Drogas
Welcome to the Institute for Drugs and Drug Addiction Page
This isn’t going to be a fun one, but I am willing to keep this site going. However, in the past, this page was all about drug addicts and the drugs they consume, and how to change your life today by seeking help and treatment as soon as possible.
Parents and Educators
There are a number of queries that can make this site. In ‘Infodrogas‘ can find information on substances, some myths about drug use and reasons that may lead to their consumption. You can also find some useful tips that can help settle the alternatives to deal with issues related to consumption, as well as prevention, treatment, and more..
Our mission together to diminish drug use
- Educar para um futuro livre de drogas
- Mission statement of European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction
- Consuming things for drug-like effect has a centuries-old history
- The structure of National and International agencies with Anti-drug strategies
- Often, Municipalities form partnerships for drug use prevention and treatment
- Some links to Drug Prevention programmes with frameworks and grant funding
- Some general notions with positive statements about treatment and intervention
My life as helping people with addiction
Walking down the street or sitting in a café watching people go about their lives. Each is different from one another and not paying any attention to anything except their own world. Many of these people could be harboring a dark and sad secret called addiction.
Addiction is a word nobody wants to hear on a daily basis because even though most of us, modern humans, are addicted to coffee or chocolate, there are those who struggle with this illness and it involves much more dangerous things. Helping people overcome these problems is a hard but a very rewarding job.
Volunteering for teens and adults
Volunteering is a great opportunity to expand horizons and do something useful with time outside school or work. Working with adults battling, among other things, drug addiction, alcohol addiction, or even addiction to gambling cannot be seen as just a job. It taught me patience and tested me every step of the way. Every now and then we all, the volunteers, hit physical and mental barriers and had to learn to overcome them in order to be there for someone who perhaps had nobody else to talk to.
The hardest group of people to work with is usually teenagers since many volunteers are in the same age group. How to find the right words? Talking to teenagers and young adults about treatment, first of all, is not simple even in the most mundane setting. However, youth centers and shelters where many of these problems are easier to crystallize, it is even harder. On these occasions volunteers lean on each other for physical and moral support.
The idea about talking to young adults in a different situation, meaning, in a school is nothing new. Choosing the right audience is the first step but it doesn’t make it any easier since young adults on many occasions don’t really listen or don’t really pay attention since their young spirit is whispering: “Don’t worry, it’s never going to happen to you”, and so they only hear parts of what the teachers and volunteers are saying.
Perhaps it is easier to talk about addictions if the talker is a teenager as well and either has experienced or is still experiencing the always-lingering effects of addiction. Since teenagers are the most media influenced group, picking out food addiction was a simple solution. Standing in front of them with someone who is suffering from an eating disorder and explaining diets and these other regimens to shedding inches, just as drugs and alcohol or smoking, can become an addiction.
Word after word and these teens open up, speaking out about addiction as a whole and what it means to them. It is a conversation about smoking and possibilities of breast cancer, alcohol and drug-use prevention, and after that, many of these young birds leave the room with a very thoughtful look on their faces. Some time ago, mentioning breast cancer, after everything, wouldn’t have had any reaction but today it makes the girls in the room nod.
Addiction is an illness and without professional help it is very hard to overcome. It is often connected with deep emotional scars and trying to hide them or forget about them. Since the modern world is so hectic, there is no wonder that people sometimes just cannot cope.
It has to be said, every volunteer and profession who works with people battling different addictions, goes home hoping that at least one life will be saved and touched at the end of each passing day. When it happens – it is always overwhelming.
Conclusion
There are many things to take away from this story. First of all, we are all humans. Most humans who have not been lucky in life just need someone to talk to them as an equal. Emotional issues are hard to deal with and should never been taken lightly and this is the seemingly most common sense point people actually forget.
Young adults at schools and colleges can benefit from working in soup kitchens and shelters or youth centers, coming in contact with people less fortunate. It is an experience which cannot be taught any other way.
It has to be said, everything comes with a price. Nobody tells us that when we start but there is always something we take home from each group session, each round-table and each game of chess. We take home both – good and bad things and our coping mechanisms need to be strong, assuring us that addiction is not the way to go.
