Drug use – a medical, anthropological and psychosocial phenomenon

This volume does not attempt an exhaustive presentation on the phenomenon linked to drug use. This paper was written as a brief foray through several scientific aspects of illegal drug use, such as: medical, anthropological, psychological and religious. The purpose of this paper is to sensitize readers and explain the harmful effects of drug use, affecting individual consumers and the society, but also the family of the users. The paper is intended as a small guide for teens and parents, young people and students, in their journey to becoming better informed about this danger that can strike anytime and any of us. At the same time, it is intended as a challenge for researchers to continue and deepen studies on the damaging effects of illegal drug use and specially to engage in a comprehensive process of informing the population of all ages. In order to follow the above objective, I tried to present as brief and clearly as possible the problems linked to illicit drug use, which I consider essential and necessary to raise pull an alarm: each of us must get informed and take action to diminish this global plague! This cry of despair was joined by father Constantin Necula– a priest, Associate Professor at the “Lucian Blaga” University – Faculty of Orthodox Theology “Saint Andrew Șaguna” from Sibiu, Romania, that is fully involved in the recovery of drug-addicted people as a president of the Blue Cross Association for Romania “CARO”. Father Constantin Necula emphasizes, in the chapter called “Addicted people’s culture of prevention through the culture of faith”, the fact that resizing the therapeutic culture of the people that are in difficult situations or addicted becomes an emergency in terms of a religious culture. This book is divided in five chapters, each describing one of the drug related aspects mentioned: medical, anthropological, psycho-social, adding the recovery in terms of the religious culture, all these being preceded by a chapter that outlines a few introductive aspects of this phenomenon. This paper presents a few selected cases following a study that was done in Bucharest for a period of two months, with the participation of a batch of 44 drug users. The age of the volunteering subjects ranged between 19 and 43 years old. An “omnibus” questionnaire was applied, with different topics, containing 46 items. The questions were both open and closed. The unit of analysis was the individual, each participant to the study that use drugs being questioned on age, gender, school level, family, friends aspects, work and self-perception. The participation in this study was voluntary, after a written, informed and freely expressed consent. Thus, this paper was written with the purpose of emphasizing, through the presented data, the fact that drug addiction is a cruel reality that has spread in the entire world; to mitigate this phenomenon, it is required that we are better informed. This book is meant to be a scientific step in the educational endeavour.