Does the drug really kill?

"The drug kills" is a sentence that has been used in numerous awareness campaigns. and addiction prevention. However, this phrase so heard and repeated countless times hides aspects of substance use and obscures the perception of this problem. What sickens, deteriorates and can kill is the way a person relates to drugs.

And when we talk about drugs we are not only referring to the so-called hard drugs, such as cocaine or base paste, and we do not even talk only the illegal ones, because drugs are both marijuana, illegal, such as alcoholic beverages, tobacco or psychotropic drugs, legal.

If we stop from the classification of substances between legal and illegal, from a legal model, the consumer is left instead of a criminal, since buying and consuming something illegal implies committing a crime. From this perspective, we leave aside the power to think of the consumer as someone who has a health problem, a desperate dependence on a substance.

• Related article: "Addiction: disease or learning disorder?"

Does the drug really kill?

The drug itself does nothing; neither sick nor kills. It is a thing, inert, without life or entity, or power. It is a necessary component in a substance use addiction, but it takes a person to choose it, use it, abuse it or depend on it.

Anyway, it is worth clarifying that there are many drugs with a high addictive capacity, as is the base paste or cocaine; but beyond this "power", necessary but not sufficient, it will be necessary to give certain conditions of the person so that at the end of the day they enter an addictive and dependent relationship with her.

The often repeated slogan "we must end the scourge of drugs", demonizes it, gives it the ability to be an active agent, which, like a virus, invades a person, understood as passive.

• You may be interested: "Types of drugs: know their characteristics and effects"

Two examples: the case of alcohol and psychotropic drugs.

If the drug is the one that generates dependence, just by trying an alcoholic drink, we would all become alcoholics. However, that does not happen, because it is not the drug itself that will determine it, but the relationship between the person (with social, biological, psychological, cultural factors, which are intertwined) and the drink.

Now let's talk about psychotropic drugs. On many occasions psychopharmacological treatment is necessarybut with proper professional supervision to make it really work. The great variety of psychotropic drugs for different functions opens the possibility of "solving" different concerns and problems with the simple fact of being medicated. Taking medication without treatment is like lowering the fever with an antipyretic and continuing as if nothing, covering what the body is announcing that something is not working at all well.

Not being able to sleep, feeling restless, having restlessness when alone, or surrounded by many people, being in a bad mood or acting impulsively, has a possible solution in a little pill. However, it will be much more productive and healthy not just to cover the symptoms, but to find out why not We can sleep, what happens to us or what happened to us to not tolerate being alone, why do we feel these nerves when leaving home… All of these answers will not be found in binge pill use. without a treatment that interrogates and heals.

Conclution

If we consider drugs as the protagonist and guilty of addictions in the first place we dismiss others addictions that are non-substance, such as addiction to sex, shopping, food, or gambling, among many other

Second, to think of drugs as a scourge, social, national and global, leads us to see the addicted person as a passive victim and in this way we remove the responsibility for his actions and, therefore, the possibility that he has in his hands to build changes and recover.