Introduction
Psychoactive substances surround us everywhere, including our places of living, stores, malls, and streets. Everyone faced or consumed one of the psychoactive substances at least once in their lives. Most of them are extremely dangerous long-term and could cause a lot of damage, but remain a big part of many lives. Today we will look at this topic from my perspective.
Types of PAS
A psychoactive substance is any substance that, when introduced into the human body, can change the mood, behavior, cognition, perception, and motor functions. They are called psychotropics, and the way they work is that they affect the way the brain works. Most of the time, psychoactive substances are referred to as “drugs,” but many products that we consume regularly are psychoactive as well. PAS can be divided into three groups: alcohol, drugs, and non-narcotic substances, and every one of these substances can cause addiction. Non-narcotic psychotropics can have a significant impact on a person’s health. Substances like coffee, tea, sedatives, sleeping pills, gas, and even glue in big amounts are dangerous for people. One of the common components of coffee, tea, and other psychoactive substances is caffeine. Caffeine weakens the effect of opiates and hypnotics and increases the reflex excitability of the spinal cord, cardiac activity increases, and the heart beats faster. Hypnotics do the exact opposite, they enhance and concentrate the processes of inhibition in the cerebral cortex and weaken excitation in the central nervous system.
My Education About PAS
I consider myself well-informed about psychoactive substances and how they affect people’s bodies and minds. Looking back, I see how I got all information about PAS from many different sources. However, I learned most of the information I know mainly on the internet and other modern sources. Alcohol is not a prohibited subject for conversation in my family, but we barely talked about it with my parents. I can say the same about any psychotropics, which is a common problem in many families. Most of the time, parents do not tell their children real grounded reasons to be prudent and only tell them not to use drugs or smoke. Something I experienced directly is non-narcotic psychoactive substances, such as coffee, Puer tea, and sedatives. It was interesting to discover how they work after I felt how it affected me. I read several articles online and found everything I wanted to know. Now I am careful with everything I eat, drink, or consume and the amount of it.
One of the main ways I learned the information I know is through observational learning. Many children and teenagers nowadays learn about new things in their lives through the internet or from their friends, classmates, or anyone they contact on the regular basis. Unfortunately, drugs are also something teenagers meet for the first time in school, as well as marijuana, alcohol, and nicotine.
Conclusion
Psychotropics have a massive influence on our world and our minds. Many people choose this way consciously, but a larger number of people do not control it because of addiction. In my personal opinion, even though humanity got used to it, the world could revise its opinion about psychotropics. For many years society has lived without coffee, sleeping pills, drugs, and any of those different substances. That is why we need to be careful with every type of psychoactive substance, control ourselves and try to be healthy as hard as possible.