Substance Use Disorder And Chemical Dependency Essay Sample

Substance use disorder is using one or more psychoactive drugs to lead to dependency or clinical impairment. These drugs like cocaine, methamphetamine and heroine can deteriorate the mental and physical health of the individual and lead. Substance use disorder refers to the more of the individual psychological consequence whereas chemical dependence refers more to the social consequences of the substance use (APA, 2013). America is addicted and if they have not been addicted to alcohol and tobacco they have shown an addiction to illicit drug use. These substance use disorders lead to high healthcare costs.
When new psychoactive compounds are introduced in society there is the potential to abuse them. Many substances that are abused once therapeutic a therapeutic potential. Firstly, by knowing the therapeutic index of the drug will give an idea of how safe it is for the population. Secondly, understanding the primary and secondary of chemical compounds will give an indication of whether this drug is safe or not.

Alcohol and Tobacco vs Illicit Drug Use

Although alcohol and tobacco is legal they are a lot more prevalent than illicit drug use and carry a heavy burden. There is a lot of people that drink alcohol in the United States with nearly 90% reporting that they have had alcohol within their lifetime and 56 report they drank within the month with half of this amount engaging in binge drinking (SAMSA, 2012) . Alcohol is prevalent in our society and it has been although they have tried to stop the drinking by prohibition or restrictive laws it has become an increasing problem enough that 88,000 died of alcohol related illnesses and 1.3 million need treatment for alcohol related illnesses leading to a quite a high economic burden ($223.5 billion) (CDC, 2013; SAMSA, 2013).
Although the number smoking is a lot less at 17.8% of adults the cost 480,000 deaths in the United state per year is nearly the same in economic burden at 300 billion (Xu, 2015 ). According to the CDC illicit substances are used at most by 9.6% of the population. However, as these are illegal the government does not have control of the sale and a one can only estimate the overall prevalence of drug use. Although alcohol and tobacco are legal drugs they still cost the state a lot of money and are the leading cause of preventable deaths above illegal drugs.

Substance Abuse Disorders (SUDs) contribute to the rise in healthcare costs

According to a 2009 report SUD only accounted for 1% of all health care spending with only 24 billion being spent. Interestingly, SUDs do not increase health care costs among older adults. Any costs that affect health care may be from decreased working time or high divorce (Smith, 2011). However, health care should spend more money on detection of people with mental illness as they will be most at risk for SDU (Dickey, 2002). Thus there is a strong correlation between mental illness and substance abuse disorder (RachBeisel, 1999). Likely, a further need is to increase healthcare costs for treating mental illness rather than SUDs directly.

Lethal doses are used to calculate the therapeutic index of a drug relating to SUD

Many drugs are abused as there may be therapeutic value but taken in much heavier quantities creates a toxic effect. More understanding for drug prescribers needs to be taken care to determine where that therapeutic index lies. The therapeutic index is the amount that causes the therapeutic effect compared to the amount that causes toxicity (Muller, 2012). Originally, the therapeutic index was done using laboratory animals to see the lethal dose over the effective dose 50% of the time. In humans it is calculated using the therapeutic dose over the effective dose for 50% of the population. Depending the on the drug and its target there might be significant difference in these values. For example tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) has a therapeutic index of 33,300:1 meaning it can be taken in large quantities without reaching an effective or lethal dose. Interestingly, alcohol on the other hand has a therapeutic index of 15:1 (Gable, 2004).
Drug companies and the Food and Drug administration need to take care on how to effectively. Rather than the therapeutic index they might use the safety ratio to describe drugs that are used for non-therapeutic purposes like recreational uses. In this case the safety ratio might help to determine whether someone is using too much to warrant SUD depending on the drug (Gable, 2004).

Prime and side effects of chemical compounds relating to SUD.

A side effect the effect that could be therapeutic or adverse to the prime effect. It is commonly associated with an adverse or undesired effect like drowsiness. However, some of these are more severe with people that are SUDs. Although some drugs may reward their reward center other parts of their body might be affected like their immune system, decision making and memory. However, the prime effect is the only thing people with SUD may care about and these other parts of their body become affected nonetheless.

References

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