WORLD DAY AGAINST DRUG ABUSE. THEME: LISTENING!

DRUG ABUSE: THE ROOT OF NEW EVILS

(an excerpt of WHAT DRUG HAS DONE) 

By Dr. Chuka Amukamara 

Our society has had a taste of new happenings, things not known to man in the beginning of life now happen to man.
New words found their ways into our local African dictionaries: transgender, bestiality, bisexuality, lesbianism, homosexuality, pedophilia, prostitution, armed robbery, pilfering, manslaughter, manslayer, homicide, suicide and aggression, wife-beating and rape.

While some old words resurfaced and become regular, new words emerged and added to the bug on our peaceful African society.
Our culture has been replaced, and the usual respectful youth replaced with one that lacks regard for superiority, value and peace.

Drug seeks to replace not only the will to good behavior of our youths, but to greater extent, their health and purposes of living.

What is a drug? 

Any substance other than food that has activities on a living system. Drugs of abuse otherwise socially know as "drugs" are chemical substances that have psychoactive activities capable of affecting man's mental and social well-being, as well as his perceptions of reality. These agents are called DRUG because their recreational use lacks medical indication and at a dose describable as poisonous: only dose can wholly differentiate a drug from a medicine.

They can be categorized according to their modes of use and activities as either:
Inhalants wrongly believed by users to be devoid of adverse effects since they do not appear as drugs, examples include: household wastes, human excreta, dirt, glues, magic mushrooms and animal dung. These agents produce volatile chemicals which are inhaled by their users. The health hazard of these agents  includes respiratory depression that results from poor oxygen supply to the body during their use and other consequential diseases including brain bleeding, heart, kidney and lung diseases.

Other drugs include opioids (codeine, tramadol and morphine), stimulants (cocaine, amphetamines, methamphetamine and nicotine), hallucinogens (LSD, ketamine and mescaline), the depressants including benzodiazepines(flunitrazepam, diazepam)and barbiturates (phenobarbitone), Marijuana and alcohol.

Drugs of abuse are mostly characterized by the presence of persistent craving, tolerance, addiction, dependence, withdrawal syndrome and relapse. These words are different in meaning but collectively promote drug use even in the face of adversities. "You crave for drug after being exposed to it first time, tolerance sets in and your body begins to develop dependence to the drug enforced by addiction, that any attempt to quit ushers withdrawal symptoms where relapse is inevitable and you continue in the marriage with drug till you die"

Drug use is a stepwise JOURNEY that starts with an exponential feeling of joy, fulfillment, euphoria and well-being. It attains a stationary stage of NO RETURN and  ends with COMPULSORY sorrow, pain, sickness, poverty and death.
Addicts of opioids experience euphoria and states of well-being in the beginning of their covenant with the drug, but suffer sleeplessness, headaches, body aches, altered breathing and heart rates in any attempt to stop the exponential increase in dose or quit use.

A journey with stimulants, Marijuana and hallucinogens primarily presents feeling of well-being, improved energy at work, improved alertness, disconnect from realities and other transient feelings but COMPULSORILY ends with psychosis, thought disorders, hallucinations, aggression, loss of self control, delusion, sicknesses and death.

What about our friend alcohol the silent killer, that welcomes you with great pleasure and quickly increase your risk to acquiring organ damages like liver diseases. Just to name a few, rohypnol and other depressants give you "sense of belonging" but later frustrate you to suicide and death.

Their killing is mostly unannounced, since it has to do mostly with respiratory arrest.
Just as addiction, tolerance and dependence fuel craving, ensuring that whoever starts this journey REMAINS in it, withdrawal syndrome similarly and seriously threatens to kill the person if he tries to quit, and relapse ensures that even though he quits, he still comes back for more. This pathway continues and keeps the user in a state likened to a SECRET CULT.

Drug use has contributed significantly to poverty, armed rubbery, sexual misconducts, aggression, manslaughter, manslayer, rape, disease circulation, depression, psychosis, mania, suicide and death.

According to Mhiz "I started by secretly sniffing glue and 10-day old urine in my childhood, I joined my friend to club when I was 19 and there I met tramadol and amphetamine decided to try, today I take 225mg of tramadol five times a day, and any moment I try to skip dose, I feel like am dead, I no longer sleep, constant headaches, body aches, my salary of 50,000 no longer afford my drugs for two weeks, and I joined in armed robbery, paid-sexual practices, homosexual to raise money and remain on drug or I die.
Marazu has advanced in his use of LSD that he no longer sees difference in man, woman, children or animal whenever the sexual urge sets in. He's known for bestiality, pedophilia, homosexuality and all manner of risky adventures.

During the online survey of the health medium international (HMI) team, when they interacted with known addicts of different drugs, the summary of their interactions depicts that "no drug user has peace" they were either complaining of one disturbance or another.

Drugs impact our society through their users with their adverse effects as well as the fallout of their pharmacology,
LSD is known to cause hallucinations, thought disorders and disconnect from reality. During these experiences, human brains fix to evil thoughts and uncivilized practices including sexual misconduct as seen with "marazu".
Robbery, pilfering, stealing and their likes are increasing by day, because as mhiz opined, "an addict must remain in drug or he die" just as matter of drug to an addict is a matter of life and death.

Depression and suicide is almost becoming a daily news headline; what about aggression, manslaughter, manslayer, and divorce in our today marriages-majority of which are linkable to drug use. 

Marijuana the controversial weed and cocaine have ensured that psychiatric hospital beds are ever occupied by youths most of who are below twenty-five years of age. One of the chemical constituents of Marijuana, tetrahydrocannabinol THC ensures that this toll to psychiatric hospitals remains high on the youthful.

These drugs have equally affected the productivity of their users, who can no longer function properly, thereby adding to the societal burden. They breach laws, and make the society unbearable. Constituting rape and circulating sexually transmitted diseases.

The untimely and unannounced death patterns of these users to either respiratory arrest or heart block has been described by our ever religious society as MYSTERIOUS and caused by "village people". While some are genuinely mysterious, others are simply avoidable by a mere act of fleeing from drugs.

Just as some parents refused to discuss relationships openly with their children, guiding them on the right way to handle it rather than shy away from it and have the children learn it wrongly from their peers, so will some parents who will not look for this book "WHAT DRUG HAS DONE, to be read by every innocent youth, accept their blames when their wards learn about drugs from their peers and yield.

Majority of the today's societal problems are linkable to drug abuse, and an attempt to arrest drug use, will significantly translate to arresting some of the societal problems.

Chuka Amukamara (BPharm, PharmD)
Author of WHAT DRUG HAS DONE
CEO of Health Medium International (HMI)
healthmediuminternational@gmail.com