MARLAN ZULU writes
@horizonzambia
Have you ever walked down the street or in a grocery store and bumped into someone you know, and they look really bad? Drugs have “eaten them alive” and they are barely recognizable.
You can remember how beautiful they were “before” the drugs but you’re staring the “after” directly in the face. It has been discovered that most people who struggle with drug addiction began experimenting with drugs in their teens. Teenage drug abuse is one of the largest problems in society today and the problem grows larger every year.
Drug abuse can affect people in various aspects of life. There are several factors that can lead to drug abuse, such as media and the environment in which a person grows up. In my experience, I have seen movies and heard music that promotes drug use. Long-term drug abuse can have disastrous physical and mental health consequences. As the body adapts to the presence of a substance, it requires increasing amounts of it to experience the desired results, a process known as tolerance. Drug abuse impacts nearly every part of your body from your heart to your bowels. Substance abuse can lead to abnormal heart rates and heart attacks, and injecting drugs can result in collapsed veins and infections in your heart valves.
If you use drugs and alcohol, you’re more likely to experience physical injury or be involved in car accidents. Even worse, you also have an increased risk of death through both suicide and homicide. Drugs and alcohol are expensive, especially when you’re using a lot and constantly.
Substance abuse also impacts your productivity and success at work and in school. Drug and alcohol abuse not only has negative effects on your health but can also have legal consequences that you’ll have to deal with for the rest of your life. Many employers require that you take a drug test before offering you a job—many of them even conduct random drug tests even after you become an employee.
All in all drug abuse is one of the social challenges that is affecting most parts of the world and most people doing this act tend to be teenagers who then decrease a country’s productivity, as the development of country is dependent on the young population. So if people work together, they can help abolish this pandemic, drug abuse, and make the world a better place to live for all!