Substance Abuse Pros And Cons

When a person is going through stressful situations, such as family, work, or financial problems, sometimes the easiest route to take is indulging in small rewarding things. These things can be safe, like enjoying a piece of chocolate cake, or life changing, such as partaking in recreational illegal substance use. In addition, substance use (is a dependence on a legal or illegal drug or medication) as a disease (a disorder of structure or function in a human, animal, or plant, especially one that produces specific signs or symptoms or affect a specific location) or choice has been a very controversial topic, creating a lot of debate among people and researchers. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, in 2013 “it was projected that 24.6 million people ages 12 and over used
In previous research, it has been stated that “substance use is considered a disease, because it alters the brain functioning patterns. That is, the CNS is involved in a person’s behavior” If this is true, other activities, such as reading should be a disease due to the brain functioning differences between people who read and those who don’t (Branch, 2011).
Substance use has been considered a brain disease, because there is a predisposition to addiction. Unquestionably, an individual does not possess compulsive behavior due to a genetic predisposition and substance use addiction. This is, because there is no direct relationship between compulsion and predisposition (Heyman, 2013). A previous study found a steep discounting, which refers to the behavior of choosing short-term rewards, despite the having the possibility of having a bigger reward in the long-term. This is related to substances, such as alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use, and the amount experimentation with the substances. Delay discounting and substance use disorder are