakes! Unfortunately this mistake can follow them throughout their lives…and death.

The book I Am Your Disease (The Many Faces of Addiction) available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble details the lives of 40 people who have lost a child to drugs. The stories are brutally honest and heartbreaking. When a person does drugs, they are not the only ones affected. Their entire family and circle of friends are dragged into the quagmire and everyone suffers.

Be Smart – Don’t Start!