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Field Of Practice Paper On Substance Abuse And Addiction : Marijuana

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Field of Practice Paper:
Substance Abuse and Addiction: Marijuana
Monet L. Pollard
Shippensburg University
SWK 102 – 10:00 AM

Field of Practice Paper:
Substance Abuse and Addiction: Marijuana My first semester at Shippensburg University, my older friends invited me to an outdoor party at Frat Row. This would be my first college party ever, so I agreed to attend. My thoughts were that this party would be just like in the Hollywood films- beer bottles shattered all over the ground, smoke floating throughout the air, graffiti all over the walls or buildings; basically, a complete disaster of an area filled with young adults breaking the law. Is there a word to describe how accurate my accusation was? Complete perfection. The scene was fun to watch, but not such a fun experience. Insisting on being a law-abiding citizen, I stayed away from all illegal activities. As I stood upon the walls covered with condensation, I witnessed several exchanges of both alcoholic beverages and drugs. Since I’ve never been in an environment like this before, I asked my friends to take me back to my dorm room. My automatic assumption was that all the students in the room were either alcoholics or drug addicts. I told myself not to associate with any of them, but then I did some research. There are four different levels of usage when it pertains to drugs and alcohol. At least harmful to worse is social use, substance misuse, substance abuse, and substance addiction. Social use being a harmless activity that usually occurs within a friend or family gathering, substance misuse being one uses it for all the wrong reasons or taking more than instructed, substance abuse as for a result of feeling “high”, and substance addiction as a compulsive use where the user becomes reliant on the substance. Not all the people in that party were alcoholics and drug addicts. Each and every one of them had their own reasoning for their actions and I shouldn’t have labeled them all the same. So, if this is the case, then should we be allowed to label all these substances as wrong and addictive? Alcohol was furthered researched and eventually became regulated to adults twenty-one and over and cigarettes were regulated and can be sold to

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