Drugs

1
Drugs

• Psychoactive drugs have the capacity to influence
  behavior by altering feeling, mood or other
  mental states
• The experience of any drug is derived from
  expectation
• Beckers study of marijuana users is an example

2
Types of drugs

• Narcotics
• Pain relief, euphoric
• Depressants
• Suppress central nervous system, deaden pain
• Stimulants
• Hallucinogens
• May produce unverifiable sensory experiences

3
Use vs. Abuse

• Physical dependence
• Withdrawl
• Addiction
• abuse

4
Alcohol

• Egyptians brewed it in 3700 BC
• Distilled spirits came about in 800 AD
• Alcohol related offenses constitute the lowest
  single arrest category
• There is considered to be about 10-12 million
  alcoholics in the US

5
Jellineks Gamma Alcoholism

• Disease model sees it as a predisposition
• Pre-alcoholic symptomatic phase
• Social and development of tolerance
• Prodromal
• Blackouts, memory loss, private drinking
• Crucial phase
• Disease process, complete loss of control

6
The Conrad Schneider challenge

• No evidence of characteristics that separate
  alcoholics from non-alcoholics
• Linear model did not fly
• Doubt that drinking always necessitates losing
  control once at a certain phase
• Disease concept keeps them out of jail more than
  providing an etiology (origin pathway)

7
Problem Drinking and Differential Association

• Jessors Tri-ethnic study (Learned Anomie)
• 1) learned perception of the lack of means
  available
• 2) alienation
• 3) personal toleration for deviant behavior\
• Environmental Support weighs in as heavily as
  psychological factors

8
Bales theory of problem drinking rates

• Cultural tension
• Alcohol attitudes
• Abstinence, Ritual, convivial, Utilitarian
• Culturally approved substitutes

9
Heroin

• 1803 opium ingredient named morphine after the
  greek god of dreams
• 1898- Heroin discovered in an attempt to make a
  less addictive morphine
• 500,000 Americans are daily users

10
Getting Hooked

• Learning
• Deciding
• Tolerance
• Dependence
• withdrawl

11
McAuliffe-Gordon thesis

• Continuance involves
• Avoiding withdrawl and re-experiencing pleasure
• The addicts esteem lies in ones ability to enjoy
  the euphoria and the pursuance of that goal leads
  to physical dependance

12
Methadone and methadone addiction

• Good and bad results
• Heroin addiction is not physiologically unsafe
• Most problems associated with delivery system and
  the subculture, and its illegal status

13
Late 19th century reaction and harm reduction

• Lack of ostracizing users slowed the development
  of deviant subcultures
• Moral indignation stemmed from young white girls
  smoking with their lovers in the dens of San
  Francisco, Seattle and Portland
• 1914- the Harrison Act and the loss of medical
  control over opium
• It became a legal issue
• Did the criminalization of drug users create more
  problems than it solved?