Understanding Drug Consumption: Theories and Psychological Factors
Theories of Drug Consumption
The Compulsive Desire for Drugs
The compulsive desire to consume drugs stems from the consumer’s experience with the drug. A personality profile is often associated with prior drug dependence, potentially acting as a catalyst once the individual comes into contact with the substance.
- Szazs: Chemical aspects of biological changes, ceremonial aspects of these changes, and biological influences on the psyche.
- Laplanche: Every drug user has pre-existing ideas about drugs and drug addiction, giving this desire similar characteristics across addicts.
The Subject’s Relationship with the Drug
This involves the constitution of the desire to consume.
- DSM-IV: Chemical structure and drug dependence-producing agents in terms of biological changes.
- Psychoanalysis: The subject as a dependence-producing agent as a function of the unconscious meaning attributed to the drug experience.
Decrease of Displeasure and Pursuit of Pleasure
Drugs can lead to the disappearance of pain, the appearance of bliss, or experiences like a “flash” (an initial mystical experience of suffering).
Continuation of Consumption
The initial pleasure is often more important than the alleviation of suffering. Rado suggests that if the substance and doses are well-chosen, the first, pleasant effect is the most impressive event of its kind in the entire course of the disease. Quincey noted that his pains had vanished and were now commonplace to his eyes.
Motivations for Consumption
- Coping Mechanism: Used to deal with any kind of suffering.
- Pleasure Seeking: Consumed for any pleasure.
- Biological Changes: Awareness of the effects of the substance on the body.
Mental Processes
Propagation
This marks the start of consumer motivation and problematic consumption. Changes in the operation of a motivational system will determine others.
Defensive Utilization
Users experience a pleasant state, both consciously and unconsciously, leading to compensatory satisfaction within a drugged context.
The Drugged Context
This context often does not correspond to reality. The myth about withdrawal, and the fear of suffering, acts as an enhancer of consumption, regardless of whether the individual suffers from the disorder or not. The relationship between the subject and the drugged context involves the constitution of the encoder system of desire to use.
Focus
The attitude the subject takes with the drug is key. Clinical experience shows that the desire to consume, symptoms, and patterns of consumption (large quantities with great frequency) are important. Much time is devoted to consumption, leading to changes in personal behavior, social life, and work. Intentionality, expression, and behavioral coding of consumer desire are determined by how the subject interprets and reacts to it.
Self Before the Emergence of the Desire to Consume
Feelings of impotence and incapacity often arise. The individual experiences an intense desire to consume and feels it is impossible to fight.
Interpretation of Desire
This involves the junkie and the drugged context, the drug addict’s family, and health personnel.
The Causes of the Desire to Consume and the Meaning of the Drug Experience
Types of suffering include depression and anxiety of separation. A number of conditions, such as anxiety with sexual and/or aggressive desires, and persecutory anxieties, can also contribute.
Bleichmar’s Perspective
Drug dependence can mask the suffering generated by desires and anxieties, activating motivational systems of psychic functioning, narcissistic desires and anxieties, desires and anxieties of the sensual-sexual system, attachment, and related psychobiological regulation.