October 25, 2023 | By devevon

Signs of Drug Use and Addiction How To Tell If Someone Is On Drugs

A trained provider can help guide you to the treatment you need. If the drug fulfills a valuable need, you may find yourself increasingly relying on it. You may take illegal drugs to calm or energize yourself or make you more confident. You may start abusing prescription drugs to relieve pain, cope with panic attacks, or signs of drug use improve concentration at school or work. If you are using drugs to fill a void in your life, you’re more at risk of crossing the line from casual drug use to drug abuse and addiction. To maintain a healthy balance in your life, you need to have positive experiences and feel good about your life without any drug use.

• Independent of the addictive process, problems can also develop from the taking of any chemical substance.
• Substances affect your brain, especially the reward center of your brain.
• Increased irritability, mood swings, and signs of depression can all signal a problem.

Substance Misuse and Mental Health

Experts identify at least five early warning signs of addiction. • Developing the unpleasant physiologic symptoms of withdrawal—shakiness, sweating, queasiness or vomiting, headache—when unable to take the substance. Withdrawal is a highly variable sign of addiction; it occurs with use of some drugs (alcohol, for example) but not others (cocaine); however, it often drives continuing use. Withdrawal can require medical treatment when a person abruptly stops heavy substance use.

Effect on Your Brain

Healthcare providers may recommend cognitive and behavioral therapies alone or in combination with medications. Over time, the substances change your brain chemistry, and you become desensitized to their effects. About 20% of people in the U.S. who have depression or an anxiety disorder also have a substance use disorder. People are psychologically dependent when a drug is so central to their thoughts, emotions and activities that the need to continue its use becomes a craving or compulsion despite negative consequences.

Warning signs that a friend or loved one is abusing drugs

Sometimes these moments of togetherness will prompt a teen to share more about their lives. Certainly, not every warning sign on these lists indicates a teen is doing drugs, but teens who do use drugs do many of the things on these lists. Kids using drugs also can display more extreme school-related issues as well. For instance, if you get reports they are sleeping in class, defying authority, breaking rules, or skipping class, you should investigate. Even failing to inform you of teacher meetings, open houses, and other important school activities could be a sign they are trying to hide something.

Causes and risk factors

Experiencing legal trouble, such as arrests for disorderly conduct, driving under the influence, or stealing to support a drug habit. Using drugs under dangerous conditions or taking risks while high, such as driving while on drugs, using dirty needles, or having unprotected sex. People who are pressured into treatment by their family, employer, or the legal system are just as likely to benefit as those who choose to enter treatment on their own. As they sober up and their thinking clears, many formerly resistant addicts decide they want to change. Do not dispose of medications by flushing them down the toilet or pouring them down the sink. Medications can be crushed and mixed into the trash (to keep them away from children and pets) or returned to your local pharmacy or community drug take-back program.

• Even failing to inform you of teacher meetings, open houses, and other important school activities could be a sign they are trying to hide something.
• Addiction also is different from physical dependence or tolerance.
• You break promises to yourself that you will stop using—a source of self-contempt that has a way of perpetuating addiction by needing relief in the high of substance use.
• We offer best-in-class care for substance use disorder and co-occurring mental health disorders, treating the whole patient and setting them up for a lifetime of success.

• Withdrawal symptoms occur when drug use is abruptly stopped or the dosage is sharply diminished.
• Learning to recognize the physical or behavioral signs of drug use can help to prevent the problem from progressing further.
• These changes can remain long after you stop using the drug.
• Unfortunately, this has the effect of passively enabling the unhealthy behaviors.
• Overall, 75% of heroin users report that the first opioid they took was a prescription drug.

How does substance use disorder develop?