Vulnerability to addiction differs from person to person. In general, the more risk factors an individual has, the greater the chance that taking prescription drugs or street drugs will lead to abuse and addiction. “Protective” factors reduce a person’s risk of developing addiction.
What factors determine if a person will become addicted?
No single factor determines whether a person will become addicted to drugs. The overall risk for addiction is impacted by the biological makeup of the individual – it can even be influenced by gender or ethnicity, his or her developmental stage, and the surrounding social environment (e.g., conditions at home, at school, and in the neighborhood).
Which biological factors increase risk of addiction?
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Tags: Prescription Drugs Addiction · Street Drugs
Anabolic Steriods are:
- Synthetic substances related to the male sex hormones (androgens). They promote growth of skeletal muscle (anabolic effect) and the development of male sexual characteristics (androgenic effects), and also have other effects.
- Used by doctors to treat conditions that occur when the body produces abnormally low amounts of testosterone, such as delayed puberty and some types of impotence, and also to treat body wasting in patients with AIDS and other diseases.
- Legally available in the United States only by prescription. Anabolic steroid abusers obtain drugs that have been made in clandestine laboratories (sometimes with poor quality control standards), smuggled from other countries, or diverted illegally from U.S. pharmacies.
- Distinct from steroidal supplements. In the United States, supplements such as dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) and androstenedione (street name Andro) can be purchased legally without a prescription through many commercial sources including health food stores. They are often taken because the user believes they have anabolic effects.
Anabolic steroid abuse is:
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Tags: Prescription Drugs Addiction · Street Drugs
Poisoning is second only to motor-vehicle crashes as a cause of death from unintentional injury in the United States. Nearly all poisoning deaths in the United States are attributed to drugs, and most drug poisonings result from the abuse of prescription and illegal drugs.
Previous studies, using multiple cause-of-death data, have indicated that the trend described in this report can be attributed primarily to increasing numbers of deaths associated with prescription opioid analgesics (e.g., oxycodone) and secondarily to increasing numbers of overdoses of cocaine and prescription psychotherapeutic drugs (e.g., sedatives), and cannot be attributed to heroin, methamphetamines, or other illegal drugs.
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Tags: Prescription Drugs Addiction
Drug misuse is one of the major social, legal, and public-health challenges in the world. The total burden of drug misuse, in terms of health, social, and crime-related costs, is in the billions of dollars every year.
Recent research conducted in the UK has found that alcohol and tobacco are more dangerous than some illegal drugs / street drugs. Tobacco is estimated to cause 40 percent of all hospital illnesses, while alcohol is a factor in more than half of all visits to hospital emergency rooms.
Research Categories of Harm
There were three main factors that together determined the harm associated with any drug of potential abuse:
1- the physical harm to the individual user caused by the drug
2- the tendency of the drug to induce dependence
3- the effect of drug use on families, communities, and society
Two independent groups of experts were asked to do the ratings on the various drugs.
Results of the research:
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Tags: Prescription Drugs Addiction · Street Drugs
Many people die every year because of a drug overdose or of errors in taking the wrong drug.
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Tags: Prescription Drugs Addiction