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Drug Use Concept Essay

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The concept of drug use was not always seen as problematic. Instead, students viewed substance use as a means of remedying negative emotions as a sign of addiction. Overall students were able to recognize and share how their peers and close relations had suffered from this type of use, rather than admit that they personally had used substances as a means of self-medicating negative emotions. The idea of using drugs to remedy negative emotions was also named use “as a source of happiness” or a “means of escape.” Despite these different descriptions all of these concepts have roots in dislocation causing addictive behaviors. Among the interviews conducted, examples of negative experiences among users often originated with problems in the user’s …show more content…

It was like she’d black out every single time and we ended up having to take care of her and having to go get her and start apologizing to other people for her and it got to the point where we had to sit her down and tell her it’s a …show more content…

The result of this sudden displacement was feelings of loneliness and isolation. She attempted to remedy the resulting emotional traumas through alcohol use. Alcohol acted to replace the feeling of integration she had lost after going through the break up. Instead of using alcohol to enhance positive experiences with her friends, she began to drink alone and drink heavily. It was this dependency on alcohol as a source of happiness and the resulting erratic behaviors that were viewed as problematic by Sophia and her other roommates. Animals in nature can have a similar response to dislocation or emotional suffering. In Johann Hari’s book Chasing the Scream he is able to describe a situation with a mongoose that parallels Sophia’s roommate’s negative emotional state: The tropical storm in Hawaii had reduced the mongoose’s home to a mess of mud, and lying there, amid the dirt and the water, was the mongoose’s mate – dead…The mongoose found the corpse, and it made a decision: it wanted to get out of its mind. Two months before, the professor had planted a powerful hallucinogen called silver morning glory in the pen. The mongooses had all tried it, but they didn’t seem to like it: they stumbled around disoriented for a few hours and had stayed away from it ever since. But not now. Stricken with grief the mongoose began to chew. Before long, it had tuned in and dropped

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