Facts
Given the unknown impact of crack preparation practices on the risks for exposure to bloodborne pathogens, crack injection may be an important factor in the current HIV epidemic. While drug users have been injecting crack as early as 1990, crack injection is a hidden practice since few research studies or drug treatment providers ask injectors specifically about injecting crack. The fact that both young and older injectors initiated crack injection throughout the 1990s - increasingly in the late 1990s among this sample - indicates that crack injection remains an emerging practice that may expose new cohorts of injectors to infectious diseases. These findings suggest that HIV service providers, outreach workers, and researchers should ask crack users about mode of administration since smoking is generally assumed. Without more detailed inquiries into the modes of administrating crack, crack injection is likely to remain a largely hidden practice. Consequently, IDUs who inject crack will fail to be identified and targeted for interventions designed to reduce the risk of transmitting bloodborne pathogens and other harms associated with preparation practices particular to crack injection. Physical abuse is also likely when parents are high on methamphetamine. Common effects such as irritability or paranoia can lead to violence towards children in the home, which is made even more dangerous when guns or other weapons are present. In an attempt to prevent police or drug manufacturing competitors from discovering and destroying a methamphetamine laboratory, rooms may by booby trapped. Although the intent is to ward off law enforcement or competitors, booby trapping rooms is an obvious risk for children, as well as workers who enter the home. Child welfare practitioners need to be cautious in approaching a home where it is known that parents are using and look for the presence of guns or weapons to assess the safety of the situation. For America's children and teens, marijuana is a dangerous drug. The extent of the danger and the most effective way to keep our youngsters from using this drug are matters for teens, parents, schools, churches, communities and public policy makers. In the 1980s, cocaine production in the Andean countries of Peru, BOLIVIA, and COLOMBIA expanded significantly into nontraditional growing zones (the Bolivian Chapare region and Peruvian Upper Huallaga Valley, or UHV), augmenting the more traditional licit production areas of the Bolivian Yungas and Peruvian Cuzco regions. In the early 1980s, U.S. demand for Mexican marijuana decreased dramatically, because of consumer concernabout Mexico's drug-elimination program, where marijuana was sprayed with the herbicide paraquat, some of which is reported to have killed U.S. users. Consequently, Colombia replaced Mexico as the preferred source of high quality marijuana. Colombia and Guatemala also began to cultivate substantial amounts of opium in the early 1990s. |
Abstinence
Abstinence is the act or practice of refraining from indulging a desire. The type of abstinence we are referring to here is abstinence from drugs and alcohol. This term has two connotations when it comes to abstaining from drugs. The first refers to drug or alcohol treatment programs that aim to help an individual stop using drugs or alcohol for the rest of their lives. The time abstinence is also used in drug education and prevention. It refers to trying to stop children from ever using drugs.
Alcoholism
Alcoholism, also known as "alcohol dependence," is a condition that includes craving and continued alcohol abuse despite repeated drinking-related problems, such as losing a job or getting into trouble with the law. It includes four major areas: Craving: - A strong need, or compulsion, to drink. Impaired control: -The inability to limit one's drinking on any given occasion. Physical dependence: -Withdrawal symptoms, such as nausea, sweating, shakiness, and anxiety, when alcohol use is stopped after a period of heavy drinking. Tolerance: - The need for increasing amounts of alcohol in order to feel its effects.
Tolerance
Tolerance to a drug takes place when an individual is exposed to the same drug repeatedly and begins to build up an resistance to the drugs effects. The body then adapts and develops a tolerance for the drug. The addiction that is produced is so powerful that it creates cravings in the user. These cravings for the drug are the result of its impact on the individual's memory with feelings of pleasantness and euphoria which the individual has come to associate with the taking of the drug.
Intervention
An intervention is when a group of loved ones and/or a trained intervention counselor meets with the person in need of help for the purpose of breaking down their denial and motivating them to immediately seek drug addiction treatment. Often, individuals in the midst of drug addiction engage in a variety of self destructive behaviors. Although baffling to friends and family members such people generally either aren't aware on a conscious level that they have a drug addiction problem, or even when they know they have a problem they may cling to the false belief that the problem will somehow go away without any outside help. When an intervention is held a moment of clarity is created
for the addict. Most people struggling with the problem of drug or alcohol
addiction will accept help the very day of the intervention.
Relapse
Relapse is a term used to describe when an individual who has quit using drugs starts using once again. A relapse can mean just a one time use, a long term continues period of using or anything in between after a period of sobriety has taken place. An individual begins to experience a psychological relapse long before their first use after
quitting. Some things that can lead to relapse both physically or psychologically include: 1. Being in the presence of drugs or alcohol, drug or alcohol users, or places where you used or bought chemicals. 2. Feelings we perceive as negative, particularly anger; also sadness, loneliness, guilt, fear, and anxiety. 3. Positive feelings that make you want to celebrate by using. 4. Listening to others past drug use stories and just dwelling on getting high. 5. Believing that you no longer have to worry (complacent). That is, that you are no longer stimulated to crave drugs/alcohol by any of the above situations or by anything else – and therefore maybe it’s safe for you to use occasionally.
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