Domain

Explanation

What are drugs?

• Drugs are artificial chemicals, man-made for changing or tuning bodily functions
• They are used in medicine 藥 & addiction 癮

What common addiction drugs?

• Narcotics
• Heroine
• Cocaine
• Ecstasy
• Methamphetamine: yaba (Thai), shabu (Japan & Indonesia), batu (Philippines) & bingdu 冰毒 (China & Singapore), speed (West)

Why speed?

• Base of speed - ephedrine - widely available from Chinese mao herb (1892)
• Simple and inexpensive manufacture: meth labs are an ideal family business for industrious Asians

What powers does speed have over addicts?

• Speed is empowerment
• It encourage brain to flood synapses with neurotransmitter dopamine
• Feels high, invincible, liberation, accomplishment, glory, optimism
• But
• When the speed effect runs out, realisation surfaces, depression sets in,
• Psychosis
• Addiction causes brain to undergo physiological changes & serotonin levels depletion
• In short, great highs & bottomless lows

What does an addict feels?

• "The drab grayness of the world would become crushing & the boredom seem ineluctable. Nothing seemed fun. Nothing seemed worthwhile. Every book was tortuously slow. Every song was criminally banal. Every movie crawled. The sparkle and shine had been sucked out of life so completely that my world came across some fluorescent-lit, decolorised, salt-petered version of the planet I had known before. And my own prospects? Absolutely dismal. I would sit … and consider this sorry career I had embarked upon, these losers I associated with compounding the very long odds that I would ever amount to anything. It really seemed that there was no hope, that I was destined to become this shabbily dressed, dull mediocrity, short on wit, lacking talent, unable to muster the power or engines for sustained flight"
• "This is their night, the night they look forward to all week during boring mornings at school or dull afternoons pumping gas."

What gives rise to this drug addiction?

• At first, during economic boom, money is sufficient to pay for a "speedy" relaxation after a hard day's work
• But, in poverty, crisis or disaster, coupled with the hardships of life, many turn to drugs as a perceptive "get-away-from-it-all" attitude that turns dangerously into obsession

Research on drug use & abuse

• Social issues
• Social forces
• Labeling-criminalisation process
• Biological/psychological characteristics
• Taken together, explains drug use/abuse & addiction

Social issues

• Two aspects to drug definition:
• Scientifically, "drug is any substance other than food which by its chemical nature affects the structure & function of the living organism"
• Socially, drug definitions vary according to our values, attitudes & behaviour à drug herein is subjective
• Drugs would then be those substances having psychoactive properties that influence the mental functioning of humans, & consequently have a physical effect on the body as well, due to bodymind interactions à e.g. marijuana, hallucinogens (LSD), cocaine (crack), amphetamines (stimulants), sedatives, tranquilizers (barbiturates, depressants), alcohol, heroin & nicotine
• A drug can be legal or illegal, harmful or helpful
• Drug abuse 毒發上癮 or substance abuse à abuse implies "non-medical taking of drugs is undesirable"
• People with drugs can be either Users or Abusers:
• Users fall into the following categories:

1. Tried a substance but have discontinued
2. Use infrequently & primarily in response to social circumstances
3. Use periodically but infrequently enough to avoid dependence or addictions

• Abusers are heavily involved: interpreted as "life-sustaining"
• Level of abuse ranges from early dependence to life-threatening usage, where treatment is clearly the appropriate intervention
• Drug addiction:

1. Classic addiction: person takes certain drugs in "sufficient quantity over sufficiently long period of time, & stops taking them abruptly, the user will experience a set of physical symptoms known as withdrawal" like chills, fever, diarrhea, muscular twitching, nausea, cramps, body aches & pains, esp. in bones & joints
2. Drug dependence: drug-related states which are harmful to individuals

• Taken together, social issues:
• Normative structures
• Deviance definitions
• Resource allocation

Social forces

• Social order: considered deviant if people do not share common values & behaviour
• Robert Merton: a person's location in the social system offers differential access to societal goals à deviant behaviours like drug abuse represents the individual's rejection of both culturally-prescribed goals & available means of success à in other words, drug abuse is not only a personal choice, but is also an imposed societal position à accounts for distribution of deviant behaviour & rates of deviant behaviour among people by functions or system properties … Read niche à points through aspects of society lying in false niche, hence requiring niche realisation
• Environment: imposes conditions that favour or discourage or punish drug abuse à high risks: deteriorating, poverty-stricken, personal or family problems
• Values & morals: deviant behaviour is product of goals & means prescribed by members of lower-class à imposition of cultural & economic deprivations
• Interpersonal relations:

1. The Family: child should receive sustenance, recognition, approval & family appreciation à industrialization, technology, urbanization impacts family structures à drug addiction correlates to parental rejections, lack of emotional warmth & overprotection
2. Peers: those who abuse tend not to do so alone à being with a group of abusers is a dominant factor à the more the peers are isolated, the more alienated from parents, the more involved they are with other peers, the greater the likelihood of experimenting with drugs à selective peer-group interaction à general 4-stage progression of substance use: alcohol drinking à cigarettes or hard liquors à marijuana à other more dangerous drugs
3. Education: strong correlation between negative school experience (being labeled as losers, stupid, retarded, slow, outcast) à higher incidence of drugs use & abuse à the greater the emphasis on education, the greater the potential of education to shape the young, for good or for bad

• Media: TV & news might be serving as a preparatory school for anti-social activity like drug use à more easily available, even worse with many resources

Labeling-criminalisation process

• Certain people in their societal positions & circumstances (from Robert Merton's theory) have predisposed them to become labeled as drug law violators à forecloses their non-criminal options & coerces them into a criminal role à hence, due to self-fulfilling prophecy 自造倫 à through societal interactions à turning some of them into actual drug offenders, when they were not initially or by themselves
• This consequence is similar to the social effects & influences from gossips, rumours, small-talk 謠言過重 à some starters spread malignant rumours or their willful interpretations to others about an innocent perpetuator à creating an atmosphere & environment that is adverse to the perpetuator à the perpetuator, left without for good, is coerced by overwhelming negative feedback, stares, subsequent rumours & stabbing back-talking into a false state of detriment & deterioration 無路可尋, 每況愈下 à the starters, by choice or by defence, have caused the criminalization of innocent perpetuators who would conduct themselves otherwise
• Dear readers, be careful of what you say, talk & conduct yourselves à by the Closed-loop aspect of nature à this may land you some day some time 人言可畏, 得饒人處且饒人
• Criminal justice is stereotyped à law is subjective à confronted by public condemnation & the label of "an evil man" à difficult for offender to grow & maintain a favourable image of himself
• Hence, the labeling-criminalisation process "produces criminals by dramatizing, suggesting, stimulating & evoking the very characteristics it is allegedly assigned to alleviate"

Biological/psychological characteristics

• Biological: postulates that nature, the inherent genetic make-up by birth, objective physical mechanisms & structures impels some to experiment with drugs or to abuse them once they are exposed to them
• Psychological:

1. Emphasis on reinforcement: research shows that drugs have addictive reinforcement properties, independent of personality factors à Positive reinforcement: occurs when person receives a pleasurable sensation from drugs & wishes it to be continuously repeated (euphoria-seeking) à Negative reinforcement: occurs when person uses drugs to seek relief or to avoid pain, thereby being rewarded & motivated to continuously repeat it (withdrawal symptoms, addicts take drugs just to feel normal)
2. Personality of a person: pathology, defect or inadequacy problems of an emotional or psychic nature leading to drug use à "escape from reality" 逃避現實: lacks responsibility, independence & the ability to defer pleasurable gratification for the sake of achieving long range goals à drugs to manage emotions such as rage, shame, jealousy & anxiety; stimulants to alleviate depression & weakness; psychedelics against boredom & disillusionment; alcohol against guilt, loneliness, anxiety & troubles à low self-esteem, feelings of self-derogation from "peer rejection, parental neglect, high expectations, school failure, physical stigmata, social stigmata, impaired sex-role identity, ego deficiencies, low coping abilities & coping mechanisms that are socially-disvalued & self-defeating" à pathological gambling

• Deviant or problem behaviour approach: drug users tend to be more rebellious, willing to take risks, receptive to deviant behaviour, pleasure-seeking, peer-oriented, non-conformist, unconventional; hence less religious, less attached to family, less achievement-oriented, less cautious & higher sexual activism à all trends that the current globalization, New Economy style is encouraging à are we becoming more susceptible & vulnerable to drugs? … That is more than meets the eye

Any hope?

• Any hope will lie in effort & any effort will lie in belief
• Treatment will be long, hard & painful
• 12-step program derived from Alcoholics Anonymous
• There must be something for the addicts to walk toward & away from the grave of drugs
• Motivation is crucial
• 今日之苗, 明日之果, 將心彼心

Who is to blame for this drug mess?

• No one
• It is a fundamental weakness of human, a flaw
• Societal culture, economics, education, values, security and drug proliferation are influencing factors
• The sellers: seen as business people, profiting from this trade, in line with economics
• The buyers: consume due to a craving, a need, in line with demand
• The growers & traffickers: sources & transportation medium networking to end-users, similar to any business or Internet connection
• It is a human activity which will always occur alongside "proper" business

Stop drugs?

• No, drug use is necessary in certain circumstances
• Mild use, with vigilance & without addiction is encouraged, but few can really do it à culturally-tolerable: incense, perfume
• Needed for medicine, elevating pain from terminal chronic diseases like cancer; aromatherapy
• As temporary measure to wait for the "right" time to get up & away

An ex-addict would say …

• "It is the internal combustion of speed: fast, fun, treacherous."
• "I want it right now. But I walk away."