Alcohol is a depressant. One of the first things its depresses is the part of the brain that is responsible for inhibitions. When inhibitions are lessened people may feel exhilarated because suddenly they are doing things they ordinarily would not do. Alcohol is frequently abused by people whose aggressiveness has been repressed rather than having been channeled into effective action. They self-medicate because they have learned that it feels good to actually express their bottled up anger. Unfortunately for them, intellectual ability also suffers from the depressant qualities of alcohol, as does physical coordination. So the frequent result of this kind of self medication is a drunken brawl, a fight in which one has handicapped oneself.
Heroin and the other drugs derived from, or synthesized on the model of, opium are also depressants. When one has been severely injured, morphine and similar products are medically useful to alleviate pain. Heroin sends a "feel good" signal to the brain, so people who feel terrible may use it to self-medicate. After a severe injury a doctor may administer morphine to control pain, but 'e is also treating the injury. As the pain from the injury subsides, the doctor lessens the dose of morphine. The person who self-medicates with heroin is in no shape to cure his/her underlying source of pain. Moreover, the motivation to seek a cure has disappeared. The body adapts to the presence of opiates so that higher and higher doses are required. At first the higher doses are required to produce the desired euphoria, and as habituation continues, higher and higher doses are required just to feel normal. When opiates become unavailable to the addict, 'e feels the flip side of the earlier euphoria -- withdrawal. To escape the pain of withdrawal, people very frequently engages in crimes and other destructive forms of behavior to pay for their habits. Both men and women frequently engage in prostitution.
Because addicts may steal from their own family members as well as others, prostitute themselves, and lower themselves in other ways, they create more negative feelings about themselves than they had when they began taking drugs to subdue their psychic pain. So they dig themselves in even deeper as they pay for their habits.
Learning to use drugs such as heroin is like learning to swim or to ride a bicycle -- you never really can forget. Actors who are required to "drown" say that playing such a scene is incredibly difficult because their bodies know quite well how to swim and automatically react to prevent them from sinking beneath the waves. Don't believe it? If you know how to ride a bicycle, ask yourself whether it would be possible for you to fall off your bicycle as you did when you were first learning to ride.
Overcoming physiological addition, getting beyond the stage of withdrawal pain, is relatively easy. Forgetting how to use drugs to deal with pain is impossible. So someone who has learned how to use drugs and has then "cleaned up his act" will very easily revert to using drugs when 'e hits some life crisis. Another person would not know that the psychic pain could be replaced in seconds by euphoria. Another person would not know where to go, how to identify a likely pusher, how to conduct the purchase, how to prepare the drugs for injection, etc., etc. For the ex-addict, it is all too easy -- even years later -- to revert to one's earlier self-destructive behavior.
As a drug used in medical practice, an opiate such as morphine is a very "clean" product. Probably because it is chemically similar to natural chemicals that help regulate the brain, it does not have bad side effects and dosage can be adjusted easily.
As "street drug," an opiate (such as heroin) is a frequent killer. It kills in at least four ways: (1) It causes the user to not care about nutrition and hygiene, so users frequently suffer malnutrition and infections from dirty "works" (needles, syringes, etc.) and from prostitution. (2) Since the purity of the drug is never known with certainty, purchasing a quantity of higher-than-usual potency heroin can lead to an overdose. The opiates slow down respiration, and if it slows down too much then it just stops. Permanently. (3) To make a manageable consumer product, heroin is "cut" or mixed with an "inactive ingredient" to cut down its potency per unit of volume. Sometimes benign substances, such as quinine, are used, but at other terms even poisons like strychnine may adulterate street drugs. In addition to the risk of injecting something that would be poisonous to anyone, there are also cases where people have died as a result of what are called "idiosyncratic reactions."
If your car were running out of gasoline, it would be a bad practical joke on oneself to do something to make the gas gauge needle stick in the "full" position. But that is what people on heroin do.
There are conditions in which the "soup" in which the brain functions is itself out of balance, perhaps due to some inborn flaw, some genetic or prenatal accident. In recent years medical science has made great progress in restoring chemical balance to brains. Schizophrenia and other conditions which formerly responded poorly to any therapy offered can now often be alleviated by the use of medications. But since these medications affect the functioning of the brain, it is most important to have external supervision of medication.
There are sound reasons for requiring that some medications be used only under proper medical supervision. Over-the-counter drugs are available without supervision because there are relatively minor consequences to their misuse, and they usually do not leave one in such condition as to be unable to tell when their deleterious effects have become a threat to one's well being.
One rule that divers adhere to very rigidly: Always dive with a buddy. Not only can one get in trouble because the ocean is a dangerous place, but also because one can suffer rapture of the deep and lose one's good judgment about when to return to the surface. To the extent that one risks losing one's ability to judge, it is desirable to have an outside monitor who is not so subjectively involved. That's one reason why people value having friends to confide in when they are falling in love. So it makes sense to insist that whenever one uses drugs that influence one's judgment, one have an external monitor who can "reel you back to the surface."
Other drugs: marijuana, nicotine, amphetamines (speed), cocaine and crack, LSD, peyote, mescaline, and other such drugs. Most of these drugs have legitimate uses in medicine, but all of them can be (in different degree and in different ways) dangerous when misused. The manner in which these drugs are administered may also impose severe dangers on users.
Marijuana is a mild hallucinogen. It has been used medicinally since earliest recorded times in China, where it appears as a pain reliever. It is now sometimes prescribed because it relieves nausea suffered by those who must undergo chemotherapy. Most people now know that tobacco smoke is carcinogenic, but so is marijuana smoke. An even more subtle danger of this drug is that people may use it during the years when they are undergoing the processes of psychological maturation. People need to learn to interact socially with one another, but it is a scary undertaking. As a result, some young people get scared and then get stoned. They do not face their fear and grow through it (see Frank Herbert's "Litany Against Fear"), and as a result the next time they face a daunting social situation (the next dance, the next date, or whatever), they will still feel the need to get stoned. By staying stoned through all the growing opportunities of life a person may remain a juvenile in an adult's body. Other people are not very tolerant of people over 21 who still react to situations like kids, so the need to stay stoned persists. In short, using drugs can cancel out the opportunity to grow. (And if you have an automobile wreck while stoned you may get cancelled out completely and permanently.)
Nicotine is a multi-faceted poison. It is the single ingredient of one potent insecticide. If "being addicted" means being unable to give something up without feeling miserable and suffering bad physical affects for a prolonged period of time, then nicotine is addictive. It is a depressant, but it makes people feel more alert because it relaxes the muscles controlling the flow of adrenaline into the system, giving one an instant burst of natural speed. It is calming because it depresses the central nervous system. The smoke of tobacco products is carcinogenic, and tobacco use also causes heart disease. If you don't mind dying decades before your time, think about its other costs. Cigarette smoke smells worse than a bad fart. People who smoke frequently swallow some of the smoke into their stomachs, so if they do fart it produces a really "ingratiating" odor. If you have any plans on doing any deep kissing in your life, try deep kissing a smoker before you take up smoking yourself. If that doesn't sound too hot, just lick out a used ash tray, the taste will probably be about the same. People may look cool while they are smoking, but anybody who deliberately did something to make themselves fart as much bad smelling gas as people make by smoking would be ostracized. So think about it before you take up something that may be a lifelong (or lifeshort) financial and social commitment.
Amphetamines. "Drug store cowboys" have a motto for it: Speed kills.
Cocaine. If you drove your car like that, Click and Clack would lynch you, or at least laugh you out of town. Keep the throttle to the floor. If you have to slow down to make a turn, don't let up on the gas, just stand on the brake with the other foot. Brake pads smoking? Screw that. Keep on keeping on! Slow garbage truck ahead? Ram the bleeper!
Hallucinogens. Very few people actually enjoy being "skitzed out." Getting high may be fun for the type of person who enjoys the funny house in the carnival, but coming down is productive of the kind of terror that only Edgar Allan Poe was capable of describing.
Industrial strength solvents. They will take the paint off your car, so what will they do inside your body?
Kinkaju has known more drug addicts than most people have known druggists. E has found them cool people to be around when they are "straight," extremely talented people in many cases, people whom it is easy to admire for their beauty and their zest for life, even people who elicit love by their own positive characteristics. And the ones that Kinkaju loved best are dead because, despite what they told themselves, they really could not handle it.
Kinkaju has not tried to present an exhaustive list of drugs and the ways in which they can cause serious problems for people. For one rather exhaustive source on the pharmacology of street drugs, see: http://www.winternet.com/~publish/index.htm
Back to Home page.