Definition and introduction
The definition of drugs is: any substance, apart from food, that, when injected, inhaled, smoked, consumed, absorbed via a patch on the skin, dissolved under the tongue, causes temporary physiological, and/or psychological change in the normal body. Although normally associated with the less legal use of drugs for their effects, remember that the medicine we consume counts as drug usage as well. Since ancient times, man has collected various roots, herbs and fungi for their beneficial effects. Crushing them with mortar and pestle, boiling, drying, even consuming them raw, our ancestors learned through trial and error. The result of trial and error was the beginning of medicine for health restorative properties, and the after-effects that cause physiological changes.
Medicinal Drugs
Misuse of medicine is the number-one cause of death worldwide. Be it overdosing, suicide, or an allergic reaction, medicine is in limbo for both its benefits and risks. Medicine has been used ever since our ancestors learned to differentiate between types of pain, be it physical or psychological. The most common use of medicine is simple pain alleviation. Headaches, toothaches, spine related pains, joints etc., all are reduced or completely alleviated. Although the obvious effects of medicine are the most common ones, medicine itself, and the drugs it has created has helped humanity a great deal. Diseases that once threatened the very existence of mankind, the common cold, viruses, parasites and plagues, are now history. It helps those with more troublesome diseases: dementia, schizophrenia, autism etc.. As humanity progresses, so too does medicine, ever improving itself, to help us be the best we can, or even surpass our expectations. Yet as much as medicine helps us, so too it might be our very end. We use medicine to alleviate or cure our troubles, but evolution heralds what might well be the inevitable. Progress, be it from our hand, or from nature’s, cannot, and will not be stopped in its never-ending march forward. Microscopic organisms, bacteria, viruses and the like, are never completely gone. They simply evolve, or rather mutate, upon previous iterations, causing what medicine once was capable of putting into dormant hibernation or destroying, to be nothing against the newer versions of our microscopic troubles.
Smart / Designer Drugs
Drugs that enhance or improve our cognitive abilities are called smart or designer drugs. These newer types of drugs are the result of the modern era. Use of these types of drugs enable the person taking them to have significant advantages over the common man or woman; such as steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. To achieve more, or as the ones making, selling and partaking in would proudly announce to “reach heights we were incapable of before”. It is true that these drugs allow the average person, or anyone for that matter, to do more, be more, and achieve more; surpassing what would be the limits of their abilities in any field requiring physical labor, with relative ease. Yet these performance-enhancing drugs come at a great cost. Most, if not all of the partakers in these drugs experience side effects more gruesome, as a result of the huge boost they receive from; heart failure being the most common cause of death, organ failure and rarely, affecting their psyche. Yet for all the negative effects of some of these new drugs, the positive ones display quite a bright future. As they are new, and more freely disbursed, these drugs help people with serious diseases. Quelling the urge to tremble due to Parkinson’s, allowing senior citizens to improve memory, or simply stop the loss of memory due to aging, the benefits seem to outpace the drawbacks for a time.
Spiritual, Religious and Recreational Use
As people in history learned of the various effects of drugs, it was only a matter of time before they were used for spiritual or religious purposes. Ceremonies, passing of trials, curing pain and diseases as well as recreational use, all had one explanation, higher beings helping us. All hallucinogens, psychedelics, dissociatives, deliriants, stimulants, sedatives, euphoriants and even anesthetics trace their origins to spiritual or religious use. As religions and spiritual events bring together communities, it is no surprise that use of these types of drugs was widespread all around the world, in every period of history. When removing the harsher drugs from the conversation, recreational drugs still offer more benefits than drawbacks. Of course, anything taken too much has drawbacks, anything taken a little of – almost none, and anything taken on a regular basis, leaves the person with a habit. Recreational drugs can be the likes of psychedelic mushrooms and LSD. These types of drugs are not recommended to be taken, even below the minimal dosage, for the effects they have, altering the brain, its’ way of thinking and working are not exaggerated. But even coffee, alcohol, tobacco and cannabis, as well as region-specific ones, like khat and betel nut, fall under the category of recreational drugs. These are the most common and daily taken drugs that offer the most-mild effects than the rest of the drugs. But, like all other drugs, they too have their drawbacks. Depression, dizziness, impaired inhibition, heart attacks, artery clogging etc., even if they are beneficial in the short run, so too they can be destructive as well.
