Psychoactive Drugs
What are psychoactive drugs? What are the effects of the drugs and what damage can they do to your body. There are many different drugs that are very harmful to you and some of them are marijuana, alcohol, PCP, sniffing, crack/cocaine, heroin, nicotine and methadone. Those are just a few of the hundreds of drugs that are out in the world today. Many of these drugs can kill you or even harm your body severely.
To begin with, marijuana has been a common drug in many countries for thousands of years; there is still no consensus about what it does to the human body. In the United States, millions of dollars and many years have been spent in a search that has not provided all the answers.
Marijuana (pot. Dope, skunk, boom) comes from a weed called hemp, known since ancient times. Scientifically, it is called Cannabis sativa. Marijuana is a complex substance, containing more than 400 different chemicals. When it is smoked, about 2,000 separate chemicals are produced, and many of these do not pass readily through the body. Some are stored in the fatty tissues of the brain, the lungs, and the reproductive organs. Some of the chemicals from the joint stay in the body for four to six weeks.
More is known about how marijuana can affect the lungs than about its effect on other systems of the human body. There are more cancer-causing agents in marijuana smoke than in cigarette smoke. Marijuana smoke may be four times as harmful as cigarette smoke. Smoking one joint is smoking four cigarettes at one time. Marijuana is a drug that people experiment and once the drug makes them feel good, people get hooked on it and they cant live without it. Do you really want to try this drug?
Secondly, in the United States alcohol is the drug having the greatest incidence do abuse, although many people do not think of it as a drug. Alcohol is probably the oldest mood changer, dating back to the early Stone Age. At some times in history, people used it not only for the pleasant feelings it produced but also to put themselves to sleep, or for medical reasons to dull their ability to feel pain.
Low doses of alcohol seem to stimulate the body because they break down normal inhibitions, but alcohol really shows the body down. Relaxed feelings occur with small amounts, but with continued drinking, some people become violent or depressed.