...The effects of cocaine are more than just physical and mental. Over time, it can effect every aspect of the family's life. From ruining the financial health of the family to making relationships difficult, cocaine causes significant problems in the home. As the addiction continues, it only becomes more difficult to mitigate the effects of cocaine use. The Immediate Effects of Cocaine Early on in the addiction, husbands and wives may not realize that a problem exists. Partners often try to hide their addiction, so it is difficult to find out about the problem until later on. Physically, the effects of cocaine happen almost immediately. A small amount of cocaine cause the user to be extremely energetic, alert, euphoric and talkative. If a spouse has an addiction, the only noticeable thing at first may be a sensitivity to touch, sight and sound. When they are using, they may no longer need sleep or food. A husband or wife may seem suddenly talkative and...
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...head: DRUG PROFILE PAPER Drug Profile Paper Sherita Brown Axia College of UOP Drug Profile Paper In this paper I will examine abused substances and their various effects; I will also explain the psychology and Physiology of drug addiction. Addiction begins as a high, as an illusion of being in control, but it eventually turns on the individual. The results are pathological relationships to a mood altering experience that brings negative, life destructive consequences. People become addicted to drugs due to a combination of factors. For example, genetic factors: some people may inherit a vulnerability to the addictive properties of drugs, meaning that the risk of substance use disorders is higher for individuals who have close relatives with substance abuse disorders (www.drugpolicy.org). The environment is another factor, for example, the home; neighborhood or community where people live has an influence on whether or not an individual develops a substance abuse problem. Additionally, research shows that more than half of people with substance problems also have mental health issues such as anxiety or depression. We can become addicted to anything that alters the consciousness and alters the mood. Psychological characteristics of an addict are more impulsive and more lacking in impulse control, they are inclined to act in accordance with their mood of the moment and tend not to plan for the future. The most common illegal stimulant is cocaine and amphetamines;...
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...Overview of Cocaine Jasmine Wright Research Paper Professor Suh It is a Friday night and your roommates at your dorm invite you to a dorm party. Instead of finishing your homework you decide to join them and put the homework off for tomorrow. You tell yourself that you wont be out so late and that you had a long week so why not. As you arrive to the party, there are girls kissing up on boys as they take shots. You tell yourself that you would not participate because your parents did not grow you up in that kind of manner. As the night passes, your roommates pressure you into taken a shot of tequila. Eventually, one shot turns into two and then three. Until, the shots are not enough. Your roommate turns to and says, “Try this”. She passes you a little “baggy” of a white powder substance. You ask, “What is it?” She replies, “ it’s coke, you’ll love it.” You take the rolled up bill from her hand and you try your first line of coke. At that moment, you fell in love and life was no longer the same. Cocaine became prevalent in 5,000 B.C. of the Inca Empire in Peru. It is derived from cocoa plants were they would chew the leaves and extract the cocoa from it. It effect can be increased by adding calcified lime to raise the alkalinity which improves the effect of cocaine. This would be of assistance to them when they had to travel great distances due it increasing their endurance and strength. Eventually, the demand for cocaine grew high in the field of medicine. A surgeon, Halsted...
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...Introduction On the topic of crack and cocaine and the mandatory minimums that come along with those drugs in term of jail sentences, our group had a lot to say about the issue. The purpose of this essay is to give my specific ideas and thoughts given the multitude of topics presented by the issue. I will give my expert opinion on the topic of mandatory minimums, some lessons learned about the topic, and some of the most valuable information towards legislation regarding this topic. With so much to say about the topic, I will start with my expert conclusion of the subject. Expert conclusion The policy that my group researched was the topic of Crack vs Cocaine in regard to the mandatory minimum sentences that come along with possession of...
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...Drug addiction is most often defined as a chronically relapsing disorder in which the addict experiences uncontrollable compulsion to take drugs, while simultaneously the repertoire of behaviors not related to drug seeking, taking, and recovery, declines dramatically."(1) Recent scientific research has shown significant causal relationships between drug addiction and genetic predisposition as well as between addiction and environmental factors. Both genetics and the environment influence the brain, which in turn effects the behavior of usage. Once an individual begins using psychotropic substances, such as cocaine or heroin, measurable changes in brain chemistry and physiology perpetuate the cycle of addiction. Thus, we have an example of brain affecting behavior, which in turn, affects the brain. This cycle is particularly extreme and insular in the situation of drug addiction where free will and decision making are quickly and severely impaired. In this paper, we will first explore the genetic and environmental theories on drug addiction. We will then investigate how the behavior of drug addiction changes the brain to perpetuate the circle of cause and effect between the brain and behavior. Genetic Influences on the Behavior of Drug Addiction: Addiction does not result from a single gene. However, multiple genetic trends have been identified as crucial contributors to the illness of addiction. Alcoholics and cocaine addicts often express the A1 allele of the dopamine receptor...
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...The definition of a drug addiction is the loss of control over the intense urges to take the drug even at the expense of adverse consequences (Volkow & Li, 2005). The drugs are used multiple mechanisms like positive reward, inhibitory control, and executive function to modulate the brain functions. In this paper, I am going to examine how addictive drugs alter the brain function and result in mediating our behaviors. The primary function of the brain is to monitor the external and internal environment of the individual, then respond to an unconscious and/or conscious level. However, our body requires more complex works for a living. What are the fundamental concepts of how the nervous system mediates behavior? The brain does not work independently...
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...Drug Addiction Leah Richards PSY326: Research Methods Maleka Hillsman August 27, 2012 The topic that caught my attention when I was reading my choices was “Drug Addiction”. Drug addiction is something that should not be taken lightly by anyone who has a family member or friend with this issue. We often wonder how and what make people turn into being a drug addict. “Drug addiction is rooted in long-term adaptations within the brain that promotes escalating drug use, difficulty quitting, and relapse—all despite the awareness of negative consequences.” With that being said I have always wondered what keep a person going back to their addiction and why can’t they quit. When I read the article and it mention how drug addiction is rooted a light bulb clicked in my head. When something is rooted inside of you whether it is for good or bad it is hard to break. “It was previously hypothesized that addiction was caused in part of an imbalance between an impulsive system that governs appetitive motivation and is driven by immediate rewards on the one hand and a reflective system that regulate and control impulsive according to future pleasurable or aversive consequences.” With this study they were able to predict the hypothesis and see what causes addiction to happen in some cases. I think that the method used in order to see how people become an addict was efficient and it was very precise that made the validity of the experiment a success. It is important to...
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...1.Now most cocaine is grown in Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia but once it hits the united states its cut down or diluted with ingredients such as lactose so they can distribute more and make more. 2.The Organization of American States estimated that the revenue for cocaine sales in the U.S. was $34 billion in 2013. 2.Research presented this weekend reinforced previous findings that 90 percent of paper money circulating in U.S. cities contains traces of cocaine. 2.Estimates on how much money is sent south each year range from $10 to 30 billion. Processed cocaine is available in Colombia for $1500 dollars per kilo and sold on the streets of America for as much as $66,000 a kilo 1.•The primary way that cocaine enters the United States is via the border between the U.S. and Mexico (65% of all cocaine that comes in does so at the Southwestern U.S border). 1.•The Colombians control the bulk of the cocaine trade in major cities such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Miami. •1.Mexican drug cartels have started to run and produce cocaine themselves (and not as “middlemen” for the Colombians) and now control the drug trade in major Western U.S. cities such as Phoenix, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Seattle and San Francisco. •1.Despite the best efforts of the Unites States’ “War on Drugs”, the cost of cocaine is lower than ever and the availability is greater than it was 25 years ago. http://www.michaelshouse.com/cocaine-addiction/cocaine-trafficking/ References: http://www.cnn...
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...The Outside Drug: Cocaine in the US Page Break Michael Moss once said, “Some of the largest companies are now using brain scans to study how we react neurologically to certain foods, especially to sugar. They've discovered that the brain lights up for sugar the same way it does for cocaine.” Cocaine is a common party drug for young adults and a severely addictive drug for offenders. America’s battle with substance abuse has yet to calm down, it is important for people to recognize the power of the correct treatment and the lack of the treatment in the American society. For years, people have searched for way to stop cocaine from getting into America meanwhile, they have yet to find out how to treat the ones who already use the drugs. It is important to understand the approvals and disapprovals that cocaine had throughout the decades of being in America....
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...beating heroin and crack cocaine into second and third place, according to an authoritative study published today which will reopen calls for the drugs classification system to be scrapped and a concerted campaign launched against drink. Led by the sacked government drugs adviser David Nutt with colleagues from the breakaway Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, the study says that if drugs were classified on the basis of the harm they do, alcohol would be class A, alongside heroin and crack cocaine. Today's paper, published by the respected Lancet medical journal, will be seen as a challenge to the government to take on the fraught issue of the relative harms of legal and illegal drugs, which proved politically damaging to Labour. Nutt was sacked last year by the home secretary at the time, Alan Johnson, for challenging ministers' refusal to take the advice of the official Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, which he chaired. The committee wanted cannabis to remain a class C drug and for ecstasy to be downgraded from class A, arguing that these were less harmful than other drugs. Nutt claimed scientific evidence was overruled for political reasons. The new paper updates a study carried out by Nutt and others in 2007, which was also published by the Lancet and triggered debate for suggesting that legally available alcohol and tobacco were more dangerous than cannabis and LSD. Alcohol, in that paper, ranked fifth most dangerous overall. The 2007 paper also called for an...
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... Addiction is a condition that results when a person ingests a substance such as alcohol, cocaine, nicotine or engages in an activity gambling, sex, shopping that can be pleasurable but the continued use/act of which becomes compulsive and interferes with ordinary life responsibilities, such as work. Computer addiction can be described as the excessive or compulsive use of the computer which persists despite serious negative consequences for personal, social or occupational function. Another clear conceptualization is made by Block who stated that Conceptually, the diagnosis is a compulsive-impulsive spectrum disorder that involves online and/or offline computer usage and consists of at least three subtypes: excessive gaming, sexual preoccupations, and e-mail/text messaging While it was expected that this new type of addiction would find a place under the compulsive disorders in the DSM 5 the current edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders it is still counted as an unofficial disorder. The concept of Computer Addiction is broadly divided in two types, namely offline and online Computer Addiction. The term offline Computer Addiction is normally used when speaking about excessive gaming behavior, which can both be practiced offline and online.Online computer Addiction is also known as Internet addiction and gets in general more attention from scientific research than...
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...National Institute on Drug Abuse about six million people over the age 12 have used cocaine at least once in the past year.” Our text book stated : “Cocaine is one of the most dangerous drugs available to teenagers and along with the amphetamines are powerful psychostimulant that markedly affect mental functioning and behavior. These drugs augment the action of several neurotransmitters, the most important is dopamine. “( text book) Cocaine is a purified extract from the leaves of the Erythroxylum coca bush. Different chemical processes produce the two main forms of cocaine: Powdered cocaine: commonly known on the street as “coke” or “blow” dissolves in water. Users can snort or inject powdered cocaine .Crack cocaine: commonly known on the street as “crack: or “ rock” is made by chemical process that leaves it in its “freebase” form, which can be smoked. One of the most risky effects of teenage cocaine use is that the body can develop a tolerance to the drug, and the user needs increasingly larger doses of the drug to achieve the same feeling. This can increase the chance of an overdose, as the user takes successively greater amounts of cocaine in an effort to get high. In certain cases, first time users of cocaine have suffered from sudden death, the possibility of which dramatically increases when alcohol is simultaneously consumed. The objective of this paper is to discuss the symptom of the abuse in teenagers, the degree that the substance...
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...n the An Introduction to the drug ratings in the Philippines Background study drug addiction and drug abuse, chronic or habitual use of any chemical substance to alter states of body or mind for other than medically warranted purposes. Traditional definitions of addiction, with their criteria of physical dependence and withdrawal (and often an underlying tenor of depravity and sin) have been modified with increased understanding; with the introduction of new drugs, such as cocaine, that are psychologically or neuropsychologically addicting; and with the realization that its stereotypical application to opiate-drug users was invalid because many of them remain occasional users with no physical dependence. Addiction is more often now defined by the continuing, compulsive nature of the drug use despite physical and/or psychological harm to the user and society and includes both licit and illicit drugs, and the term "substance abuse" is now frequently used because of the broad range of substances (including alcohol and inhalants) that can fit the addictive profile. Psychological dependence is the subjective feeling that the user needs the drug to maintain a feeling of well-being; physical dependence is characterized by tolerance (the need for increasingly larger doses in order to achieve the initial effect) and withdrawal symptoms when the user is abstinent. INTRODUCTION Illegal drug use is “almost automatically”([1]) associated with criminal behaviour. The statistical...
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...Addiction Requires Treatment Not Punishment Gloria Tooles English 112 Professor James Introduction The United States has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world with a significant portion of those imprisoned are for drug-related crimes. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, between 1987 and 1997, the number of drug violations increased 48.2 percent. Drug addiction is an uncontrollable illness that causes its victim to commit all types of crimes to supply the ongoing urge for drugs. In short, this paper will be an attempt to examine this illness and, at the same time, determine which is better for the individual: punishment or treatment. Opposing arguments are that all drug abusers should be locked-up and the key should be thrown away. The initial law enforcements for drugs, even if no other crime has been committed, has been mandatory prison sentences to cover first time offenders, and harsher sentencing for second and third timers. There is no evidence that enacting tougher penalties will deter the drug problem or decrease the number of crimes being committed. For this matter, despite the fact that society considers drug abuse to be a crime; drug addiction is an illness and not a crime. Drug abusers should be punished for committing a crime in a way to help them with treatment to avoid them from relapse and committing the same old crimes over and over again. Definition of Drug Abuse Drug addiction is a compulsive craving for some type...
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...these users are children around the ages of seven to fourteen. The drugs they use are highly addictive Amphetamines, similar to cocaine. The worst part is these drugs are prescribed to them for behavioral problems in school. The stimulants these children are taking are for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Because these children do not behave the way schools have described as “normal”, they are drugged with harmful synthetic stimulants. Behavior traits in children can be changed by a proper diet, adequate sleep, and positive activities at home. The principle causes of ADHD are unknown. The attempt to classify it as a disease has failed. There are four categories of disease in the medical world: infectious, contagious, traumatic, and systemic. Infectious and contagious diseases have to do with germs so we can rule those out as classifications. Traumatic indicates an outside force such as head trauma or nervous system trauma so that is also ruled out. Systemic diseases happen when the cells or chemicals of the body begin to malfunction such as cancer. This is not correct for ADHD either and so it is not a disease (Stein 23-24). Doctors turn to other causes and classifications of this disorder including genetics. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) often appears to run in families, and research studies have suggested that there may be a genetic component to this disorder. Individuals diagnosed with ADHD may have close blood...
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