Opportunity Cost of Drug Use

Many people use opportunity cost analysis in the context of people using drugs and becoming drug addicted. The opportunity cost of anything can be defined as being the loss of benefit from other alternatives when one alternative is chosen. Wikepedia defines the “loss of benefit” as what we sacrifice or lose, by making a particular choice. People who begin drug use, with subsequent dependence and...

Teen Risk Taking and Drug Use, Ontario

Teen risk taking is a normal developmental stage – challenging rules, finding adventure outside of the home, taking off into new and unknown territory is an indicator of developing independence, autonomy and freewill. Sometimes teen risk taking is a response to a sense of feeling entrapped by, enclosed and controlled by the “envelope” of life, sometimes a result of feelings of isolation and...

The Mental Environment: Children in the Family

The mental environment of children, both in the community and in the family, needs to be supportive of the development in children of a healthy lifestyle, and good attachment patterns.  When children have problems in their development, people tend to cast blame. Perhaps it is the child who is somehow deficient, unable to meet the demands that are made of him. He gets given special support, and at the same time, the...

Theta Waves, Drug Use and Stress

People often talk about living in peace and harmony with nature. There is probably more involved than simply taking time out from a busy life to quickly smell the roses and sit ourselves out in the sun.  The universe extends much further than we can observe with our basic five senses, our experience of nature is limited to what meaning and feelings we can ascribe to the sensory inputs that we receive from nature as...

Is Cannabis a Gateway Drug

Cannabis is considered to be a gateway drug because children who start using cannabis in their early teens later use other addictive drugs on a regular basis, and often become drug addicts. Not all teenagers who experiment with addictive drugs go on to become drug addicts or drug users.  In 2008, US and Australian researchers conducted a study of same sex twins – 311 pairs in which one had started to use cannabis...