Drug addiction impacts more than just the addict’s life. It affects families, companies, schools, friendships, and the health of both the addict and those around them.
Drug users experience various physical effects beyond the expected highs. For example, the excitement of a cocaine high is followed by a “crash,” leading to anxiety, fatigue, depression, and a strong desire for more cocaine. Marijuana and alcohol impair motor control, contributing to many automobile accidents. Users of marijuana and hallucinogenic drugs may experience flashbacks long after use.
Sharing needles increases the risk of HIV and hepatitis, and heightened sexual activity among drug addicts raises the incidence of AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases.
In the United States, over 10,000 deaths annually are directly linked to drug use, with cocaine, heroin, and morphine often combined with alcohol being the most common substances involved. Many drug users engage in criminal activities like burglary and prostitution to fund their habits, and some drugs, especially alcohol, are linked to violent behavior.
The addict’s preoccupation with drugs, along with their effects on mood and performance, can lead to marital issues and poor work performance or job loss. Drug use can disrupt family life and create destructive patterns of codependency, where family members unintentionally enable the user to continue their habit by covering up, supplying money, or denying the problem.
Pregnant drug users have a higher rate of low birth-weight babies. Drugs like crack and heroin can cross the placental barrier, resulting in addicted babies who go through withdrawal after birth. Fetal alcohol syndrome can affect children of mothers who consume alcohol during pregnancy, and pregnant women with AIDS from intravenous drug use can pass the virus to their infants.
Drug abuse affects society in many ways. In the workplace, it leads to lost work time and inefficiency. Drug users are more likely to have occupational accidents, endangering themselves and others. Over half of highway deaths in the United States involve alcohol.
Drug-related crime can disrupt neighborhoods due to violence among dealers, threats to residents, and the crimes of addicts. In some areas, younger children are recruited as lookouts because of lighter sentences for juveniles, and guns have become common among children and adolescents. Most homeless people struggle with drug or alcohol problems or mental illness—many face all three.
Drug addiction affects every aspect of life for the user, their family, and society. The time to seek help for addiction is now, before its effects become irreversible.
See The Truth About Your Family Member’s Struggle with Drugs or Alcohol for more information.