Signs of Drug Abuse

Manifestations of Drugs in the Physical, Behavioral, and Cognitive Aspects

1 Corinthians 3:16-17: Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.

Drug use is leading to substance abuse. Consequently, drug abuse is damaging to both physical, cognitive, and behavioral aspects of a person. Drug abuse is a total havoc to God’s temple. It destroys God’s temple, the body of man. As the Bible states, anyone who destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him.

The excessive use drugs can destroy the brain cells of a person, resulting to distorted information processing eventually causing changes in the central nervous system and the electrolyte imbalance of the body, affecting the physical, behavioral, and cognitive aspects of a person.

Over usage of drugs can cause physiological transformations in the central nervous system and electrolyte imbalance of the body. Due to these, several signs of drug use is manifested some obvious physical signs. There is a change in eating habits by either loss of appetite or increase in appetite, thus resulting to sudden weight loss or weight gain. The addict will gradually have poor physical coordination through staggering walk, shaking hands, hyperactivity, excessive loquacity, unusual laziness, inability to sleep, irregular heartbeat and tremors in the hand, feet, or head. Physically obvious symptoms may include red and watery eyes, cold and sweaty palms, swollen face, runny nose, irritating cough, nausea, vomiting or excessive sweating.

Chronic exposure to drugs also causes brain cell damage resulting to brain malfunction in terms of information processing. It forms an addictive cycle of looking for the next dose.  Inability to feed these demands of a higher dose will push the addict to succumb to distorted means of getting a hold of the addictive substance. This often results to a total personality or attitude change. From this, the addict tends to change friends, hang-outs, activities, and hobbies. There is also a sudden decline in school or work performance, family interest, motivation, energy, self-esteem, and focus.

Cognitive effects are often manifested in a more advanced stage of addiction. In a more threatening phase, the addict suffers from paranoia, depression, oversensitivity, temper tantrums, irritability, nervousness, etc. In most of the later cases, the addict will demand excessive need for privacy, will manifest a suspicious behavior and chronic dishonesty, often resulting to accidents and crimes. The damaged brain cells create a distorted cognitive or reasoning ability, which eventually develops the distorted presence of the addict in the society. He can either be tagged by the society as chronically mentally ill or a criminal.

The signs of drug use is widely varied and can be confusing to diagnose. However, if a family member has at least six out of the many signs combined and manifested in a short span of time, there is a big possibility that he or she is into drugs. First aid for situations like this should be communication, the most effective tool in early diagnosis of the root cause on why the family member has surrendered into drug use. Communication is key to saving the user from becoming addicted to the substance.