Substance Abuse Essay

Substance Abuse, Is it a Way to Overcome Difficult Life Situations? Substance use disorder (SUD) is a mental disorder that affects a person’s brain and behavior, leading to a person’s inability to control their use of substances such as legal or illegal drugs, alcohol, or medications. Those who experience substance use disorder may also experience a co-occurring mental disorder. These co-occurring disorders can insist of anxiety, depression, ADHD, bipolar disorder etc. Children and adults who are diagnosed with SUD in the United States are about 1 in 7, ages 12 years or older and there are 35 million people worldwide who suffer from drug use disorders. Due to the common diagnoses of SUD, there are many studies being done as to why the addiction

Starting with peer pressure, when there is a person who is involved and or around someone who is using, it is easy for someone to feel obligated to try what the other person is using. Even if the induvial states that they do not want to, for example, drink or smoke, seeing their peers use will easily influence those around them. For example, 30% of teens are pressured to use drugs throughout middle school to high school, ages twelve to eighteen. (DeLeon, 2000). Next, I want to talk about physical and sexual abuse, being under the influence makes it seem easier to do things we would not normally do sober. There are levels of confidence that a person can feel with they are under the influence, 26% of women and 39.1% of men are more likely to be sexually active who partake in drugs (DeLeon, 2000). There can be many reasons as to why both men and women feel more likely to engage in intercourse while being under the influence, one being, their nervous system depresses. Both drugs and alcohol are known to be a depressant for the nervous system, when a person uses, a person’s brain activity slows down, changing your mood, behavior, and self-control control, basically making your memory blurry and making it seem easier for people to engage in activities that would normally make them uncomfortable. Lastly, for what can cause addiction, I want to touch on, parental guidance. When

It is known that impulsivity is a prominent element of disorders, such as substance abuse. This method has also concluded that drug use is often defined as a form of impulsive behavior (Rhoades, 2003). Although we are aware of SUD being a result of impulsive behavior, there are different measurements that impulsivity can be categorized into, lack of meditation, perseverance, sensation seeking, and urgency. (Rhoades, 2003) This specific laboratory focused on male participants, ages varied, between 18 and 40, and out of the 32 participants, 31% met the experiments criteria of substance dependance on drugs and alcohol. It was noted that many of the men that volunteered to participate in the experiment were able to recognize that the beginning of their use began with impulsive thoughts and led to an unbreakable dependence on their drug of choice. Unfortunately, many of the participants also noted that this was never their intentions to become an addict after using their drug of choice. It saddens me to read about how many young kids begin to do drugs or drink alcohol slowly based on impulsive behavior and is now something they will learn to deal with on their day to day. Implications such as homelessness, lung or heart disease, strokes, cancer, different mental health disorders, are all issues abusers will soon