The one with drugs will surely produce positive results in terms of cures of ailments and disease whereas the one without drugs will experience many premature mortality and misery as it happened in the Seventeenth Century, France. If the drugs spoken of were to be hard drugs, the supposed good effect will be short lived whereas the adverse effect will be prolonged. In this brief article, the following points will be discussed: the notion of drug, drug abuse and misuse, drug addiction, tolerance, and dependence, the effects of drugs and alcohol and conclusion.

The Notion of Drugs

Drugs are chemical or synthetic substances manufactured for the purpose of curing ailments or diseases. Schiffers (1977:121) says that drugs represent one of the many ways by which doctors treat diseases. This is a legal notion of drugs. Such include drugs like paracetamol of aspirin used for curing minor ailments like headache or fever. This notion is obtainable in Nigeria and in some other countries. In places like the United States of America and Italy, the drug refers to narcotic or psychotropic substances. This is another understanding of drugs. This second one is normally termed “hard drug” and raises eyebrow once it is mentioned.

Drug Abuse or Drug Misuse

The ordinary notion of drugs is the legal one while the second understanding is the illegal one. The legal drugs can be abused or misused. When drug is not used according to the doctor’s prescription it is drug abuse. When drugs are used not for the purpose for which they are made or prescribed it is drug misuse. Abuse and misuse are intertwined. Indiscriminate or excessive use of drugs irrespective of time and dosage to prevent or treat pains, fears, and disease, including inappropriate medical advise or self-administration or for unsuitable purposes is drug misuse

Every drug misuse is drug abuse. Every society has mood changing often used in such a way that is not socially approved. According to Cox (1967:642), all drugs from the beginning were used licitly before inappropriate use and the end it was directed made them to be categorized as harmful or illicit. Original, heroin was used for the treatment of or for the cure of morphine of addiction but was found to be more addictive and dangerous. The body quickly built up tolerance to heroin making it the most addictive narcotic. It has been prohibited in the United States of America since 1922 (Cox, 1973:642). Other drugs that can be abused or misused are marijuana, cocaine, brown sugar, pethidine, methadone and so on.

Drug Addiction: Tolerance and Dependence

In the Bailliere Nurses Dictionary (1984p 20), addiction is rendered as the habitual taking of drugs or alcohol for which a craving develops that is beyond the will of the person addicted to control. The most commonly abused substances that may be associated with addiction are alcohol or barbiturates, related sedatives, or hypnotics, opiods, amphetamines and caffeine (the Editor, 1989). Habituation indicates only the psychological dependence while addiction indicates physical dependence with an increasing tolerance. It is either the drugs or the person feels like dying (Irvine D., 1990 p. 78). Tolerance is the capacity to undergo exposure to drugs or poisons in an unusual quantity or for an appreciable time without showing the expected or toxic effects (the Editor, 1989). Dependence is seen as the physical or psychological reliance on drugs. In physical dependence withdrawal of the drugs causes physiological discomfort with symptoms such as sweats, vomiting and tremors. Tolerance, emotional or psychological dependence are offshoots of drugs addiction .

Effects

Dependence, tolerance and addiction are side effects of drug and alcoholic habituating and abuse. Such effects extend to the entire society. Relations of those infected with the malaise are equally affected. Various types of people are involved in drugs. The most affected are those between the ages of 20-25 normally couched the “the peak period”. Realistically, the youth are the most affected owing to their curious tendency to experiment everything and follow peer/pressure group. It is the succulent part of the society that is very badly affected. Continuous indulgence in drugs and alcohol causes deterioration in health. Effects like blood thinning, non coagulations of blood affecting the central nervous system, reduction in food consumption and loss of appetite, loss of consciousness, being in fugue-like-state, partial amnesia, sleeping at a place one would not normally have done.

The person can sleep for hours without being disturbed. The aggression that goes with lack of money is another side effect, anger. Polysubstance abuse involving alcohol and hard drug can either stimulate or sedate depending on what the combination was. Generally, hard drugs necessitate plenty money. To get enough money that will purchase the quantity capable of producing euphoria, one may have to shoplift or loot stores or rob or kill or maim. That is why addicts are dangerous since their moods can easily change. Families can easily disintegrate; violence can creep in, distrust, quarrel, telling lies and the possibility of being dismissed from work because of truancy and absenteeism. Explicitly or implicitly, the drug addict becomes a reject of the society, and those who are compassionate look with pity on them while some look down on them as people who are irresponsible. This is not what they bargained for. The longing for happiness has landed them or as dragged the giant into the mud and the stars and lamp-stands have become like dross and greatly smeared with dust.

Their supposed tasting of eternity as crax or crack comsumers term it has become a perpetual drudgery and very close and lovely ones have become suspects or targets of elimination because they caution and disapprove of their ways. They become uncontrollable and unpredictable. They are as amorphous as sulphur. They are no longer stable. Their instability is their constancy.

Conclusion

Even though drug free clubs do exist in some schools, and many drug addicts either in the form of tasters, seekers and heads exist; they can be rehabilitated as long as they give their consent. In this way, what looked tattered can be mended and reintegrated but the freedom and the will to be well depends on the addict as such. Be courageous to give your consent for treatment if you are involved and begin life a new. If you are not involved be warned against the danger of drugs. Stay clear!