Drug abuse a social ill that needs attention

Ropafadzo K Banda

Youth Interactive Writer

Addiction is a disease that affects your brain and behaviour. 

When you’re addicted to drugs, you can’t resist the urge to use them, no matter how much they cost or affect your life mentally and physically. 

The earlier you get treatment for drug addiction, the more likely you are to avoid some of the consequences and damages that will take place in your own life.

Some people when they hear the word addict or addiction they first think of illegal drugs like alcohol, cocaine, tobacco, cannabis (marijuana) but reader do you know that they are, more than one type of these addictions. 

They are so many reasons why people are taking in drugs and to my surprise even now they are young adults and school children who are now taking in these drugs, which is so embarrassing. I once asked one school boy “why do you take drugs”, guess what was his reply “I just want feel good my sister and avoid reality since I’ve got academic pressures”. Interesting isn’t it.

I don’t know whether I should call it drug abuse or drug addiction or maybe both. 

Firstly, just going over the issue of this student, I picked up three causes of drug abuse and these are – to feel good, avoid reality and academic pressures. 

Well in most cases, in these children’s lives, friendships contribute more to this issue because they spend more time at school.  

Without firstly judging this child, we don’t know his background or whom he stays with. maybe if I had enough time, I should have asked, because I wanted to dig deep to the root cause. 

Many people are going through stressful situations in life, they will be looking for something that makes them forget the situation without knowing that you can never runaway from a problem. You won’t be living, rather just existing and keeping on repeating the same thing. 

Parents should make time for their children, “yes” I know we are now living in a world of technology where by internet has taken all the attention, the time parents used to have time with their families is now taken over by WhatsApp groups, YouTube etc. 

The same with youths so many things have affected this generation. Now reader I’m taking you deep in this article for you to fully understand the cause and effects towards this (addiction) issue. Earlier on I mentioned about drug abuse and drug addiction these are two different things. 

Drug abuse is when you use legal or illegal substances in which you shouldn’t and this unhealthy habit can be easily changed then now to our main focus in this article, addiction this is when you can’t stop it, not because you have fallen ill or when it causes financial effect, because the urge to use the drugs and getting them will always show up every time of the day even if when you decide to give up. It is different from physical dependence or tolerance. 

They are three factors that I have discovered that cause drug addiction and drug abuse. 

Firstly,  communication, our children need parental guidance, some end up doing all these things because they lack counselling and no one is there to help them. 

Parents should also take a look the type of friends that their children play with because that’s where everything starts from, including peer pressure because if you do not take part, it will also affect the brain’s chemical systems and circuits that will lead to poor school performance resulting in bad results. They also should guide their children from, bad company.

Stress and inability to cope – most people that go through stress they think of something that makes them happy for a moment forgetting whatever that they will be going through. 

Taking in drugs doesn’t solve anything to ease your stress because at the end of the day you’re going to come back to the situation again. 

Poverty is the number one big problem that is increasing peer pressure on young adults, causing them to drop out of school because of low income at home which leads some of them to take drugs to relieve their stress and avoid facing reality. 

I’m encouraging youths to get counselling, including the adults who are as well addicted to drugs .

One might think that they have failed in life then end up being addicted to substances that turn of their minds and think otherwise.