Overview

1. Go to BlueLight Discussion Forums

   This is a site where addicted individuals share information about drugs of abuse including misuse of many prescription drugs. 
   https://www.bluelight.org/xf/forums/

2. Browse, research a recreational or prescription drug.

3. Post your findings in a brief summary. (200-300 words).

4. What is “the word on the street?”

5. Did anything about this surprise you?

No references are required; APA format not required. Appropriate spelling and grammar are required. Turnitin assignment. 

NOTE: Attached, you will find a copy of a classmate assignment example, and you may use its content and data as a reference to complete my assignment. TURNITIN Assignment (No plagiarism)

Background: I live in South Florida, I am currently enrolled in the Psych Mental Health Practitioner Program, I am a Registered Nurse, I work in a Psychiatric Hospital. 

1

EXPLORATION OF BLUELIGHT 4

NU 643 – Advanced Psychopharmacology

Exploration of Blue light.

According to Blue Light Discussion Forum findings, recreational drugs such as cocaine are hazardous and have adverse health effects, and people should avoid them. People find themselves using cocaine after quitting opiates that are usually prescribed by doctors. They tend to fake as much sickness as possible so they could find a new vice. When trying a new drug to change the lifestyle, people usually feel that the new drug, for instance, cocaine, is better than the opiates. The habit and perception lead to addiction or dependence on the new substance. Cocaine abuse is associated with panic attacks. Therefore, people tend to look for other options that would help reduce these symptoms. Also, a cocaine addiction escalates the addiction to different recreational drugs such as benzos. The combination of recreational drugs also changes individuals’ behaviors since they would do anything to access drugs due to addiction (Zhukovsky et al., 2019). Moreover, cocaine abuse with benzo has an adverse impact on health as it strains the heart and the individual’s body. Finally, cocaine abuse can lead an individual to death, jail, or rehab, none of which an average person would want.

The words on the streets imply that cocaine is expensive, and it is ‘garbage.’ The drug makes people bankrupt due to the addiction, making someone not stop wanting it despite its high cost in the market. The drug also costs people social life. When people are too addicted to cocaine, they tend to focus on the substance, forgetting their house’s responsibilities. The words on the street depict how most marriages have been affected through cocaine addiction (Marchi et al., 2017). More so, cocaine addiction also cost people their jobs and career. Cocaine also affects the mental and physical health status of an individual. Consuming too much coke daily combined with anxiety, the anxiety of stemming from having to deal with coke to support the habit is just too rough. Consequently, the words on the streets state that cocaine makes people behave like manic psychos.

As a Psychiatric nurse, most things in this discussion forum have surprised me. The first thing that has surprised me is how people are willing to fake their illnesses to access recreational drugs. It is a death wish, and people seem to ignore the impact of these addictive drugs. Despite knowing the drugs’ adverse effects on their health, people are still willing to go the extra mile to access these drugs. However, at some point, I am not surprised by some of these posts. For instance, I have seen the adverse impact of cocaine on people’s lives. Cocaine works by sending high dopamine levels, a natural chemical messenger in our bodies, into the brain’s parts that control pleasure (Wang et al., 2019). Cocaine drug has a short-term effect such as extreme happiness, headaches, lung damage, and heart attack. More so, I am aware that cocaine is detrimental both for a person’s mental and physical status. The abuse of cocaine has affected most people financially due to the expensiveness of the drug. Additionally, cocaine abuse destroys families, so; I am not surprised by some of these posts. Before deciding to abuse cocaine, individuals should seek advice from websites such as Blue Light discussions.

References

Marchi, N. C., Scherer, J. N., Pachado, M. P., Guimaraes, L. S., Siegmund, G., de Castro, M. N.,… & Pechansky, F. (2017). Crack-cocaine users have less family cohesion than alcohol users. Brazilian Journal of Psychiatry, 39(4), 346-351.

Wang, G. J., Wiers, C. E., Shumay, E., Tomasi, D., Yuan, K., Wong, C. T., … & Volkow, N. D. (2019). Expectation effects on brain dopamine responses to methylphenidate in cocaine use disorder. Translational psychiatry, 9(1), 1-11.

Zhukovsky, P., Puaud, M., Jupp, B., Sala-Bayo, J., Alsiö, J., Xia, J., … & Everitt, B. J. (2019). Withdrawal from escalated cocaine self-administration impairs reversal learning by disrupting the effects of negative feedback on reward exploitation: a behavioral and computational analysis. Neuropsychopharmacology, 44(13), 2163-2173.