Prevention of Drug Addiction

Drug addiction has become an epidemic that mercilessly “cut” thousands of people each year. There are spent a lot of money, but it does not give the desired result. People continue to seek salvation and thrills in drugs and, without noticing, become their hostages, slaves. The meaning of life for the addict is to take a dose in time, and the world around us – family, friends, and work – does not matter. There is no place for all this in life, completely absorbed narcotic dope.

Drug addiction – is the human condition, in which all his thoughts are focused only on where and how to get the next dose of the drug. Unbearable pain will penetrate the body and soul of a drug addict if he does not provide vital doping at the time. Scaring to feel all the “charms” of the state at the time of sweats the addict is ready for anything, even for illegal actions. There is no question of morality. For the addict, the most important is his own personal benefit and satisfaction of the main and only goal – drug use.

The desire to feel euphoria fully again causes the addict to begin a new life; the truth is much darker, more primitive and shorter than the previous one. The society mostly does not perceive and even scorn such persons, but, nevertheless, try to direct them to the right path and return to a normal life of anyone who is tired depend on the “high” and can’t handle it on their own.

The most affordable and widely practiced method of prevention of drug abuse, invented by society to reduce the number of drug addicts is the promotion of healthy lifestyles in schools and getting to know young minds with the cruel realities of addict’s life. The choice of this age group is not accidental because that’s what young people are able to resist more than others malign influence by virtue of their naivety, curiosity, and their protest against social foundations.

With a right approach, there is a chance to protect girls and boys from the wrong, and perhaps fatal, choice in his life by presenting real information about the properties of drugs and the consequences of their use.

Prevention methods

Preventive measures of struggle with drug addiction – is a complex of measures aimed at preventing the development of a social phenomenon such as drug abuse, as well as reducing the number of involved in the process of drug use people.

Preventive techniques are most effective among young men and young people, as these categories of society represent the group of conditional risk. In addition, exactly in adolescence age it is necessary to provide information work about the dangers of drug use. In this regard, to the development of preventive methods there were involved teachers, psychologists, and social workers, whose task is to provide pupils and students properly presenting information on drug abuse and its attendant risks. Active advertising contributes to an improvement the efficiency of this technique, print publications and media covering the whole range of discussed problems.

Creation of preventive measures is rather time-consuming and elaborate process, the results of which directly dependents on the quality of selected information and the right way to its presentation. One incorrect statement and unresponsiveness of responsible for its conducting person are able to negate a lot of effort of countless people, developing a particular technique.

The information offered for exploring by adolescents destructive properties of drugs must meet several basic principles:

• to have a positive message of no gloom and despair;
• to offer a logical and clear conclusion from all of the offered information;
• to contain the facts of the tragic consequences of drug use;
• to be oriented to an individual target audience and set out in clear exactly for this audience form;
• pickup of bringing to the attention facts should be provided exclusively by specialists in this field (drug specialists, psychologists, social workers, law enforcement, etc.);
• selected for the work information should be analyzed well by a special commission of experts.

Not the last role in the formation of the desired results of the work with young people is played by the media, which, in turn, is obliged to refrain from demonstrating scenes of drug and alcohol use, as well as to engage in the promotion of healthy lifestyles.

Along with the propaganda work, there is service of anonymous help to drug addicts, including “hotlines”. The establishment of such services – is a logical and necessary step, as drug addicts, because of their fear of being condemned by society for their addiction, afraid to seek qualified help in case they have different kinds of problems. In addition, despite the presence of “bad” habits, everyone has the right to receive the necessary help and support. These are the basic principles of humane society life.

Nowadays, alcoholism and drug addiction have stopped to be a private matter because the effects of these phenomena have a detrimental effect, on the whole, society: the rise in crime, the spread of serious diseases, including sexually transmitted, neglect of morals, moral decline, promiscuity, etc. Also, the reducing of the education level of the population can be added here, because young people, carried away by the use of drugs, in the last instance will be thinking about their education, personal growth, and self-realization.

A great help in the fight against drug and alcohol abuse would be an appropriate legal framework that provides for severe penalties, without exception, for the distribution, marketing, and promotion of the use of narcotic substances.

Subjects and objects of prevention

From the general concepts, it is known that the subjects of anything are those who provide certain actions and manipulations, and objects – are those in respect of which these manipulations are undertaken. In other words, the objects of drug prevention are persons potentially exposed to engage in drug use, as well as persons suffering from drug addiction or in rehabilitation.

The number of subjects in this problem is much more diverse since prevention is provided by a large number of governmental and nongovernmental organizations, among which appear:

• Departmental Anti-Drug Commission;
• Service for Drug Control;
• Internal Affairs Agencies;
• Agencies of education authorities;
• health authorities;
• authorities for the youth policy;
• authorities for the social policy;
• crisis services (including non-state);
• specialized public organizations.

Surprisingly, but with so many subjects of drug abuse prevention, the number of its objects, unfortunately, does not decrease, but on the contrary, every year it is growing.

However, used preventive work still takes place and working, although not so effectively as might be desired. Without the existence of the subjects involved in the search for new methods and ways of a fight with drug addiction, the statistics would be far more daunting. Therefore, there is no any sense to deny its necessity.

Looking only at the list of agencies and organizations whose activities are aimed at eradicating the problem of addiction, you can already conclude how serious the problem of a fight with drug abuse and what the sizes of the epidemic today.

Prevention among adolescents

Teenagers – is a category of the population between the ages of twelve to eighteen, most of them are involved in the educational process, provided in schools and universities. In society, the adolescence is considered to be the most dangerous and complicated in terms of its unpredictability, provoked by processes of achievement of personhood, which in turn is accompanied by physical, physiological and mental changes. It is therefore quite natural that the prevention of drug addiction is increasingly aimed specifically at the youth of the population of a country.

In the early days especially in the 30 years of the twentieth century, there was not a drug addiction as the phenomenon at all in a community, so there were no special measures. It was almost impossible to meet the addict on the street. Thus, their effect on healthy minds confined to a minimum. Total control over the people gave their results in the elimination of the dissolute lifestyle.

The most common type of drug was morphine (dependent people were called morphine addict). Often, people became morphine addicts reluctant because the drug has been widely used for medical purposes as a depressing the nervous system and pain numbing agent. A very large number of drug addicts were among psychiatric patients receiving morphine by prescription.

Often there were cases of “contamination” by drug addiction by family members of the patient’s, having access to the drug causing strong addiction.

The only quite doubtful prophylactic administration of that time was warning about adverse properties of morphine. But, as it is well known, human’s sufferings were not finished from its use.

Such historical review makes you wonder how the global is the problem of drug abuse among adolescents nowadays. Prevention becomes not only necessary, or advisory, but simply an integral part of school education and education in general. Lectures with a demonstration of video documentaries and feature films, as well as the conduct of psychological conversations “on equal terms”, no doubt, may become the limiting factor that can reduce the growing number of drug addicts among adolescents and help avoid the wrong choice.

The essence of prevention, its types

The World Health Organization (WHO) is closely involved in the problem of drug addiction, due to which it has allocated several types of its prevention:

• primary (responsible for the prevention of drug use);
• secondary (working with people who use drugs: detection, treatment, monitoring, control of recurrence);
• tertiary (aimed at social and occupational therapy and medical rehabilitation of drug addicts).

Directly drug prevention, as it understood and interpreted by the society, according to WHO, in its original form. This form includes such forms of feedback, such as:

• educational work among young people;
• hygiene awareness in the community;
• public consumption and the fight against drug trafficking;
• administrative and legislative measures.

An important aspect of preventive work among teenagers is the ability to identify potentially prone to addiction personalities. As a rule, this group consists of boys and girls with the unstable mentality, difficult rebellious and hysterical nature, emotional instability, with a sense of disregard for social norms and morals, they are prone to depression. Rejection and lack of understanding by the society of such individuals lead to their alienation and, as a consequence, the search for solace in drugs.

Often, teenagers, as well as all people, in general, are organized in groups “by interests” with a similar outlook, foundations, understanding what is happening, principles and behavior. Thus, the addict may be revealed by a circle of his communication.

With regard to the sanitary and hygienic aspects of drug prevention, so there is no consensus: some experts believe that it is necessary to provide health promotion in educational institutions during the school years while others vote for the introduction the individual courses of drug prevention into the curriculum.

Prevention also includes training the teaching staff to identify different types of drug intoxication and development of the strongly negative perception of addiction by students. Providing outreach and awareness-raising work with real examples of health and social consequences of drug abuse (deaths, disease, degradation of the individual, etc.) is necessary.

Despite the great work and the presence of a huge theoretical base, preventive measures are still not produced significant results. At the moment, the biochemical mechanisms of drug dependence are not identified yet, so psychology, sociology and drug addiction has not yet invented one correct and effective method for the prevention of various types of addictions. Further study of the problem can help to answer the question of how to eradicate drug abuse among adolescents and to save society from the senseless self-destruction and extinction.