The Substance Abuse Problems

"It is quite possible that long before humans planted crops, they already had a good working knowledge of the local plants that could alter their consciousness. . . . The search for mind-altering roots, leaves, and cacti continues, but it is overshadowed these days by the sterochemists's computerized scanning of peotentially consciousness-altering molecular configurations."So begins Sidney Cohen's comprehensive survey of modern day drug use and abuse. Dr. Cohen examines the drug user--including adolescents and the elderly; the drugs--cocaine, marijuana, alcohol, tobacco, hallucinogens; diagnosis and treatment issues; and the implications of drug use for society.In this second volume, Sidney Cohen again deals authoritatively with today's controversies and questions in the area of alcohol and drug abuse. In addition to the specific drugs and their effects and side effects, conceptual problems and fundamental issues about the abuse of mind-altering chemicals are explored. This volume is a reliable resource that offers accurate and up-to-date information on an array of drug-related topics. Written in a concise and readable style that clearly distinguishes facts, controversies, and opinions, this valuable book will help make complex subjects comprehensible and should, like the preceding volume, be of great use to a wide variety of professionals and students.Facts You Should Know--from The Substance Abuse Problems, Volumes 1 and 2: Addictive diseases are related to 25 of all deaths in the country. This amounts to half a million people a year dying from alcohol, tobacco, and drug abuse. We have the technology to synthesize enormously potent opiods without utilizing opium poppies, cocaine-like compounds without coca leaves, and hallucinogens without resorting to pexote cacti or any other plant. Nor would these products be illegal because they are not named in the control legislation. By the time they were controlled, the psychochemists would have moved on to new and slightly different molecular configurations. Many aspects of the 1980 presidential race were unusual, but in one respect it was unique. Never before have four of the leading candidates or quasi-candidates had close relatives who have publicly acknowledged that they had been in trouble with alcohol. (Betty Ford, Billy Carter, Joy Baker, and Joan Kennedy) The juvenilization of abusive drug-taking has important implications . . . all previous drug fads occurred in adults. Why this pediatric dominance? Perhaps it is because, for the first time, youth has the affluence and the freedom to indulge. Multihabituation, better known by that bastardized word, polydrug abuse, is another new phenomenon. Although speedballs were known in bygone days, most career drug abusers were true to one substance, and were identified after their agent of choice as potheads, hopheads, rumheads, pillheads, and cokeheads. Now garbageheads must be added to the list. The rapid delivery systems produce a higher peak effect, a highly desiredintensity of mood elevation. The decay of activity is also fast; the return to baseline or below occurs within seconds or minutes. Such extreme emotional ups and downs are the cause of intense dependence patterns seen when these methods are used. It is becoming clear that a drug-free Eden, if it ever existed, will never return. Inexpensive, ample supplies of mind drugs will find people to use them. It is difficult to hopeless to try stopping anoutbreak of drug excesses while floating in a sea of that substance. The factors that defeat prevention are: easy availability of drugs, friendship group pressures, a lack ofexternally introduced internal goals and controls that exclude the drug option, and an attenuated authority system that leads to lack of structure during childhood and adolescence.