Drugs and Substance Abuse as Social Issues

Counting 5 days before we fly back to Bali in preparation for our Manila (Philippines) flight, this day was well-spent as we were given the opportunity to listen to a seminar of Indonesia’s national police. Just how important this seminar is for the university students? We’ll take a look at Indonesia’s statistics in terms of drug and substance use. And just how important it is to talk about these things? Why do a lot of young people resort to such? To understand this much better, I have to look back to my country and how bad the case is especially for young people like me. And as part of the younger generation, what can I do to help?

               In the case of Philippines, official statistics show that approximately 4 million of the nation’s population are drug users (“users” defined as someone who had used the drug in the past year) as pegged by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency or PDEA. Study has it that primary factors for drug abuse are the negative attitude towards stress, sleep deprivation and emotional instability. It’s a postulate that no one’s life is perfect. Everyone finds himself in situations where he gets to be confronted by the usual challenges and difficulties in life. Financial problems, family-related conflicts, social and personal issues, academic concerns are just few of what people, most especially teens and students, face every day. Excessive workloads, be it academic or work-related (as some students are employed) or personal-responsibility bounded (some working-students are also “bread-winner”), deprive one of sleeping which psychologically affects and alters a person’s mindset or perspective about the world and everything in it. This then leads to emotional imbalance and instability. While there are a lot of avenues to improve Adversity Quotient and Emotional Quotient, young people choose to resort to drug consumption in the interest of veering their minds away from stress that consequently and gradually results to drug addiction. Every little problem equates to a dose of drugs. Every stress calls for a little intake of the future-ruining substance. Young minds are isolated into thinking that the only way to fight against problem is forgetting about it (instead of actually resolving it) thus they use drugs in the process and eventually become addicted. Young minds imprisoned to that concept.

               Given how dependent to drugs youth had become, study shows that these users find the need to take increasingly larger and more frequent doses to maintain the desired effects while preventing psychological and physical symptoms of withdrawal, as cited by Drug &Alcohol Dependency (Detoxrehab Website). Furthermore, chronic and regular stress are known to be associated to high drug rates of addiction. According to Stress and Addiction (Al’Absi, 2007), there is a solid evidence that further verifies the connection between stress and motivation to abuse addictive substances. For instance, research in human studies shows that adverse childhood experiences such as physical and sexual abuse, neglect, domestic violence, and family dysfunction are associated with increased risk for addiction. People with an unhappy marriage, dissatisfaction with employment, or harassment, also report increased rates of addiction. Aside from the fact that these illegal drugs are made available by the sellers, we also can’t discount the fact that people most especially Filipinos tend to self-medicate and therefore use drugs to feel better whenever confronted by problems and crisis. Having said this, it’s important that we teach the young minds on how to go about handling stress and how to become resilient during hard times.

               Understanding all of this, I can say that my key contribution around this particular social issue is that I have to start with the man in the mirror. First off, I would give serious attention to learnings that I freely have access to as in my Sociology classes, in order to be well-informed and be aware about drug addiction and how it starts and what symptoms one can see to identify if he has fallen to this bad fate. This way I am able to keep myself from being imprisoned or dependent to drugs whenever I face serious problems. After gaining basic knowledge about this issue, I can share it to my friends who I think may be going through challenges in their lives so that they can also avoid resorting to drugs to solve their problems. Also, our institution, the University of Mindanao conducts seminars like the ones I have previously joined in before going here in Indonesia themed Excellence Beyond School through Resilience. I can always take advantage to this opportunity of being educated and helped on how to deal with stressors and how to be resilient in trying times, instead of using drugs. I can also influence my friends to come and hear out these types of seminar as educating the mind breeds making the right decisions.