The facts about drugs

I have now been commissioned by my publisher to write a second book, this time on drug counselling. I am currently writing about how it is important for the drug counsellor to have the facts about drug use. Whilst this seems like a fairly simple and rudimentary task it is surprisingly difficult.

One reason for this is that drugs are inevitably a political issue and that means governments will present the facts on drugs in a way which suits their current political need. This extends to the official health information on drugs. Most commonly they tell the truth but they don’t tell the whole truth.



The following comes from a website of the Government of Western Australia - Drug and Alcohol Office.

It provides variety of information including the possible effects of various drugs. Below is what it presents as the list of the possible effects of cannabis. This list is what one usually finds in government presented facts on cannabis. It is presented in this order in the website.

loss of concentration
impaired balance
loss of inhibitions
reduced coordination
feeling of wellbeing
increased heart rate
reddened eyes
increased appetite
talkativeness
tunnel awareness - where a person focuses their awareness on one thing
confusion
restlessness
detachment from reality
excitement
hallucinations
anxiety
panic attacks
respiratory problems
mental health problems in those who are vulnerable
bronchitis
lung cancer
decreased concentration
decreased memory and learning abilities
dependence
interference with sexual drive and hormone production
mental health problems in those who are vulnerable



This list presents the effects of cannabis as a very undesirable thing. If this list was accurate who would ever spend their hard earned money to get such effects. Who would ever voluntarily engage in an illegal activity to get such effects. Yet one third of the entire adult population of Australia has done precisely that, engaged in the illegal activity of smoking marijuana. It cannot be as bad as this list suggests.

It does not present the true picture even though it does include all the facts. Yet they are presented in such a way to give a misleading picture and hence my point that drug counsellors can find it hard to get the true picture on the facts about drugs. This list has a political agenda behind it because drugs as I said before are always a political issue.

The reason why so many people have used marijuana is because of effect number five - feeling of wellbeing. The way it is stated and how it is hidden in the list gives a false picture of the effects.



If they were going to give a true picture of the effects of cannabis at the top of the list they would say - The vast majority of users will get the effect where the cannabis makes them feel really, really, really good. Clearly this is very different from it being included as the fifth effect and simply put as, a feeling of well being.

A government website could never be so candid because there would be an outcry from various groups saying such a statement encourages cannabis use. That may or may not be true. However the point at hand is this demonstrates how hard it is to get the true picture on the facts of drugs. Those engaged in drug counselling have to negotiate the various political agendas on both sides of the fence to get accurate information which obviously the drug counsellor must have.

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Why are some drugs legal and others not?

I bought a new book the other day on addictions counselling. It is quite good and has some useful information in it. It is the usual sort of thing reflecting mainstream thinking on the topic at the moment. In chapter two it makes a statement that one would not uncommonly find in such a document.

“Contrary to popular belief, most people who use substances do so in ways that cause them relatively little harm”
(end quote).

Why would this be so? Not that it causes relatively little harm but that it would be contrary to popular belief. Why would the wider community have a contrary belief to this?

There are a number of reasons for this which in part answer the question which is the title of this paper. The Australian Psychological Society (APS) has done a position paper on substance use. Now the guys that put these position papers together hard nosed MFs, who eat, sleep and s**t science. You can be sure they know the area very well, they are relatively free of any political pressure so you are going to get a pretty good statement about the science of the area under investigation.

To quote them:

“In Australian history, laws regarding the legality or illegality of certain drugs have been politically driven, and had little to do with the level of use or possible harms that the substances themselves might cause.” (p3)



This creates a problem for government because they say to the public that they are making some drugs illegal because they are dangerous to people’s health. They profess that it is a health issue and what they are doing is for the good of the public. Unfortunately this is not so. They are doing it at least in part for their own political well-being not for the good of the public.

To sell this to the public they then have to set about demonising illegal drugs. They have to exaggerate the dangers thus trying to convince the public that they are acting for their well-being and not for their own political survival.

Thus they demonise illegal drugs in all sorts of ways and hence one ends up with the contrary belief in the wider community that I mentioned earlier. The general public believe illegal drugs are much more dangerous than they actually are and the government has made them illegal to protect us.



From a pure lethality point of view consider this chart below. This was put together by two psychologists who work at Liverpool University in the UK. They looked at the official causes of death through the 1990s and then calculated the risk of death per 100,000 people. They came up with a chart that shows which things are risky for us and which things are less risky for us. Included in it are various drugs.

Very high risk
Tobacco, methadone, injecting drug use, BASE jumping, grand prix racing, cancer, heart disease, space travel

Quite high risk
Heroin, Morphine, barbiturates, alcohol, hang gliding, parachuting, motorbike racing, sudden infant death, working in mining, asbestos poisoning, strokes, prostrate cancer, shaking of babies, off shore oil work

Medium risk
Solvents, benzodiazepines, motor sports, water sports canoeing, diabetes, skin cancer, influenza, suicide, giving birth, helicopter travel, liposuction, working in farming, being in police custody, working in construction

Quite low risk
Ecstasy, MDMA, speed, cocaine, contraception pill, GBH, fighting sports, snow sports soccer & rugby, Asthma, AIDS. meningitis, cervical cancer, food poisoning, air travel, being murdered, chocking on food, electrocution, drowning, passive smoking, factory work

Very low risk
LSD, magic mushrooms, viagra, fair ground rides, swimming, riding sports, food allergies, syphilis, malaria, appendicitis, pedestrian crossings, clothes catching fire, falling out of bed, vaccination, abortion, storms, terrorism

Extremely low risk
Marijuana, cannabis resin, indoor sports, playgrounds, peanut allergy, measles, insect stings, copulation, starvation, dogs, lightening, nuclear radiation, police shootings

Negligible risk
Caffeine, nitrous oxide, ketamine, computer games, masturbation, small pox, leprosy, sharks, cats, meteorites, executions, volcanoes




If the government was acting purely for the health of the community it would change the laws on which drugs were illegal. It would make tobacco and alcohol illegal and make marijuana, LSD and ecstacy legal. There is as much chance of dying from ecstacy as there is from choking to death on your dinner or being blown up in a plane by a terrorist. In addition as far as drugs go marijuana is the safest drug you are going to get.

Then some will argue that marijuana may not kill you but it can make you go crazy with a cannabis induced psychosis. Unfortunately as time rolls on the science has simply not backed up this hypothesis. Yes it is very unwise for a person with a propensity for psychotic symptoms to use marijuana and the vast majority of marijuana users will suffer no mental health problems at all. Hence back to the original quote from my newly purchased addictions counselling book and the APS position paper.

Is a government going to make such legislative changes with illegal drugs? I don’t think so. If they did they wouldn’t be in government for very long which is why they have to exaggerate the dangers of illegal drugs and thus mislead the public in this way. Pretend to act for the good of the public when they are actually acting for their own political survival.

However despite all the politics this does raise some interesting questions for the drug counsellor and indeed parents of children who may use drugs. Does a drug counsellor (or parent) use scare tactics with the client (child).





One way to try and stop a person using drugs is to make such a thing very scary for them. Get them to believe that drugs are much more dangerous than they actually are so they get scared and don’t use. Commonly known as scare tactics.

To do this you have to lie to them even if only lying by omission. Is it OK and therapeutic for a counsellor to lie to a client? Most would argue no. To my mind you have to tell the drug user the truth even when you don’t like what the truth is.

If you tell them that marijuana can make people go crazy the first thing they will do is make their own observations. With the vast majority of marijuana users they will think - “Well I have smoked marijuana and I haven’t gone crazy”. Then they will look around at all their marijuana using friends and see that none of them have not gone crazy as well. After making these observations what is the drug user going to think - “My counsellor is lying to me”, as indeed he is.

As a result trust is broken, the therapeutic relationship is damaged and the counselling suffers, at times significantly. Besides this most drug users have heard it all before anyway. Their parents, teachers, the police, the press, the government and drug counsellors have all exaggerated the dangers of drugs to them many times before. So if you, the current drug counsellor comes along and tells the user the truth and the WHOLE truth they are going to be surprised and maybe even shocked by such a transaction from you. Thus the therapeutic relationship is placed on a much more robust footing and the drug counselling is more likely to be successful.


If you lie to the teenager can you expect them to tell you all of what they are doing?

In particular they are more likely to be truthful with you about what they are doing and why they are doing it. Can you really expect a client to be truthful with you, the counsellor, when you are lying to them in the first place. If you lie to them you have to expect them to lie back to you.

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Cannabis and self medication.

Four types of drug use are commonly cited.

Experimental use

Recreational use

Symptomatic use

Dependent use

Symptomatic use is when the person uses the licit or illicit drug so as to solve a problem or treat a painful symptom. They discover that by using a certain drug they feel better because it treats a symptom. For instance heroin is an opiate. It is a pain killer. What better way to deal with your pain than to ‘kill’ it.

A person may have grown up in an abusive home and as a consequence they suffer pervasive depression and anxiety through their life. One day they try heroin and discover that that it makes them feel better because it gets rid of their depression and anxiety. So they try it again and obtain the same result. Thus they become a regular user of heroin because it alleviates their pain. This is sometimes called self medication. That is the person uses the drug to self medicate so as to ‘treat’ the symptom.

There is one type of self medicating that I have noticed over the years. These people use marijuana to self medicate. I would not say that it is a large group but you do come across them from time to time. This has recently been highlighted for me because I am working with a man where this type of drug use is quite obvious.

Marijuana for some people is effective in dealing with adulthood ADD or ADHD. I can’t say if it is for children as most people don’t start using cannabis until well into their teens. These people report that when they stop using they start to display the classic symptoms of ADD. The lack of focus, disorganisation, hyperactivity, insomnia and so forth. When they use marijuana the symptoms can subside significantly.

As a result of this they develop a particular pattern of use. It is different from the recreational user where the goal is to get stoned and experience the euphoria of the marijuana. This persons use is very intermittent. The cannabis user to self medicate for ADD uses much more consistently throughout the day and day after day.

The first use often occurs early in the day and then there is semi regular use throughout the day. This person does not get really stoned because they are continually half stoned all the time. Being continually stoned becomes their normality and they can function better due to the reduction of ADD symptoms. This is quite a different pattern of use compared to the recreational cannabis user.

Now one would usually say that the solution is obvious. This person needs to go to a psychiatrist, have a correct diagnosis of ADD made and then prescribed the appropriate ADD medication. Unfortunately it is not that simple.

Some have even done this but found that medications like dexamphetamines are not as effective. From what I have heard reported, marijuana can be a very effective treatment for the ADD symptoms. Just because its illegal is not a reason to stop in many a users mind.

Secondly, this type of marijuana user must have good connections in the drug scene. They have established a consistent supply over a long period of time. Now one thing you do not want to do when working with a drug user is introduce them to yet another drug, whether it is legal or not. Especially a drug like dexamphetamine which is very saleable in the drug subculture and can be used to make some good money.

The solution to this type of cannabis user is a difficult one indeed. I have yet to find a good one really. Maybe some other management skills for their ADD symptoms could help and just learning to live with it.

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