The past few weeks have been filled with moments of reflection. It reached a peak this weekend with the news of the passing of Whitney Houston. The 2012 Grammys had some great performances, LL Cool J did a great job as the host, but the undertone of sadness because of Whitney’s death was apparent. She was so beautiful, so talented, so passionate. So many artist’s lives have been ruined by drugs and alcohol. The subject of my blog today is the damage that drugs and alcohol do to not just the addict, but everyone that loves them.

It’s always so interesting to see people smoking in 2012, despite the fact that there is a ton of information which shows that cigarette smoking directly causes lung cancer and other respiratory diseases. Most of those people believe that it won’t happen to them. I even see doctors smoking. That sight is the most puzzling. Day in and day out, these doctors see people dying of lung cancer, but still they continue to smoke. “It won’t happen to me”, they say. When they are gone, it is their loved ones who are left behind to mourn and pay for their careless behaviour. The dead person is at peace. They have no more worries. Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown battled alcohol and drug abuse for nearly two decades. They have a young daughter who is now left without a mother to help her through the difficult teen years. If Bobby Brown does not clean up his act, she might be left an orphan.

I hear many people say that they will try anything at least once, but doing drugs is not bungee jumping or jumping out of a plane. They both offer extreme rushes, but bungee jumping and sky diving are controlled activities. There is no way to control how a person reacts to drugs. It takes just one try to get hooked on crystal meth. Crystal meth is the most addictive drug in the world.  After that first try, users require more and more of the drug to get that feeling again, and maintain it. Meth users have described this feeling as a sudden rush of pleasure lasting for several minutes, followed by a euphoric high that lasts between six and 12 hours, and it is the result of drug causing the brain to release excessive amounts of the chemical dopamine, a neurotransmitter that controls pleasure. All drugs of abuse cause the release of dopamine, even alcohol and nicotine, explains Rawson, “[But] methamphetamine produces the mother of all dopamine releases.”

For example, in lab experiments done on animals, sex causes dopamine levels to jump from 100 to 200 units, and cocaine causes them to spike to 350 units. “[With] methamphetamine you get a release from the base level to about 1,250 units, something that’s about 12 times as much of a release of dopamine as you get from food and sex and other pleasurable activities,” Rawson says. “This really doesn’t occur from any normally rewarding activity. That’s one of the reasons why people, when they take methamphetamine, report having this euphoric [feeling] that’s unlike anything they’ve ever experienced.” Then, when the drug wears off, users experience profound depression and feel the need to keep taking the drug to avoid the crash.

Cocaine, crack and crystal meth ruin so many lives. Families have been shattered due to these drugs. Multi-million dollar businesses have been destroyed by crack and crystal meth. Many people think that it’s only people in the projects or in trailer parks that do meth, but that’s very far from the truth. Highly educated and successful professionals are slaves to these drugs as well. These drugs do not descriminate. Several surgeons do crystal meth and then go into the operating room. It makes them feel like superman and they can stay awake for several hours, doing countless surgeries. God help us all!!! So many of these meth addicted surgeons have gone to jail, lost their licences or both.

Doing drugs is not bungee jumping or jumping out of a plane. Are you playing with fire?

By

Ngo Okafor

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