Just imagine yourself in a world of hate and regret. Why did I start? What am I doing? Why can’t I stop? You ask yourself these questions every day, but then the questions pops up in your head. Where can I get some more? All your worries fall down the drain when you take that first dose. You suddenly love it again. You say to yourself I will stop tomorrow one dose won’t hurt, but it does now you are one step closer to being a full blown addict. Addiction is very serious situation to be in, addiction is the uncontrollable use of a mind altering substance or behavior that harms physical, mental and spiritual well being and requires professional help. Being an addict offsets everything you need to be a healthy human being. Heath is the balancing of one’s physical, mental, and spiritual wellbeing but if you start taking drugs your whole health balance is off set. Physical health is any biological function relating to the 13 body systems, mental health is the ability to reason, and spiritual health is how you feel about yourself and interact with the world around you using the greater values of mankind all of these can be offset by only one dose.

Physical health is any biological function relating to the 13 body systems. In class during this unit we watched a video on binge drinking. In the video this showed how addiction changes your physical health and that if you are addicted to drinking and you drink just to get drunk many serious things can happen like your lungs and brain that can be injured badly and can be very fatal. I also learned that even all the steps, “FREE” are also affected by taking drugs. F stands for physical food, while taking drugs your appetite changes and sometimes you don’t eat at all. R stands for physical rest while you take drugs a lot of times the teens do the drugs at night because they do not want their family members to know about it, and then the time they takes to take the drugs cuts into the time they need to sleep and they end up only having a couple of hours of sleep a night. E stands for physical exercise, usually when teens are taking drugs they don’t care about anything but the drugs so they usually drop out of sports and end up getting little to no physical exercise. The last E stands for physical elimination and the people who take drugs don’t really care about there appearance so they don’t shower often and they get sick a lot more due to bad drugs or a disagreement between the drug and the addict/person.

Mental health is the ability to reason. In class we did the sugar activity this showed that drinking or taking drugs can affect your mental health because you had to try and reason with yourself about if you should eat any sugar or not. You had to see whether you where strong enough to tell yourself not to eat any of the sugar. All the steps to mental health, “FREE” where also all affected. F stands for mental food this is off set when the person is taking drugs because they lose focus in school and don’t enjoy reading or writing anymore. R stands for mental rest this is offset by drugs because instead of resting and trying to get distressed they end up taking drugs to get over their stress which makes there addiction worse. E stands for mental exercise this is also affected by drugs because they don’t care about any of the grades they get so they never study or are never prepared for school. The last E stands for mental elimination this is changed because you are not getting any help so the problem keeps on getting worse and worse and then you will never eliminate the problem.

Spiritual health is how you feel about yourself and interact with the world around you using the greater values of mankind. In class we learned about the waterfall effect and how only 2 out of 10 addicts go back to normal this represents spiritual health because it show how addict never feels the way they felt before they started using and you never feel good about yourself and you get mad at yourself for taking drugs in the first place. F stands spiritual food and this change because they feel they have no one to turn to and that they feel they have to keep it a secret from their family. R stands for spiritual rest this changes also because they don’t allow anyone to help then stop. E stands for spiritual exercise because they don’t care about anymore about anybody but the drugs. The last E stands for spiritual elimination this is offset because they are afraid to show their emotions to anybody.

Being an addict does not only affect the person who is the addict but it affects all of the people around them. The addict’s family feels worse than the actual addict themselves they have to live with the worry always in there mind that at any time something can go wrong and the addict can get seriously injured or die from the effects of the drugs. In the book I read, Go Ask Alice the girl is addicted to acid and twice so far she has run away from home, I can only imagine how the parents felt not knowing where their daughter was and if she was ok. In this unit I also learned that each step of addiction puts even more pressure on the family to fix the problem. Usually one f the family members or friends is the one who has to talk the addict into seeking help. Family and friends have to be the support group for the addict or they will see no reason to stop taking the drug.

Over this unit I have learned that there are many serious side affects to taking drugs and that your life can be over within one spit second and it can all happen because you where caught at a week moment and decided to try drugs. I hope that I never get addicted to drugs and I hope I will be strong enough to say no if I come across any pushers in life. I hope that I will always be a healthy human being and never offset ant of the three categories to much.