Drugs and Society 6,7,8

Throughout chapters six, seven, and eight I learned that majority of people who abuse CNS depressants are already dependent on other drugs. They combine depressants with alcohol and heroin, and if you keep using the CNS depressants you can build a tolerance and it will lead to dependence. I also learned that alcohol is the most commonly used drug in the world. I enjoyed reading these chapters and coming to the conclusion of how opinionated people are about the use of alcohol, weather its including teens and under age drinking or different stereotypes with drinking involving culture beliefs. I learned peoples opinions on underage drinking and the drinking age during the discussion period! I find the statics interesting that 75% of students who consume alcohol, 50% of them have been drunk before they even graduate high school. I also learned how much of your body is really damaged when alcohol enters your body. Not only does it effect your liver and kidneys, but it also effects your endocrine system and cardiovascular system. There are so many different types of alcoholic's, I didn't think there are as many terms as there actually are... Its so much more complex to treat someone with alcoholism because of both physical withdrawal and denial.

New additions to my vocabulary!!

Diuretic: A drug or substance that increases the production of urine. -- I didn't know you can get dehydrated from alcohols diuretic action!

Alcoholic Cardiomyopathy: Congestive heart failure due to the replacement of heart muscle with a fat and fiber. -- This made me understand the heart failure process from drinking too much alcohol.


I feel like my questions are improving in this module but my grades are not. Maybe I don't fully understand how the discussion works. I really do put a lot of effort into the discussions but then I see the score I got and I get discouraged, and I don't want to do it anymore. As I said the past two weeks, I will continue to do my best and keep trying until I get it right!

Chapter 3&5 overview

During this learning module I learned about drug use along with the law, and also how the drugs work. I learned about the Pure food and Drug Act on 1906, it wasn't the strongest of acts, but it required manufactures to write on the label about how much alcohol and drugs are in each product and this led to OTC drugs that passed the federal food, drug, and cosmetic Act in 1938. Also the demand reduction aimed to reduce the overall demand for drugs by working with kids and teaching them the negatives about drugs. In chapter five, I learned about the placebo effect. Placebo means " I shall please" in Latin. A placebo substance can have a very powerful outcome on a person. There are two kinds of drug dependencies, psychical and psychological. Psychical is when you keep depending on the drug and when you don't have the drug you will feel the complete opposite through the withdrawal stages. Where psychological is a feeling of satisfaction and it creates a positive effect on your brain, like your living in a utopia.
Prior to learning this content two terms that I didn't know or I wasn't clear about would be pharmacokinetics, and Thalidomide.

Pharmacokinetics: The study of factors that influence the distribution and concentration of drugs in the body.-- depending on how the drug is formed depends on how fast the drug enters the blood stream.

Thalidomide: A sedative drug that, when used during pregnancy, can cause severe development damage to a fetus. -- Using this drug can cause your baby to have impaired development with arms or legs, this is known as phocomelia.

In this learning module I feel like I did better than last week. I posted my question on time and I feel like I'm doing better with responding to peoples questions in the discussion area. I do feel like I put in the time and effort into this module but there is always room for improvement. I'm still working on how to correctly post a question for the discussions, and I feel like I will get the hang of it next time, I just need to put in more time and effort. But other than that I feel like I'm doing a good job!