Transcript Drugs and Behavior Today

Chapter 1
Drugs and Behavior Today
What is a drug?
Drug: A chemical substance which, when taken into
the body, alters the structure or functioning of the
body in some way.
Problems with this definition?
…excluding those nutrients considered to be related
to normal functioning.
(whether the substance in question has been
intended to be used primarily as a way of inducing a
bodily or psychological change; p. 5)
Is Benadryl a drug?
The active ingredient is the same in both
capsule and topical cream:
Diphenhydramine HCl
Which of the following is not a drug?
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
Aspirin
5-Hour Energy drink
Insulin
Nicotine patch
Vodka
What is a drug?
The definition of a drug is trickier than it
first appears. Complicating matters
even further is that there are different
definitions for different contexts, e.g. in
medicine, pharmacology, drug law,
governmental regulation and in the
general population. This will become
clearer as the course progresses.
What is a drug?
Must the substance be synthetic?
Must it be regulated?
Must it be non-essential?
Is the definition dose-related?
(e.g. alcohol in small quantities = beneficial;
in large quantities = harmful
water is toxic in sufficient quantities
Are all toxins drugs?
Must it be voluntarily introduced?
Can substances normally found in food be drugs?
Is addictive potential necessary? Sufficient?
Is drug use uniquely human?
Is drug abuse uniquely human?
By the definition used in the textbook, a chemical
substance would be considered a drug if __________.
A. it intoxicated the user
B. it had an impact on brain functioning
C. it served as a nutrient
D. both A and B
Social Messages about
Drug Use
Beer commercials on television are popular forms of
entertainment as well as effective marketing tools,
despite the fact that alcohol abuse and alcoholism
continue to present serious personal and societal
problems.
Liquor and tobacco products cannot, by law, be shown
on network TV for the good of society.
Is this ban a violation of first amendment rights?
Should beer commercials be similarly banned?
Social Messages about
Drug Use
Anti-drug campaigns in the media compete with prodrug use messages arising from the entertainment
industry as well as from Internet web sites.
How effective are these anti-drug messages?
Social Messages about
Drug Use
Prominent political figures admit to experiences
with marijuana earlier in their lives, while
marijuana remains officially classified by the
U.S. government as a drug with a high potential
for abuse and no accepted medical use.
Should current drug use preclude election to
political office?
What about prior drug use?
What about drug addicts in recovery?
Recovering alcoholics?
Does length of time “clean” matter?
Are some jobs/professions O.K., others offlimits?
i.e., is risk to others a consideration?
Nancy Reagan is famous for her “Just say
NO!” campaign against illegal drug use.
Was this campaign successful?
Why or why not?
What might be more successful?
Two Ways of Looking at
Drugs and Behavior
Psychoactive drugs are those drugs that
affect our feelings, perceptions, and
behavior.
Depending on the intent of the individual,
drug use can be considered either
instrumental or recreational.
Figure 1.1
Prescribed Valium taken to
enhance the effect of alcohol?
Suppose a person has intractable pain.
Is using legally prescribed pain-killers within
prescription limits, if multiple prescriptions are
obtained by “doctor shopping,” an instance of
recreational or instrumental use?
Would your answer change depending on
whether or not the person
a. had chronic pain?
b. was dependent on (addicted to) the drug?
Drugs and Behavior:
Misuse and Abuse
Drug misuse refers to cases in which a
prescription or over-the-counter drug is used
inappropriately.
what about “off-label” use?
Drug abuse refers to cases in which a licit or
illicit drug is used in ways that produce some
form of impairment.
Addiction is a sub-category of abuse.
What about drugs “that may cause drowsiness”
or warn against “operating heavy machinery.”
Is this evidence that the drug produces
impairment? If so, is this abuse?
If one drinks alcohol to the 0.07 blood level,
is this abuse? Does 0.08 mean abuse in the
sense of “some form of impairment?” If a heavy
drinker is tolerant to alcohol and easily passes
field sobriety tests at ) 0.12, is he/she impaired?
Legal definition vs. performance criterion?
Suppose a person has a drug or alcohol
addiction, and needs the drug/alcohol to “get
right” or to avoid impairment or even death
due to withdrawal. Is this “abuse?”
Drugs in Early Times
Earliest experiences with psychoactive drugs
naturally growing plants
products of natural fermentation.
Knowledge of drugs and their effects dates back to
ancient Egyptians and Babylonians
Some were used therapeutically
Those with knowledge of drugs and their sources
(shamans) had great power within their cultures.
Drugs in the
Nineteenth Century
Active ingredients in many psychoactive substances
were identified in the 1800’s.
e.g. morphine as the major active ingredient in
opium.
Psychoactive drugs were widely used in the form of
patent medicines.
Risks of drug dependency were not recognized until
the end of the century.
Drugs and Behavior in the
Twentieth Century
Perceived social effects of drug dependence led to
legislation regulation of morphine, heroin, cocaine, and
marijuana.
Social pressure from the temperance movement
resulted in the prohibition of alcohol consumption in
the U.S. from 1920 to 1933 (18th Amendment).
1940’s -1950’s
illicit drugs such as heroin, cocaine, and
marijuana were available but outside the
mainstream of American life.
Drugs and Behavior in the
Twentieth Century
1960’s – 1970’s
recreational use of marijuana and
hallucinogenic drugs becomes widespread
across the nation
problems related to heroin increase
dramatically
1980’s
heroin use declines
cocaine and amphetamine abuse rise
crack cocaine emerges as a relatively cheap
form of the drug
Drugs and Behavior in the
Twentieth Century
1990’s
methamphetamine emerges as a poor man’s
alternative to cocaine (rural, inner city)
2000’s (O.K., so this is the 21st Century. Big deal.)
prescription drugs (e.g. Adderall, Oxycontin)
become major problems of abuse
“club” drugs become popular (e.g.MDMA
GHB, ketamine, Rohypnol)
synthetic “marijuana” (“spice”) and “bath salts”
become readily available legal alternatives to
illicit psychoactive drugs
Present-Day Attitudes
toward Drugs
A wide range of psychoactive drugs, both licit
and illicit, qualify are sources of misuse and
abuse.
The “baby boomers” generation who grew up
during the explosion of drug experimentation in
the 1960’s and 1970’s must now deal with the
drug-taking behavior of their children.
A shaman is __________.
A. a primitive healer
B. an “extinct” cultural phenomenon
C. an individual who relies upon elaborate rituals
D. often appointed at random from among young
females in a tribe
© Copyright 2011, Pearson Education,
Inc. All rights reserved.
Patterns of Drug Use
in the United States
2009 (Definitely the 21st Century!)
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37% of high school seniors used an illicit drug
33% smoked marijuana
3 %used cocaine
44% used alcohol
11% smoked tobacco cigarettes daily
21 million Americans >25 used an illicit drug
15 million used marijuana or hashish
9 million used a prescription pain reliever recreationally
Figure 1.2
Prevalence of Illicit Drug Use
Table 1.1
Figure 1.3
Table 1.2
What factors contribute to adolescent
drug abuse?
a tendency toward nonconformity within
society
influence of drug-using peers
What are protective factors against
adolescent drug abuse?
an intact home environment
a positive educational experience
conventional peer relationships.
Table 1.3
Table 1.4
A prominent advocate of cocaine use was __________.
A. Louis Pasteur
B. Alexander Fleming
C. Edward Jenner
D. Sigmund Freud