Medicines and drugs

Andrei Popescu
Matei Nita
12F
Prescribed medicines

• With access to Prescribed medicines, people are able

to treat a multitude of diseases and illnesses. These
medicines help deal with pain, inability to sleep,
depression, and much more.
• Every day we are increasingly living in a world where
there is better living through chemicals. However, what
most do not seem to see is the rising tide of pain,
illness, and ultimately death being caused by the pills
people take every day.
• Most keep medicines in a special place in their minds,
where they see them as harmless. Sadly, this is not the
case, and in some cases our prescribed medicines can
be just as harmful as illegal drugs
• According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse:
opiates, depressants, and stimulants are the three
medicine classifications most commonly abused by
Americans.
• Although the many negative effects have caused
physicians to question the wide spread use of opiates,
the main fuel to this problem’s fire is the medicine’s
addictive nature. Some medical journals have reported
that “between four percent and twenty-six percent of
those who take opioids for long-term pain treatment
become addicted” and this addiction leads to the abuse
of the medicine.
• Depressants and stimulants, although not as
deadly as opiates, are the two other
classifications of misused prescribed
medicines. Depressants are prescribed to
treat anxiety, panic, and sleep disorders.
When taken for long periods of time, these
pills are addicting and can cause physical
withdrawal symptoms.
• Stimulants are taken to help lose weight, treat
sleeping disorders, and help children with ADD and
ADHD. Many college students abuse this medicine
to help them focus for long periods of time while
studying. Although these class of medicines are not
nearly as fatal as opiates, causing “14,800 deaths in
2008, which is more than cocaine and heroin
combined, it is believed that they are far over
prescribed and susceptible to abuse due to their
addictiveness.
Difference between medicines and
drugs
• In most cases people think of drugs and
medicines as the same, they both attempt to
solve a problem in your body or your
psychological state; however, that is false.
Drugs and medicines are actually the
complete opposite of each other.
• Medicines are substances that can be liquids or
pills etc. and are used to restore your body to its
normal condition.
• When a person consumes or uses drugs, his
body starts depending on it and cannot function
properly without it; this is what is called Drug
Addiction or Drug Dependence.
• Using the example of the sleeping pill, when a
person starts sleeping using sleeping pills, his body
gets altered due to the effect of the drug, and it
could be his neurotransmitters that are altered, and
cause the body to no longer know how to sleep
normally.
• The body will start carving for the sleeping pill and
live on the fake low quality sleeps and this is the
main reason drugs are harmful.
• A drug makes you its slave. When enslaved by a drug
you cannot live without it and if you try to rehab from
drug usage or simply cut off the drug you are faced by a
challenge which is drug withdrawal. This is the main
reason rehab is very difficult and requires time to
achieve.
• Withdrawal in general is a term referred to when having
negative feelings from stopping the consumption of a
substance and such feelings include discomfort and
stress which lead to the carving for that substance.