DRUGS-FAR AWAY FROM LIFE

Drug and alcohol addiction is a dangerous and progressive disease. When someone drinks alcohol every day, but never gets drunk, or parties and does cocaine or ecstasy every weekend, but never during the week days, are they addicts in need of drug rehab? We often say that there is an addiction problem when life becomes unmanageable in various ways, however addiction is progressive. For some people nothing seems to be unmanageable until suddenly, everything is. It’s such a sad thing when any person loses a life to addiction, but I know I’m not the only one who thought that, despite it’s horrible consequences, crack did not cause fatal overdoses , or at least not as often as heroin and prescription meds do. I guess when the damage hits closer to home, any reality becomes more. There have been numerous articles recently about the spread of heroin and perscription drug abuse among young people from 13-25 years of age. These disturbing develpments have indicated that a majority of these young people are beginning with abuse of prescription pan medications stolen from parents and grandparents who are ill or recovering from surgery. Despite the serious dangers of prescription pain medications, many people do not acknowledge these dangers because of an erroneous belief that since these pan killers are prescribed by doctors, they are not as dangerous as heroin obtained on the street.
There is no universal scale with which to measure the extent of addiction in everyone who abuses drugs and alcohol, but addiction is a dangerous game to play and no matter what the substance, any abuse is walking a very thin line. It’s tough to figure out who has a problem and who doesn’t. It doesn’t take falling down drunk or multiple drug offenses, or stealing from loved ones to be an addict. All it takes is a dependence - just to feel normal, or to go to sleep for the night. Perhaps, instead of determining addiction as life becoming unmanageable, we should take a look at what is and is not manageable when we don’t drink or do the drugs that normally “get us through” a good night’s sleep or a night out with friends. First, can we deny ourselves that drink or drug and second, has the perceived quality of our life changed in any way without these substances? This is a question that has to be answered on a personal level and hopefully, with vigilance, it can be answered before addiction gets a solid grasp on life and begins to make things unmanageable - making the need for drug and alcohol rehabilitation imminent. For a long time, I used to think that people don’t die from crack addiction. I used to think that only drugs like heroin and prescription meds could kill addicts. ng a suspicious finger toward medical professionals who will write opiate prescriptions at the word of a patient.
Along with prescription fraud and doctors who maybe a little too “trusting” of their patients, younger addicts find their fix much closer to home in their parents’ unlocked and unmonitored medicine cabinets. This kind of addictive behavior is especially dangerous because with younger people, the only interest is getting high without any knowledge of dosing instructions or possible health risks, increasing the chances of fatal overdoses.