Chemical Constraints – Why do People Use Drugs?

Drug use, both prescription and recreational has become the answer for many people to increasing feelings of despair, isolation and futility, the answer to our pain. A maxim of our times is no pain, no gain. Certainly there will times when our lives are filled with pain, something that we need to feel, resolve, and get back on our feet again. However, today’s society seems to think that the suffering caused by an endless desire for ever increasing gain, profit, wealth and “security”, that causes humanity pain is an inevitable part of the modern way of life. People that can’t “cope” with it, can get medication.

We have since the 1960′s taken pride in man’s apparent ability to become “masters of the universe” – with no limits to what mankind can achieve by using new technology at both macro and micro levels. We have become a society of competing specialists – forming exclusive associations intended to support and sustain enviable and more materially “successful” lifestyles. When happiness is dependent upon how well we are doing, as compared with others, dissatisfaction, anxiety and depression will creep into our lives, without us understanding the cause.

Many have sacrificed integrity, human relationship and connection in a hunger for power and material gain. Drug use is a solution that provides a quick fix, so that we can remain distanced from our real feelings, and keep functional.

Drugs are marketed as being beneficial when provided by licensed suppliers, however drugs that mask our feelings, that cover pain but reduce our ability to heal, only build up problems for the future. Fifty years of increasing reliance on drug products and we are beginning to see the results in the form of widespread prescription drug addiction, an increasing number of deaths and disabilities, caused by the toxic side effects of drug use.

Drug use is a way of making our body and mind conform to how we want them to be. Approval of drug use for public consumption is also a way to make everybody happy. In looking for a modern day opiate of the masses we need look no further than prescription OxyContin. People today are confused, at a loss as to where to find other values and moral teaching. Comprehensive drug rehab programs *** can help.

Perhaps our over reliance on drug use today is simply a case of a drug deal gone wrong, a failure to meet expectations, that no one likes to admit. There is money and power in marketing drugs that no one wants to give up. Drug use, like a cancer, has invaded our communities at a social and economic level, Both pharmaceutical and illicit drug use now support large sectors of the economy – patient and drug addicted populations – employment to service providers – and generate taxable income streams to provide a surplus for public funds.

It is well known in medicine that cancers that invade the body can develop a life and infrastructure of their own. Whilst the cancer itself is a burden, any sudden cure and shrinkage of the tumor can threaten the stability and life of other organs in the cancer sufferer. Governments today have opted to maintain a drug regime, blame the people for their drug use, and parsimoniously, begrudgingly part with as little money as possible to mop up the casualties that inevitably arise from endemic drug use.

Methadone programs that are used to make addicts clean of heroin, are affectionately regarded by the drug users as being “liquid handcuffs”. The result for society of methadone programs is that we can proudly boast of drug programs that can get heroin users off the drug. The only catch is that 40 years clean of heroin – you will still be on methadone. Hence methadone programs contribute to the drug problem, merely a change of supplier, and not a remedy or cure for the problem of drug use.

People are chemically constrained when they are dependent on drugs, whether they think so or not. When our drug use begins to cause us problems we might find that it is impossible for us break the habit. We will feel the chemical constraints of drug use both when we are trying to score our drugs, and when we are in withdrawal. Patients today use take home packs of drugs, each set of drugs in a compartment marked with the time and the days when the drugs are to be taken – restricted to where they can be and what they are able to do by a prescribed regime of drugs.

The more we give up our freedoms of choice, accept drug use as normal the more disempowered we will become both as individuals and communities. It will be a great day when we can give up our drug use – throw off these chemical constraints and say – more power to the people.