The use of illicit drugs is frequently described using words like addiction and reliance. These phrases are widely used inconsistently and interchangeably, and there are no agreed-upon definitions for them. Because of this, it is challenging to determine how many drug users fit the definitions of addiction or dependence. Addiction often refers to reliance on a certain drug or group of drugs that has grown to the point that it negatively affects the drug user on an individual basis. The phrase implies that a drug addict cannot stop using drugs without suffering negative consequences.
Drug users may have one or both types of reliance, which can be physical or emotional. Drug users who develop physical dependence on their drugs may continue to use them in order to avoid the withdrawal symptoms. They may also develop an emotional dependence on drugs, depending on it, for instance, to get high or to numb pain. The term dependency is preferred over addiction, according to Drug- scope, a UK-based independent center of expertise on drugs, because the latter is associated with unfavorable perceptions of drug usage.
Sociologists have had a big hand in emphasizing the significance of how society reacts to drug use. The classic study Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance by Howard Becker (1963), which drew on the concepts of symbolic interactionism, highlighted the mechanisms by which people become drug users within a deviant subculture. Using the analogy of a career, he demonstrated how the public's perception of people as abnormal and the actions of social control agents, such as the criminal justice system and medical personnel, contributed to the rise in drug use. He suggested that when a drug user receives a stigmatizing label, they react to their new identity.
Drug usage has been subject to sociological examination, which has been useful in opposing the medicalization of supposedly abnormal conduct. The common habit of referring to drug use as a sickness that can only be treated medically has been criticized by sociologists. This strategy has received harsh criticism from feminist sociologists in particular because it ignores the connections between women's disadvantaged status in society and their use of illegal substances.
Bibliography
Becker, H. (2003) Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of
Deviance. Free Press, New York.
Young, J. (1971) The Drugtakers: The Social Meaning
of Drug Use. MacGibbon and Kee, London.