Drug Awareness

Insights from Video

The video presentation on YouTube by Nan Smith, the interviewee provides that drug addiction is as a result of interaction between laws, culture, occurring events, science and economy towards formulating policy that impacts on the real world. drug use is considered as some form of society pipeline where at the opposite end some people come out as addicts unable to relate normally with other societal members (Smith 17:37). This video is informative in that it provides that society, more so, the scientific and healthcare professional community can work with others to people entering the pipeline through investing resources to research and drug use prevention. On the opposite end, addicted persons either fall victim to low enforcement agencies while the lucky ones undergo treatment. The onus is therefore upon policy makers to commit more towards research in prevention as well as research towards realizing greater savings from lesser capital inputs to law enforcements and treatments due to addiction.

Debate

One psychoactive drug principle provides that the associated effects of a psychoactive drug are dependent on a person’s expectations and history. On the other hand, main beliefs related to drug use it is unacceptable to use drugs for recreational purposes and that experienced effects are deemed pleasurable based on these said impacts or the discomfort relieved (Liz 5:23). Human society is reliant on order and discipline of its members which are further accentuated through application of maxims of morality and law. Drug or substance abuse is essentially a social problem that ought to be addressed through social interventions. However, some quotas of medical professionals associate addiction to drugs with metal illnesses which erroneously undermines the attempt to concentrate efforts on adequately combating the societal vice. It is of significance importance for societal members whether future professionals, taxpaying citizens, and parents to understand that addictions are not as a result of brain disease but founded on social embedment.

It is critical for the progressive scientific community to strongly refute any previous or contemporary attempts to categorize addiction as a brain disease. Endeavors that seek clinical interventions for socially instigated problems are mere political policy statements devoid of scientifically basis. Any disease cannot be arrested without treatment yet addictions like alcoholism are seemingly treatable with the enclosure of an alcoholic in a controlled environment (Holden Para 3). This robust observation supports the notion that addiction should not be in any manner considered as a disease. In any case, it is the subjection of one’s own to brain to prolonged instances of addiction that the brain suffers traumatic injury (Holden Para 5). A lasting solution to addiction can only be found within the precincts of its origin, that is, in the society.

Addiction as a result of prolonged instances of substance abuse is essentially a disorder borne by an affected individual that is primarily founded within a social context. Some scientists project addiction as the outcome of an underlying brain disease. This is entirely wrong because as Levy provides, brain disease is clinically diagnosed where neural dysfunction is so pronounced to the extent of leading to impairments (2). Although addiction may be regarded as a brain disease by some scientists, it does not expressly imply brain dysfunction that can be clinically classified as an illness.

It is also critical to note that progressive scientific endeavors have allowed for factual understandings of how diseases manifest and provided definite foundations to provide conclusive treatment. Indeed, different theories have informed previous generations of clinical professions with strong foundations to alleviate human suffering. The moral model of engaging the issue of alcoholism has worked well for a number of decades. However, technological developments coupled with greater intellectual insights at to the under-workings of the brain provide qualified information that alcoholism cannot be categorized as a disease. Neuron scientists may have in the past adhered to the brain disease paradigm based on better understandings on neural mechanisms as well as neuroadaptations associated with addictions. However, greater insights on associated brain activity reveal that it has no foundations indicating brain disease. Functioning of the limbic system relative to substance abuse is believed to be the basis of a one-time event progressing into reinforced learning based on correlating emotions with certain associated memories. Even though addiction is at times treated through pharmacological avenues, it is essentially a personality disorder stemming from an individual’s social embedment. This supports the fact that it is a social correlate that requires greater emphasis on the individual as opposed to the brain in an effort to empower them to subsist independently regardless of heavily occurring influences.

Works Cited

Garbus Liz. What is addiction. HBO. 2017.

Holden Tim. Addiction is not a disease. CMAJ. 184(6): 679. 2012.

Levy Neil. Addiction is not a brain disease (and it matters). Frontiers in Psychiatry. 2013.

Smith Nan. Science of addiction. YouTube. 2017. Web. 13 Jul. 2017. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKeXxIT_ReY&feature=youtu.be)>.