To begin with, substance addiction is not a specific disease that might be cured either medically or therapeutically. On the contrary, a sophisticated holistic approach should be provided, depending not only on the type of substance but also on personal characteristics. In this case, both biology and sociology play a significant role in affecting the person to start or quit substance addiction.
One of the most influential sides of drug addiction is social characteristics that affect drugs’ personal relations. This is because people are supposed to live in society, and the intimate communication environment usually influences our behavioral type, which is the most important, set the fundamentals of our values. Consequently, when investigating drug addiction causes and outcomes, it is crucial to start with the determination of the type of individual’s society and the values that its representatives settle. More specifically, this process might be done by defining the characteristics of dangerous society, determining the policies that engage such process or prevents it, and approaches that neutralize the negative social influence on the individual. As a result, three steps should be provided to analyze the social facet of drug addiction fully. More specifically, it is critical to determine the society, its interaction process with the individual, what factors or policies influenced them to engage in the society, and how to neutralize its impact on the person.
Defining the “Hazardous” Society
While some individuals consider the social side of being drug-addicted, they do not fully understand the significance of avoiding a dangerous circle of communication. This is due to the fact that a person cannot fully understand the self-influence of those who give them, mostly unintentionally, set the example of drug relations. However, many scientists attributed to institutional theory state that society has the most significant impact on personal success and failure, directly related to the observed subject. When it comes to drug addiction, most drug addicts do not start taking substances alone. On the contrary, the drug-taking process is usually involved in youth gatherings, where the risk of being involved in substance abuse is enormously high owing to the absence of “stop” signals: adults, relatives, or authorized representatives. As a result, the individual might become a drug addict depending on the type of substance and the amount consumed.
To determine the dangerous type of society, it is critical to emphasize certain characteristics that, in most cases, remain the same. For instance, the group’s prevalence of people with no life objective might be the first sign of danger. Secondly, gatherings in private places (apartments or city outskirts), instead of public ones, such as cinema or city center, can also indicate the possible danger of the group (Hasam et al., 2017). Last but not least, some clear signs of the hazardous group, such as criminal reputation or social inadequacy, should not be neglected to help in detecting the society with a high risk of drug addiction.
How Does the Society Influence Drug Abuse and Addiction? What Should We Consider When Analyzing the Drug Addicts?
Even though the determination of the hazardous society is important for analyzing the social facet of drug addiction, it is crucial to fundamentally understand the society’s influential factors of engaging a person in drug addiction. On the one hand, society’s “standards” and values determine personal recognition in certain groups. More specifically, if substance abuse is highly valued in society, those who take the biggest number of drugs have a strong reputation in the group. As a result, when the person does not share and appreciate common values, they become ostracized by the circle of communication, and this risk creates an incentive to adjust the personal valuation system to the group’s one. On the other hand, it is crucial to assess the individual’s portrait characteristics since some personalities are strong enough to resist society’s pressure and implement another system of values. When the person is psychologically healthy and does not experience social pressure from relatives, they might easily neutralize the dangerous influence of a certain group. On the contrary, if the individual cannot resist the group’s force due to psychological or family issues, society will have a “carte blanche” seduce the individual to take drugs.
Institutional Policies that Prevent or Encourage Drug Addiction
Local and government authorities who establish the rules of behavior in society play a pivotal role in preventing drug addiction in case of efficient institutional functioning or engaging people, especially young adults, to be influenced by substances. One of the most important notions is that the poverty level does not directly affect the presence of a drug-addiction society (Hasam et al., 2017). However, the interaction of different social classes determines the attractiveness of substance-addicted companies’ expansion (Taylor et al., 2016). When the city is not socially divided into other parts, especially in “poverty quarters,” then the public schools and higher education institutions are normally distributed between people in need of money and “middle” or “high” social classes (Contreras et al., 2019). On the contrary, if the poverty neighborhood is consistently neglected, this provides strong incentives to engage family representatives in the drug distribution process, which might create not only the drug-addiction expanding tendency but also form the dangerous society of drug addicts that might influence other individuals, especially in educational institutions.
Secondly, local authorities should consider the amount of money spent on the patrol police and the efficiency of their observes and investigations. Even though the presence of the police does not eliminate the drug distribution, when the patrolling is insufficient, the expanding tendency of drug-addict groups cannot be stopped by other measures, such as education and social work. On the other hand, while those related to drugs consider the higher benefit to risk ratio, the drug distribution becomes a complicated process that increases the cost of substance selling. As a result, implementing effective police work in the society combined with supporting poverty households will lead to higher pressure on drug distributors and their agents so that drug-addicted societies’ expansion will slow to the normal or even inferior level. In this case, the social impact on drug addiction will be decreased, significantly influencing the prevention of substance addiction.
How a Person Can Quit the “Wrong” Society
When the person did not succeed in defining the hazardous society or not entering in it, there are still some possible approaches to decrease the dangerous influence or even quit a certain group. For instance, the individual should start the process by sharing the issue with the family relatives. They might resolve the problem in different ways, such as changing the place of living or providing the therapy course from professional medicines depending on the seriousness of the addiction level. Thereafter, the person should realize the problem for themselves since “telling the truth” to oneself is easier when the closest people know about the issue. By doing this, the individual neutralizes society’s negative influence on drug addiction development. Finally, some special work should be done to prepare the person to quit the group since it is impossible to leave the drug addiction group by cutting the communication process. The individual should have the determined wish of quitting the group and a sufficient amount of patience to transmit this opinion to the group to decrease the risk of further social influence that will negatively impact personal well-being.
References
Contreras, C., & Hipp, J. R. (2019). Drugs, Crime, Space, and Time: A Spatiotemporal Examination of Drug Activity and Crime Rates.Justice Quarterly, 37(2), 187–209.
Hasam, A., & Mushahid, M. (2017). Drug Addiction in Urban Life of Bangladesh: A Sociological Study for Exploring theCauses.Asia Pacific Journal of Multidisciplinary Research, 5(2), 1–11.
Taylor, S., Buchanan, J., & Ayres, T. (2016). Prohibition, privilege and the drug apartheid: The failure of drug policy reform to address the underlying fallacies of drug prohibition.Criminology & Criminal Justice, 16(4), 452–469.