Substance Abusers

Substance Abusers Common Characteristics
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Substance Abusers Common Characteristics
The behavior of a substance abuser is sad, frightening, frustrating, and baffling. The power of an addictive substance is robust that a lot of individuals get overwhelmed by it, resulting in criminal, abusive, and erratic behavior. One of the characteristics common to substance abusers includes mood swings (Jalilian et al., 2015). The person steadily develops personality change, and all his or her thoughts and activities revolve around the drug. Furthermore, his or her insight and judgment also become impaired. Secondly, a drug abuser exhibits changes in ways that he or she relates to the family. The individual begins avoiding family members, stealing, lying, and violence becomes a common feature. He or she starts weakening his or her friendships with non-abusers, lies and breaks promises. He or she also switches from social gatherings to wholly drug abuse.
Thirdly, drug addiction is another common characteristic of that the drug abuser usually encounters. The drugs can affect the individual’s behavior and brain resulting in an inability to regulate the use of the drug. The person feels that he or she has to use the drug more often or regularly to get the same effects. Addiction also makes the addict continue using the drug even the though he or she knows the drug is causing psychological and physical harm (Jones et al., 2015). Lastly, drug abusers get involved in several illegal activities including, murder, extortion, violence, street crimes, and rape.

One of the most challenging characteristics to address is the addiction. This is because it leads to changes in how one thinks and how brain functions (Volkow & Morales, 2015). Therefore, to overcome addiction, the brain must be reprogrammed and retrained over a long time through programs such as rehabilitation. Contrariwise, the easiest characteristic to defeat includes involvement in criminal activities such as violence. This can be done through rehabilitation and counseling.
References
Jalilian, F., Karami Matin, B., Ahmadpanah, M., Ataee, M., Ahmadi Jouybari, T., Eslami, A. A., & Mirzaei Alavijeh, M. (2015). Socio-demographic characteristics associated with cigarettes smoking, drug abuse and alcohol drinking among male medical university students in Iran. Journal of research in health sciences, 15(1), 42-46.
Jones, C. M., Logan, J., Gladden, R. M., & Bohm, M. K. (2015). Vital signs: demographic and substance use trends among heroin users— the United States, 2002–2013. MMWR. Morbidity and mortality weekly report, 64(26), 719.
Volkow, N., & Morales, M. (2015). The brain on drugs: from reward to addiction. Cell, 162(4), 712-725.