How Drug Use Becoming Habit

The present popularity of drug abuse testifies that in all too many eases the young experimenter goes on taking drugs until he becomes “hooked.” Let us consider, then, the tragic sequence by which an adolescent boy or girl, being persuaded to experiment with drugs, eventually becomes a habitual user.

Assume that in this teen ager’s home, one or both of the parents smoke cigarettes and also partake of alcoholic drinks. The teen ager interprets this as his parent’s permission for him to do the same. Thus he is easily vulnerable to the appeals of his fellow teen agers when they urge him to join them in experimenting with cigarettes, with liquor, and even with marijuana. 

These three indulgences—smoking tobacco, drinking liquor, and smoking tobacco, drinking liquor, tragic combination by which the teen ager becomes tolerant of his own conduct and will try the more potent drugs, even against his better judgment. Not everyone, of course, who smokes cigarettes and drinks liquor, indulges in drug abuse as we usually define it. But practically every person who becomes a user of hard drugs first used cigarettes, liquor, and marijuana.

Teen agers are often cautioned to be on guard against adult drug peddlers. However, it is the teen age pusher who more often than not suppliers the drugs high school students use. He not only encourages his friends to continue their experimenting with drugs, but also profits financially. He finds it much easier to earn his spending money by selling drugs than by holding a job and earning wages.

Once a person has used a drug enough times to become acquainted with its effects, he no longer has to be persuaded. What are these effects? The ones that make him want to have more of the drug are those that influence his thinking, his attitudes, and his moods. They are the ones that make the circumstances of life seem different from reality. They are the ones that make him feel comfortable, peaceful, and secure, in spite of his problems, his anxieties, or his lack of ability. This is probably the most important factor that causes a teen ager who experiments with drugs to become addicted to their use.

The teen ager or young adult struggling with unsolved personal problems is the most likely candidate for drug addiction. Drugs provide an artificial relief from feeling depressed or thwarted. Drugs do not help a person to face reality with courage. On the contrary, they make him less willing to cope with life’s difficulties and stresses, or even unable to do so. Why should he put forth the effort to solve his problems when, under the influence of drugs, he is not aware of having problems.

It is said that the typical heroin addict is a 17 years old male who is out of school, out work, and ashamed or embarrassed because of an impoverished family background. This does not mean, however, that the teen ager who comes from a respectable family is immune to the danger of becoming a chronic user of drugs. Young people from “good families” have their personal problems too. There may be unresolved tensions between the young person and his parents. He may be lonely, even though a member of a respectable family. He may find his parents indifferent to his desires and personal needs for encouragement and guidance. He may feel unable to live up to his parents expectations of him. He may feel guilty over some previous misconduct. He may feel betrayed by some one his own age.

Is recovery possible? From what we have been saying it becomes clear that the teen ager or young adult who experiments with drugs becomes more deeply involved the longer he continues his use of drugs. Somewhere along the line of this progressive involvement every user becomes aware of the harm drugs are doing. When not under their influence, he regrets that he started using them and wishes that he might leave them alone.

Some teen agers come to this realization after their first few trials. For them it may be relatively easy to quit. But the longer the individual continues the use of drugs and the greater the difficulty he encounters in solving his personal problems otherwise, the harder it is for him to discontinue his use of drugs. So there are real hindrances to recovery from drug abuse. These may be listed as follows: 

1. Fear of ridicule by drug using friends. The young person who uses drugs is practically always a member of group of users. The other members also wish at times for freedom from this compelling indulgence. They find it so difficult to change their pattern of conduct that they are not willing to see one member succeed where they have failed. They many even be fearful that should one member of their group recover from his drug abuse, he will become an informer and make it difficult for the others. Of course, the drug pusher from whom they obtain their drugs will find ways of making it difficult for any of his customers to discontinue.
2. A teen ager needs friends. If he stops using drugs, his drug suing associates will not longer include him in their social activities. Neither will it be easy for him to develop social contacts with those who never took up the habit. By now he has a reputation for an irregular way of life. Teen agers who have not used drugs hesitate to associate with him for fear that his influence and his reputation will be a handicap to them. So the drug user who desires to reform has grave problems of social adjustment.
3. Persisting, unsolved personal problems. These constitute a great hindrance to recovery from drug abuse. The very problems that prompted the teen ager to continue his use of drugs, once he had experimented with them, are more difficult to solve after he has indulged for a time. His use of drugs has weakened his stamina, robbed him of courage, and caused him to lose time in the personal development that would have helped him to make advancement.
4. Fear of failure in life’s enterprises. The chronic drug user is now handicapped in obtaining the kind of job he would like to have or in continuing the educational program of his choice. He is no longer a front runner in the competition for good jobs or for scholarships that would enabled him to continue in school. He is sensitive to the evidence of his personal failure and so gives in easily to pressures to continue with drugs. The drugs make him content.

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Category: Mind-Alternating Drugs