Drugs

Heroin is a highly addictive opioid. It is made from naturally occurring morphine extracted from latex sap in opium poppy seeds. Heroin is one of the most challenging drugs to quit and is responsible for over 70 000 overdose deaths every year in the United States alone. Find out more about how heroin is made,...

The death rate from drug overdoses is climbing across the globe at an alarming rate. A significant proportion of these deaths are linked to synthetic opioids abuse. In 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States reported deaths linked to synthetic opioid overdoses (excluding methadone) had quadrupled since 1999. Not all...

Let’s be honest. Many of us still have a prejudiced idea of what an “addict looks like” or what type of background they come from. So it may come as a complete shock when your son or daughter is diagnosed with an active addiction. Your child came from a good home, had a happy childhood...

The four hardest drugs to quit change the brain’s chemical structure by messing with the production and absorption of dopamine or endorphins. Addiction to these drugs disrupts regions in the brain that are responsible for reward, motivation, learning, judgement and memory. Changes to your brain can become fixed with regular use of the substance as...

For many, it’s hard to wrap your mind around the fact that drug addiction is classified as a mental illness. Many non-addicts view it as something that the person has only “himself or herself to blame”. Addicts do indeed blame themselves, their family, their work or their social circumstances. Overcoming shame and guilt is part...

Every year, the number of college students misusing “study drugs” is increasing. In fact, prescription drug abuse is the fastest growing drug problem in the United States after alcohol and marijuana. So called study drugs are prescription stimulants that were approved by the FDA to treat conditions such as ADD, ADHD and narcolepsy; yet widespread...

Symptoms of withdrawal may occur when you abruptly stop using alcohol or a drug that you’ve developed a physical and mental dependence on over time. The intensity of withdrawal symptoms and how long they last vary depending on the type of drug or how heavy a drinker you are as well as biological make-up. Typical...

Drug abuse can cause a variety of physical disorders and have a negative impact on your mental, behavioural, social and emotional wellbeing.

A bad night's sleep every now and then is fine. But when a bad night, turns into a bad week, turns into a bad month. Sleep deprivation starts to take over our lives. We feel tired all day, our work performance drops and we're grouchy with our family.

They call ecstasy the ‘love drug’ because it amps up your sensations and people using it feel things at a heightened level; colours, sound and touch. It’s great if you’re clubbing or at a manic music concert because you lose all your inhibitions and can dance and rave all night long. And sex on ecstasy is mind-blowing. But what they don’t tell you is ecstasy also causes deep depression, confusion, severe anxiety, paranoia and other very scary psychotic episodes. It’s a synthetic drug and the short burst of exhilaration on ecstasy doesn’t last anywhere as long as the depressed slump you go into after your crazy night out.

That’s a question many people are asking now that dagga is legal for private use in South Africa. There were a lot of funny memes doing the rounds on social media when the news broke in September 2018 but the bigger debate is, “is South Africa courting the devil”? Marijuana, weed, cannabis, dope, dagga… whatever you call it, tends to be used as a social drug and it’s seen as a ‘soft drug’. Supposedly, it’s harmless and not addictive, and certainly less harmful than hardtack alcohol and less addictive than cigarettes. Is it? Or is it a gateway drug that leads to harder and more destructive drug addiction?