The Benefits Of Self Medication

Great Essays
In times of adversity, people feel the urge to take matters into their own hands so that they may feel in control. This is especially true when the situation is about their own physical and mental health. Instead of going out of their way to obtain treatment for their problems, people want to be able to resolve a situation in a way that is hasty and can be in their complete control. There is a sense of comfort in knowing that one has power over their struggles when they are the ones making executive decisions. Ironically, when it comes to self-medicating, people wind up losing the control that they had originally set out to gain by governing what it was that they were using to treat themselves. Self-medication may seem ideal to people initially, …show more content…
The various methods of self-medicating includes drinking alcoholic beverages, such as beer, wine, or liquors, or ingesting drugs through smoking, snorting, shooting up, or eating. In some ways, self-medication may occur unintentionally. People could be using substances to fill a void that they are feeling is in their lives without being consciously aware that they are doing so. Ways to tell if someone is self-medicating is to observe whether or not they are making it a habit to “drown out their troubles” with alcohol or use drugs to settle or comfort themselves, as well as becoming cantankerous or anxious when they are unable to obtain these items to relive their physical and or their emotional …show more content…
In society it can be seen as something that trivial and not a big deal, or it can be seen as something deeply serious depending on the situation. Alcohol is mainly used for emotional pain and can be used to “take the edge off” when someone is going through a tough time. After a rough day at work or a breakup, someone may want to turn to alcohol and binge drink to try to solve their emotional issues. In this case, friends and peers may encourage it, thinking nothing of the behavior. When this becomes an ongoing problem, and the person is drinking excessively over an extensive period of time, people may finally start to take the behavior more seriously and see the problem with it. Without the excessive behavior though, alcohol is the most widely socially acceptable substance for someone to use to self-medicate. It interacts with the neurons in the brain involving the neurotransmitters GABA and Glutamate. GABA acts an inhibitor to neurons firing when it binds with its receptor and Glutamate acts as an excitatory neurotransmitter. Alcohol is an enhancer in that it makes GABA more of an inhibitor than it already is and blocks glutamate from binding and creating an excitatory response in the neuron. The feeling in response to these neural reactions is loss of memory and impulse control. They feel less anxious and freer in a situation as it has a numbing effect on people. Obtaining alcohol is

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    A common result of a person feeling like they have to change something about their life is turning to drugs. This is because drugs can give the person a sensation of escape from reality, but it is really only a temporary feeling. The addiction of escape can drive someone to continuously abuse drugs in order to make them feel in control of the thing they originally wanted to change. Likewise, when someone has a mental illness the symptoms may drive them to self medicate in order to soothe their imperfections. Studies have shown that there is a connection between substance abuse and mental illness.…

    • 1217 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In The Glass Castle, Rex walls is usually seen as an alcoholic within the story by his family, it is mostly noticed by his daughter Jeannette. His drinking usually gets so bad that Rosemary has to look in books on “How to cope with an Alcoholic” just to find a way to help him, but what exactly is alcohol abuse? Alcohol abuse is when someone is drinking excessively, binge drinking, or just over doing the drinking. My view on the problem of alcohol abuse is that it is a serious problem because many people suffer from it, the problems this causes are crazy because they throw off relationships with marriages and their children. When someone is drunk, they are a completely different person and that can be very dangerous for the safety of their…

    • 1085 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Being addicted to the consumption of alcohol liquor is known as alcoholism. Alcoholism is classified as both a mental and physical disease. Abusing the substance is self-determinant at first but over time becomes a habit, causing the person to lose control of how much to consume, thus becoming an alcoholic. Even though the cause of alcoholism is still unknown, it is known that dependency happens when you drink so much that chemical changes in the brain occur. These chemical changes in the brain increase the pleasurable feelings you get when you drink alcohol, which makes you want to drink more and more.…

    • 808 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Some of the biggest concerns in the Native American community today are the immense presence of alcoholism and drug abuse. According to the Indian Health Services, the rate of alcoholism among Native Americans is six times the U.S. average; and according to multiple studies, there are higher rates of substance use and abuse in the Native American community. Unfortunately, the large “majority of Americans will never truly understand how damaging alcohol has been for Native Americans, perhaps more devastating than any disease, gun, massacre, or policy” (Bentley). “Loss of culture has been the primary cause of many of Native American’s existing social problems, especially those associated with alcohol … methods to measure Native American cultural…

    • 1565 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Personally, the way our culture has developed is alarming and is more destructive than we may think. Not only are we abusing alcohol, but we are using it to break the ice in situations we might not be found in while sober. In response to Beste's points, young adults are afraid to face difficult situations. To protect and shield us from the possibility of rejection, we use substances to try to mask this fear. At many times during the presentation I heard outbreaks of laughter which affirmed much of what Beste was saying is correct and is kind of foolish.…

    • 1359 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Dual Diagnosis Akron A dual diagnosis is the manifestation of two mental diseases in an individual. A dual diagnosis is seen in drug treatment when a patient has a diagnosed psychological disorder in addition to their addiction. This claim of dual diagnosis is prefaced by the fact that addiction is a mental disease.…

    • 802 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    20/20 Essay

    • 2007 Words
    • 9 Pages

    At first, the individuals resist taking medications. People resist to accept both diagnosis and medications because of the stigma attached to the mental illness. They simply did not want to be labelled to avoid the consequences. During the second period, despite the oppositions to the drugs, patients finally accept the short term medical treatment because of the pressure to take medications by the psychiatrists and the patients accept taking medications because they feel that they have no other choices.…

    • 2007 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    13- year old Mike Nelson had moved to a new school and his parents were concerned that he was not fitting in too well. He was taken to see a psychiatrist who prescribed him with antidepressants. About a week later Mike had hung himself, without a warning whatsoever. Even though several restrictions have been set for who can be given antidepressants, tragedies like this have Americans debating whether or not antidepressant should be proscribe to young patients. According to a medical study in Great Britain and the U.S, “patients medicating their depression with SSRIs can become addicted to the pills, and faced increased risk of suicidal thoughts and behavior” (“Are Antidepressants Drugs Safe for Young Patients?” 1).…

    • 977 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Dual Diagnosis Treatment Often times, a diagnosis of substance addiction or alcohol dependency, can come accompanied with mental conditions. In fact, it is more often than not that the individuals who come to see us for addictions recovery, end up finding out about, or taking care of psychological conditions simultaneously. Clinicians refer to these clients as ‘Dual-Diagnosis’ patients. Because of the frequency, and importance of this issue, (Location Name) offers a complete dual-diagnosis treatment program. Substance Abuse and Mental Health:…

    • 526 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Character of the Clinical Issue Alcohol Use Disorder is a problem that is related to an individual’s use of alcohol that leads to negative effects on the individual’s life. According to the DSM-5 (2014), the level of which the undesirable effects of the substance may affect the individual’s life is what determines whether their disorder is mild, severe, or somewhere in-between. These impairments can affect the individual’s life by impacting their physical, mental, social, or professional functioning in a negative way. There are many symptoms and signs associated with alcohol use disorder. These symptoms include frequent intoxication, nausea, sweating, tachycardia, amnesic episodes (blackouts), mood swings, depression, anxiety, insomnia,…

    • 750 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Alcohol Abuse Case Study

    • 1387 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Faith Konsdorf was married to Bill Konsdorf who had nearly a perfect marriage. They stuck with each other through thick and thin. But one day Faith’s whole world flipped around on March 22, 2014 when Bill was not responding to any of the messages and phone calls from Faith and she immediately knew something was wrong. He had been encountered in a horrific alcohol-related crash.…

    • 1387 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    When the body becomes exposed to chronic exposure to alcohol the body will adapt to changes thus causing different responses to it. A person that drinks alcohol all the time will build up a tolerance to alcohol and will not get the effect as a person that drinks once and while or rarely drinks. The brain will start to develop a pathological craving for alcohol, longer the chronic drinker uses alcohol the stronger the desires become to fulfill them. If the body does not get the desired fix of alcohol once it becomes addicted to it, individuals will develop side effect from lack of alcohol. Some of these side effects are anxiety, elevated heart beat, overwhelming feeling of restlessness and sweating (NEUROSCIENCE: PATHWAYS TO ALCOHOL DEPENDENCE,…

    • 1151 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Whether it is current or an old age tradition, alcohol has been around for centuries. It brings people together, forces people apart, and overindulgence can cause health problems. Drinking alcohol can have many dangerous effects on the mind, body, emotions, and life. The brain is a very sensitive organ, and must be taken care of accordingly.…

    • 1000 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    First off what is alcohol? Is it a drug, medicine, or a beverage? Alcohol is known as a depressant. It messes with your ability to react with movement, your speech, and your ability to speak. In other words it’s a drug that affects a person’s mind to think rationally and distorts his/her judgements.…

    • 640 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Alcohol All of us one way or another has had a bad experience that involved alcohol. A lot of good times occur with alcohol but bad ones occur too. There are many different forms of alcohol to consume. Some people consume alcohol in the form of beer. Others consume alcohol in the form of wine.…

    • 805 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays

Related Topics