Drug Use Essay -- Drugs Narcotics Research Papers

Drug Use Drug use is part of life in the United States. Some people use drugs for medical purposes and some use them to escape from reality or as a way to cope with problems. There are two main types of drugs, medicines and psychoactive drugs. Medicines are used to help the body fight injury and psychoactive drugs are used to cause a change in the users brain activity. Psychoactive drugs are very dangerous. They produce very powerful changes in the body. What a drug does is called its action and unwanted effects are called side effects. The side effects of a psychoactive drug can range from uncomfortable to life threatening. Abuse of a psychoactive drug often results in dependence or addiction where the body needs the drug to function normally. Withdrawal happens when the body is reacting to not having the drug. Withdrawal can be very painful. There are many risks of using drugs besides what they do to you. You can get AIDS from sharing needles, it can cause mental and physical problems in babies, family relationships can be strained, there are sever legal risks, and there are major cost to society. There are many reason why people us drugs. There are 3 major factors that contribute to the risk of drug abuse in teens. Those factors are family, social, and personal. A family risk factor is poor relationships with family members. If teens have close relationships with their family member they are less likely to expe...