“What is addiction, really? It is a sign, a signal, and a symptom of distress. It is a language that tells us about a plight that must be understood.” – Alice Miller
Simply put, drug addiction is the blatant misuse of mind altering substances. If addicted to drugs, it becomes a way of life. It has the ability to destruct your life one day at a time. It a constant downward spiral that results into self-harm and self-destructive behaviour. Drug addiction results in the inability to make decisions, memory lapses, mood shifts and lack of basic coordination.
Despite a number of drug addiction treatment centres in India, drug use has been a common vice that our society faces from one generation to another. It mostly begins in the formative years of a child’s life. Be it societal pressure or the inability to deal with realities that leads to drug experimentations. This results in the beginning of a very long and tough uphill battle of staying drug free.
The various types of drugs that are easily available and lead to dependency range from opioid pain killers, marijuana, LSD, hypnotics, hallucinogens and other mind altering dangerous substances.
Listed below are some of the symptoms that might be seen in victims of drug addictions, as listed by the American Psychiatric Association.
- Increasing the quantity of drug use and for use of it longer period of time.
- Overspending on drugs despite dire financial situations
- Cravings that are too hard to control both physically and psychologically
- Repeated failures in attempts to discontinue drugs
- Results in continuing the substance abuse despite turbulent personal relationships
- Cutting off from social set ups due to drug use.
- Despite physical harm, being unable to wean off the drugs
- Spending complete time and energy in either sourcing the drug or taking them
- Getting tolerant to standard dosage thus resulting in constant increased dosage of it.
- Extremely disturbing and probably violent symptoms observed on drug withdrawal just within a few hours.
Some of the more physical symptoms that the patient’s family must look after are as below
- Disorientation or feeling confused
- Dizziness or uneasiness
- Speech mis co-ordination
- Lack of motor co-ordination
- Sudden weight gain or loss that is observed by those close to the patient
- Breathing issues
- Erratic Mood shifts and unpredictability
- Internal bleeding may occur in extreme cases
The following is extremely important to do in case you know someone who may be an addict, immediately connect with some of the most well-known drug addiction treatment centres in India.
Seek help for the patients in case they start having inability to wean of the drugs even for short periods of time. If individuals start falling prey to unsafe behaviour such as needle sharing etc., it is a wakeup call.
Seek for emergency help if the patients has overdosed , having seizures, repetitive loss of consciousness, difficulty in breathing, sudden adverse reaction to drug, suffering from sudden heart attack or stroke etc.