WHAT IS A DRUG?

Most experts agree that a drug is any substance that you drink, eat, inject, inhale or otherwise put into your body that changes your brain chemistry and makes you act or feel differently from when you are not taking the substance. A drug is something that is addictive – that is, a user’s body can come to depend on the drug in order to feel normal. Within this definition, alcohol is a drug (that’s right – beer, wine coolers, whiskey and rum are all drugs), so is crack, heroin and amphetamines (speed). So are prescription drugs, like valium and xanax. And so are aerosol sprays and glue, when they are inhaled to create a "high."

It’s hard to understand why someone you love would keep taking substances which destroy health, devastate the family, and threaten life itself. The reason lies in the power of addiction. To a substance abuser, the desired drug truly becomes the center of the world. It’s more than just the surge of elation and escape that comes with drug use; more, too, than the physical pain that comes with withdrawal from the drug. It’s the physical and emotional craving for the drug that comes to control the substance abuser’s thinking and emotions, blotting out everything else. Substance abusers may sell their bodies, hurt their families, and endanger their children, if that’s what it takes to feed their addiction.

Addiction not only destroys the substance abuser’s life, but also those who are a part of it.  It’s natural to feel sad, and also to feel angry with the substance abuser. Try to remind yourself, it’s the addiction, not the person.  Addiction has a strangle-hold on someone you once knew as a better person, and for now, at least, has almost smothered that better person.