Substance Use Disorders

Alcohol addiction is one of the most common substance addictions. It is also one of a few legal substances that people often get addicted to. This makes it more difficult to treat since it is readily available for anyone who can legally buy it, and there are plenty of social situations where alcohol is made accessible to minors.

Alcohol addiction can have long-term negative effects on your health, including liver problems. It can also be fatal in the short term if you drink too much at one time. However, alcohol addiction treatment is more readily available than most other treatment options for other substances.

Cocaine is another relatively common addiction. It has a long history of being an accessible drug that affects people with money and influence as well as people without.

Cocaine addiction can be difficult to treat unless the person is willing to undergo treatment and change their surroundings to keep them away from the things that influenced their addiction.

In recent decades, medications were developed to help people dealing with withdrawal symptoms when entering treatment. For many people, cocaine was the first hard drug that they started on before moving to more effective and dangerous drugs.

Heroin is different from many other common drugs in that it is injected rather than smoked or ingested in most cases.

Heroin is significantly more effective than other drugs at getting people high, but is also significantly more dangerous. It takes much less heroin than other drugs to cause serious negative health effects.

Methamphetamine (meth) is particularly notorious among drug users as being one of the most effective and dangerous drugs on the market. People have died from as little as one dose.

It is also particularly hard to treat since people will experience difficult withdrawal symptoms, which can be potentially life-threatening under the wrong circumstances.

Inhalants can be found in many places, including spray paint cans. They are inhaled by spraying a substance onto a rag and putting it over the nose and mouth to breathe it in. Most are mildly addictive but can do serious damage to brain cells quickly.

There are many highly addictive prescription medications that are legally prescribed by doctors or illegally purchased without a prescription. Often, substance use disorders involving these drugs start with a prescription given by a doctor.

As a person becomes dependent on these medications, they may take more than prescribed or need an increasing dosage to feel the same effects.

Opioids are highly addictive pain relievers derived from the poppy plant. They are sometimes called narcotics. It is possible to become addicted to opioids after just a few days of taking the medication as prescribed.