Remember that the reasons for drug or alcohol use are complex, and there would often be more than one reason why people are using. These reasons can be construed as ‘positive’ or ‘negative’. If you are a professional working with a young person using drugs, your interpretation of their use could impact on your identification of their substance related needs.
The following reasons for drug/alcohol use are taken from flip charts containing brainstorms or thought showers carried out during recently held training sessions. As with most thought showers, no comment about specific items is given.
Explore the concept of universal needs, and read about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs.
Why do people start using alcohol and illicit drugs?
- Accidental.
- Anxiety.
- Availability.
- Because it’s daring.
- Because it’s fun
- Because peers are using.
- Because they are illegal.
- Because they want to!
- Because you’ve heard it’s good.
- Blot out problems.
- Boredom.
- Born dependant.
- Brought up in drug culture.
- Buzz.
- Celebration.
- Cheap form of entertainment.
- Compliments food, e.g. wine.
- Conditioning.
- Confidence builder.
- Contraception.
- Cultural/cultural influence/hereditary.
- Curiosity.
- Depression.
- Desensitised to one – start on another.
- De-stressor.
- Don’t have enough strategies to deal with problems without drugs.
- Don’t know any better.
- Drown their sorrows.
- Effect.
- Enhance performance – sport, sex, study, work.
- Escapism.
- Experimentation.
- Family, family history, environment factors.
- Fashionable, trend, trendy.
- Forbidden fruit.
- Forced dependency, e.g. baby in womb.
- Freebies.
- Genetic vulnerability.
- Glamour/romance/excitement
- Health.
- High self esteem.
- Injury.
- Isolation.
- Lack of knowledge or understanding of risks and dangers.
- Life circumstances/experiences.
- Low self esteem.
- Maintaining standards.
- Male bonding.
- Marketing/advertisements.
- Medicinal.
- Mistake.
- Pain relief.
- Parental drug use.
- Peer pressure.
- Performance enhancing.
- Personality.
- Pleasure.
- Pleasure.
- Quick fix to problems.
- Rebellion.
- Recreational activity.
- Reduce pain.
- Risk taking.
- Sheer boredom.
- Shift work.
- Social reasons, meeting people.
- Spiked – unknowingly using.
- Sports use.
- Stress and bereavement.
- Studying, e.g. trying to keep awake whilst cramming.
- Thinking that they won’t become addicted.
- To boost self esteem, e.g. anabolic steroid use to increase body mass.
- To get high, to get low…
- To help relax.
- To know what it is like.
- To stimulate thinking, e.g. small amounts of cannabis.
- Vulnerability to drug use.
- Wanting to be in control.
- Weight loss, weight gain.
Explore the concept of universal needs, and read about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Need
