Tsz+Kwan+Danny,+Tse

CCT205 Date Submitted: 05/02/09
 * Tsz Kwan,Tse **

** Individual Research Assignment **   (Impact of addicting drugs on health, family and career) Different types of chemical substances, which usually had a pharmacological action, combined to form drugs. Drugs, however, could potentially derive to habitual indulgence and even addiction (pg 9 Ausubel). Habit-forming is defined as an action that becomes habitual in daily life. Addiction is defined as a compulsively physical and psychological need. For example, drugs used in cigarette, cola drinks; medicine and coffee are normally identified as habit-forming. Next, there were a certain number of drugs that addicting; it included marijuana, cocaine and opiates. These forms of addicting drugs would be addictive and fatal through continued use. Normally, drug users would say that drugs are to relax themselves, or lightened their mood through depressants, and it also lifted them by providing more energy. Although these addicting drugs could bring momentary happiness to drug takers, addicting drugs will cause severe damage to personal life, especially, to health, family and career. The primary problem of addicting drugs is harmful nature that negatively impacts the user’s health. The statistical analysis of the mortality rate in Europe identifies that the high mortality rate are closely related with substance use and abuse. Addicting drugs have incidentally caused a high mortality rate of adult in adult age (Bargagli). Therefore, addicting drugs cause severe damage to health. Even if the person abused the addicting drugs once; it still causes damage to their health. Normally, different types of addicting drugs have one similar impact to health in general. However, all forms of these drugs will affect the human brain even through one single use. The probability of a person developing mental problems through continued use of addictive drugs is extremely high. For example, the user develops distorted sensory response, such as the numbing of pain when using substances. The pain is still perceived but it no longer brings forth the usual responses (pg 19 Ausbel). Therefore, addicting drugs would damage the function and analysis system of the brain. Next, there are addicting drugs called opiates. Opiates act chiefly on the central and autonomic nervous systems and, to some extent, directly on smooth muscles (pg 18 Ausbel). Normally, the use of opiates are as depressants on the central nervous system, however, it is able to produce marked analgesia without excessive drowsiness, muscular weakness and confusion (pg 18 Ausbel). However, if the person abused opiates, then the user would receive significant damage from opiates. For example, the effect of opiates included constriction of the pupil, slowing of the pulse rate, vomiting, flushing of the skin and constipation. Next, if females abused these drugs during pregnancy, there is a possibility of spontaneous abortion. Addicting drugs also caused other effects to pregnancy such as low birth weight, fetal distress, cerebral infarction and birth defects (Ganapathy). Then, mothers who carried their fetus to full gestational term had infants with depressed behavior and poor responses to stimuli (pg 17 Copenhagen). Therefore, addicting drugs had a huge damage to the drug taker; it could cause different types of health consequence. Addicting drugs impact life in a variety of ways. Substance use and abuse not only impacts the user’s life but influences and impacts family and friends as well. The influence of a family member using drugs causes damage to the whole family, because it would influence the relationship between the drugs taker and other family members, such as parents and sibling. For example, if the parents found out that their children are drug users, it would cause severe distress to the family structure. Therefore, it would affect the relationship between the parents, and increase the stress, conflict and concern on the parents. Next, a conflict of trust erupts in the family. Other family member will assume that the drugs takers are trying to steal money for drugs all the time. Therefore, the drugs taker would reduce the safety at home. If there were drug users in the family, other children would have high probability to become exposed to the drugs. Because the drugs taker and other family member lived at the same house, it becomes easy for other family member to abuse the drugs at home. Therefore, the drugs taker would increase the opportunity of other family member to become drugs taker. Along with a mix of anger, sadness, anxiety, shame, social isolation and loss as parents, brothers and sister, users struggle to adapt to the impacts of drugs on all their lives. This is greatly compounded by a sense of being impotent to alter the course of the drug problem (Joseph Rowntree Foundation). Hence, the drugs users do not affect personal circumstances but also significantly impacts their family members in a variety of ways. Therefore, the drug user should not continue to abuse the addicting drugs in order to reduce the negative impact of addicting drugs to their family. Finally, drugs do not only change an individual’s personal and family structure. It also severely impacts their career. Because the addicting drugs would reduce the person work performance on the work, the drug users will ultimately become unemployed. There are different effects of drugs that impact work performance, such as lower alertness, less positive mood, slower concentration times, slower attention reaction times, poorer memory and poorer reasoning performance (pg 46 Health & Safety Executive). These forms of impact would reduce the worker productivity in the company. For example, the drugs taker could not concentrate on the work during the office hour. The drugs taker could not remember simple instructions, and because of this, cause careless and childish errors in their work. Also, the worker always looks tired and perpetually. Their decreased efficiency creates a negative pressure to co-workers to compensate from decreased productivity. At the end, the employer must terminate their employment from the company. Without an active income, the individual can no longer support themselves and their family. Drug user had slower reaction times during concentration and attention tasks, performed lower at reasoning and memory tasks, and had lower alertness and hedonic tone scores. In addition, drugs users were largely unaware of any differences in performance on a daily basis (pg 56 Health & Safety Executive). Therefore, the impact of addicting drugs would decline the ability of work and productivity for the worker. In conclusion, there were three major impacts of addicting drugs to human being such as health, family and career. First, the addicting drugs caused different types of damage to brain such as mental problems due to continued use of addicting drugs. And the addicting drugs could bring different effects to the human health such as the constriction of the pupil, slowing of the pulse rate, vomiting, flushing of the skin and constipation. Second, the addicting drugs would decline the relationship between the drugs taker and other family members. The drugs taker would reduce the safety at the home, because other family members are afraid of the users instability of trust and security. Therefore, there are significant impacts of addicting drugs to the family. Third, the addicting drugs also affected to the drugs taker career, because the addicting drugs would decline the performance of work. Ultimately, the manager would layoff the drugs taker because they could not satisfy the demands of their occupation. Therefore, individuals should avoid addictive drugs because of its negative effects on personal life, family life, and career.

** Works Citied: ** Ausubel, David P.. __ Drug Addiction:Physiological,Psychological,and Sociological Aspects __. Random House, Barnard, Marina. __ Drugs in the family: the impact on parents and siblings __ 2 Feb 2009 < http://www.jrf.org.uk/node/1348 >. Claridge, Gordon. __ Drugs and Human Behaviour __. Allen Lane the Penguin Press, Health & Safety Executive, "The scale and impact of illegal drug use by workers." 46-56. 2 Feb 2009 < http://www.hse.gov.uk/research/rrpdf/rr193.pdf >. Maria Bargagli, Anna. "Drug-related mortality and its impact on adult mortality in eight European countries." 29 Jun 2005 2 Feb 2009 < http://eurpub.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/cki168v1?ck=nck >.