Question: why do people take drugs?

Nathan Langford answered on 3 Jul 2012:

Hi Kayleigh,

There are many sides to this question, but here are a few random thoughts. Let’s assume for the moment that there are two broad situations we’re talking about: medical drugs, where people are taking them to make them better (if they’re sick) or to relieve pain; and “recreational drugs”, where people are taking them to make themselves *feel* better (either because they’re upset, depressed or hurting in some way, or because they just like the feeling) or to make themselves do something better (like run faster, or stay awake to work longer).

There are lots of different types of drugs. Some drugs are designed to attack something in our system that shouldn’t be there. For example, antibiotics are designed to attack foreign bacteria – but unfortunately also attack the “good” bacteria which is supposed to be in our bodies. Some drugs are designed to change the way our body functions in some way, e.g., after heart operations, people often have to take a drug which stops their blood from clotting too easily. And some drugs are designed to interrupt our neural processes to stop the way our body monitors and processes what is happening to it, e.g., many pain killers are designed to block pain signals from getting to the brain – the body might still be “feeling” pain, but the brain doesn’t receive the signals which say so. You can see, though, that all of these different types of drugs can be making a really significant change to the processes going on in our bodies. These effects might be temporary or more long-term. And they can also have side-effects.

Drugs can also have enormous psychological effects on us. This can be a direct result of how the drug is designed to operate, like with antidepressants, which are designed to kick back into place the chemical balance in your brain to stop you feeling depressed. Or this can be a really simple, harmless effect like if you have a bacterial infection (some sort of cold) which is making you feel really sick and miserable, so your doctor gives you antibiotics and very quickly you stop feeling sick and you feel very happy you’re not feeling so bad any more. Even that can be more serious, however, if instead of having a cold, you’ve been in a serious accident and need to take strong pain killers for a while.

One of the biggest danger with drugs is that they can be addictive, whether physically (they change the chemicals in your body so that when you stop taking the drugs, your body wants to try and fix something) or psychologically (they make you feel “good” in some way or hide or cover pain, so that your brain eventually wants to keep feeling that way). Even simple “harmless” drugs like caffeine and alcohol can be addictive, and “medicinal” drugs can be addictive too. That is why it is so important that doctors need to prescribe medicine to people. For example, it’s quite common for people to become addicted to strong pain killers like morphine and methadone if they’ve been taking them for a while after a bad accident or illness.

So, in terms of recreational drugs, why do people start taking drugs? In this case, I think the reasons really are mainly psychological.

1) They might have heard stories about how they make you feel and be curious to know what it’s like.
2) They might be feeling sad or in pain and have heard that they make you feel better or take away the pain.
3) They want to do something better (like they’re really busy and can’t afford as much time to sleep) and want a drug that can help.
4) Everyone else is doing it – I should too.

All of these reasons can seem really, really important when someone is in a certain situation in a certain moment. But these decisions have long consequences – will it still seem so important 20 years down the track? But then a lot of people say, “Surely once is not so bad? Surely just trying it wouldn’t hurt?” The thing is that different people are affected by drugs in different ways. And some people are much more susceptible to becoming addicted than others – and this might even be different for different drugs. And you will never know the answer until you do try it.

Imagine that you are thinking about trying a drug that you know is bad for you in the long-term and might be very addictive. But you’re thinking, “I’ll just try it once to see what it’s like – once won’t hurt.” But what if you find out that you do like it? Do you “try it just once more”? When does it stop? Perhaps the possibility of finding out that you like the experience is a good enough reason in itself to *not* do it in the first place. Why make it hard for yourself to look after yourself?

In my opinion, your body is a delicate and incredible machine. In general, it’s designed to work pretty amazingly well and you need to think very carefully when you do things that change the way it works. You never know what unpredictable consequences there might be.

Cheers,
Nathan.