When you grow up do you want to be addicted to a drug? Do you really want to be always seeking this drug of choice and working long hours just to have enough money to this drug, or even stealing money if you don’t have enough because your brain tells you have to have it? When you are healthy you have a good balance of physical, mental, and spiritual health using the four daily requirements: food, rest, exercise, and elimination. But when you are addicted it is an uncontrollable use of a mind altering substance or behavior that harms our physical, mental, and spiritual health. This is why people who are addicted to drugs aren’t very sensible because all they can think about is when they get to use their drug of choice next.
When you are a drug addict your physical health is in danger. In my book, Bottled Up, the main character was never hungry for food, only drugs. This caused him to almost never eat and always throw up when he drank because there was no food to hold the alcohol down. The main character the author described was all skin and bones. He also barely ever exercised because he would sleep during gym because he didn’t care and after school he would be using drugs. The main character would never get any sleep because he was always out partying and getting drunk and high. The only sleep he would get is when he was having a really bad hangover. As you can see this character had low quality habits of elimination: throwing up, food: barely ate, exercise: rarely exercised, and rest: partying all night only sleeps when he has a hangover.
Your mental health is at huge risk when you are a drug addict. Recently in my health class I was given a block of wood with a nail stuck straight up in it. My teacher told me it was the activity they had done the day before. She told me the instructions were for me to stack eleven nails on top of that one nail. Everyone asked if they could show me how they did it the day before, but my teacher said no. I was sitting at my desk and I said it was impossible even though I knew that other people had already done it before me. Then she said that is exactly what an addict who is trying to quit a drug would say. Then my teacher started to put the nails in a crazy way and put the nails on top of the one nail. For an addict who is trying to quit a drug it must feel just like I felt at my desk… impossible.
Addiction has a huge impact on our spiritual health. In the movie, Hijacked Brain, I learned that drugs stimulate the release of dopamine in the brain. Dopamine is a natural chemical in the brain that makes you feel happy. Dopamine is normally released into your brain whenever you do something that you feel good about. Drugs cause the natural trigger of dopamine to not happen because the brain gets so used to the drug triggering the dopamine for it. This means that to feel happy you will have to be using your drug. Your brain has a set amount of dopamine for your whole life. Your body has a built in regulator so that you will have enough dopamine for the rest of your life by rationing the dopamine out, but when you take drugs you can use up your supply of dopamine. This means that later in your life, if you are a drug addict, you can use up your supply of dopamine and never feel happy again.
Addiction can have a drastic affect on family members. In my book, Bottled Up, the main character’s family is very messed up. His father is an alcoholic, his mom knows he does drugs and doesn’t care but wants him to keep his little brother abstain, his little brother wants to take drugs because he sees the main character taking drugs and the main character is a full blown addict. This family without drugs would be a normal family, but with drugs this family sounds like it needs a lot of help. Families are really destroyed because of drugs. For example the Bill Moyer’s son was an addict. Bill Moyers said that it was devastating to his family because they almost lost there son to drugs and death. I can only begin to imagine how much it must hurt for their family and how they still must be recovering now all of these years later to rebuild things normally found in a family like trust and sense of comfort.
When I am offered drugs I will always picture what my parents would do to me if they ever caught me with drugs. I will also think of everything that is important to me and imagine what would happen to them if I took drugs. When I think about all of these negative consequences that would happen I will always choose to say no. The best way to avoid the affects of addiction on my physical, mental, and spiritual health is to completely avoid getting addicted to drugs and not to hang around with people who use drugs. The best way to quit is to never have used at all.