Drugs: Effects, Uses & Risks

Under drugs, most people understand intoxicants such as hashish, opium or heroin. However, daily stimulants such as coffee and tea, alcohol and nicotine also fall under the category of drugs. In fact, the consequences of drug use are a wide range, from mild stimulation of the mind to complete destruction of the mind and body.

What are drugs?

By drugs, most people mean intoxicants such as hashish, opium or heroin. However, everyday stimulants such as coffee and tea, alcohol and nicotine also fall under the category of drugs. Unlike most medical terms, which are derived from Greek and Latin, the word drug comes from Dutch. As a colonial power in the Southeast Asian region, the Netherlands dominated the spice trade for centuries. Spices and tea were brought to Europe dried. Some of these spices, such as nutmeg, have mind-altering, or psychotropic, abilities. The history of drug use is about as old as the history of civilization. People learned about 6,000 B.C. that fermented grape juice makes you funny. Thus, wine is older than beer, because brewing was discovered in Egypt only about 5,000 years ago, or 3,000 BC. Mushrooms to produce intoxication were already used at that time in North Africa and in the far reaches of Siberia. The mind-altering power of various mushrooms had also been recognized on the American continent. Indians began to use tobacco at about the turn of the century. Widely accepted in today’s society are nicotine, alcohol and caffeine. The classics such as tea and coffee have now been joined by a vast number of so-called energy drinks. In addition to caffeine, they also contain the stimulants taurine and guanine. Sometimes, especially in bars and discos, energy drinks are mixed with alcohol, which enhances the effect.

Medical application, effect and use

Medications such as psychotropic drugs, stimulants, painkillers or sleeping pills are often misused as drugs. Conversely, some HIV or cancer patients use actually prohibited agents such as cannabis products, for example hashish, for therapeutic purposes. Opioids (e.g. morphine) are also legally used as painkillers in medicine. For mental illnesses, various drugs are often used as antidepressants. Even LSD and MDMA are currently being researched in psychotherapy. Various indigenous peoples of South America, Africa and Asia still use various drugs from plants in shamanism to fight disease and spiritually cleanse the body.

Herbal, natural, and chemical-pharmaceutical drugs.

Popular until a few years ago was the distinction between soft and hard drugs. For example, “soft” included hashish and marijuana, while heroin, LSD, or crack were counted as hard drugs. But this classification is now considered outdated. Instead, the type and origin of the drugs now play a role. On the one hand, there are drugs that are produced naturally from plants, such as cannabis products derived from hemp or opiates derived from opium poppies. On the other hand, there are numerous drugs available today that are put together in laboratories, the so-called designer drugs. Since a study by David Nutt in 2007, drugs have been classified according to their harm to the user himself, his level of addiction, and the social harm. According to this study, heroin is considered the most dangerous drug, with a harm potential of 8.32 on a nine-point scale. In a follow-up study that gave more space to social harm, alcohol was found to be at the top, followed by heroin.

Risks, side effects, and dangers

A fundamental problem with drugs is their addictive potential. For example, even taking heroin once can lead to addiction. But it is the regular use of drugs that can have a devastating effect on the mind or body in the long term. Hashish, for example, has a lower addictive potential than alcohol or nicotine. However, prolonged regular use of the cannabis product can lead to dramatic personality change or even psychosis. These can also be the worst effects of severe alcohol addiction. In addition, severe alcoholism also leads to physical deterioration. These are also the consequences of heroin addiction, with the difference that the deterioration is much more rapid.Another danger of heroin abuse, on the other hand, is much more threatening: Because the addictive potential is so great and the body needs higher doses from trip to trip to achieve the desired level of intoxication, it can easily come to an overdose, the “golden shot”. A very special danger comes from the growing market of designer drugs (e.g. crystal meth). Because these are entirely new compounds, their long-term effects are often completely unclear.