PSYCHOACTIVE DRUGS AS HUMAN'S FRIENDS

“People use drugs, legal and illegal, because their lives are intolerably painful or
dull. They hate their work and find no rest in their leisure. They are estranged from
their families and their neighbors. It should tell us something that in healthy
societies drug use is celebrative, convivial, and occasional, whereas among us it is
lonely, shameful, and addictive. We need drugs, apparently, because we have lost
each other.”
― Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays
In Colombia, drugs have been an affair that had stolen its peace and calm, all
cause the illegality that the government had given to them. Psychoactive involves
too many situations that put a risk on the integrity of the Colombian society, that
because of the consequences that its trade and consume bring to the biological
and social conditions of the human being, cause how it’s known because of their
chemical components, drugs can be aggressive, toxic and even deadly for the
human, besides their social impacts as labor exploitation or the benefits that they
can represent for the armed gangs or criminal drugs that take advantage of the
drugs trade, which is based on, according to the actual context, the illegal
exchange of psychoactive since they have been outlawed. Nevertheless, drugs
can still be attractive to people cause of their effects on the reality perception
altered that its composition can generate, thanks to the artificial process to which
they’re subjected, understanding psychoactive drugs as the substances capable of
“affect the central nervous system and alter a person's mood, thinking and
behavior” Drug Aware (w,d).
In this way, it's evident the harm and the damage that psychoactive drugs bring for
human integrity, however, in spite of the context previously given, this type of
substances aren't as bad as it seems, according to multiple scientific studies, drugs
could bring for the human different type of benefits that can optimize the people's
life quality.
PSYCHOACTIVE AS ENEMIES
As mentioned above, drugs had toxic consequences in human biology, in the wake
of its artificial alteration. To achieve the effects that this kind of substances,
psychoactive must be submitted into a transformation process that let alter the
natural composition of the original ones, this in order to make use of chemicals that
can produce a pleasure feeling or response on humans nervous system, the
chemicals used on its production include acetone, isopropyl acetate, formic acid,
red phosphorus, diethylamide, kerosene, iodine, urea and other more (CICAD,
w,d). It’s evident the alteration that this kid of substances can have in the human
body. As it’s known, some of the chemical used on the making process of drugs
have a high toxic load in their composition, in order that

REFERENCES
CICAD (w,d). Manual: Químicos utilizados en la producción ilícita de drogas. Recovered
from:http://cicad.oas.org/reduccion_oferta/esp/Recursos/Chems/Espchem%20manual
%20revFeb04.doc

Drug Aware (w,d). What are drugs?. Recovered from: https://drugaware.com.au/getting-

the-facts/faqs-ask-a-question/what-are-drugs//#what-is-a-drug