Drug addiction
that cannot be ignored

impulse

Han Li, 16, who came to Beijing from Hebei two years ago to study, feared the midday sun and felt he was better suited to people living in the dark.

His parents, who run a factory in Baoding, Hebei Province, that made plastic bags, saw Han Li as a tall, sensible, obedient child, and left him in the care of his grandmother.

But his parents didn't know that after Han Li came to Beijing, he endured the ups and downs of emotions alone. He has almost lost contact with his past friends, and his only relative, his grandmother, only takes care of his living, eating and drinking. The knots in his heart were difficult to resolve, and his emotions fell into an unprecedented low.

In his coursework, he was most annoyed with chemistry, history was his strength, and in the first exam after transferring to Beijing, he unexpectedly won the first place in the history subject.

This summer, Han Li is about to take the middle school entrance examination. The new semester after the Spring Festival was supposed to be a day of intense exam preparation, but the change also happened the day before the start of school.

In early March, Han Li went to Beijing Anding Hospital at the suggestion and company of a friend, and was finally diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Since both were minors and could not prescribe psychotropic drugs, the doctor informed Han Li's parents to come to the hospital, and they learned of their son's current situation.

On that chaotic night, Han Li had a big fight with his parents, after which he snatched the door out, bought a cough drop pill at the pharmacy, returned home and swallowed the whole bottle in one go, "looking for stimulation to reduce the discomfort in his heart." Grandma Han Li was the first to realize the child's abnormality, and she saw her grandson lying on the bed in a daze, vaguely "saying strange things", so she quickly called Han Li's parents.

A month later, Han Li wrote a comment under the video of An Qi, the owner of the B station UP, recalling the "drug experience" under the impulse: "I myself wanted to alleviate my pain through 'OD', and I lay in bed for a day without moving for the first time. This process is actually very painful, after a week, every day is very trance, 'OD' is really only bad for people, you must take care of your body. ”

“OD”

The "OD" in Han Li's message is an abbreviation for the English "overdose", which translates to overdose. "OD" has become a buzzword in specific teen circles, and a small number of adolescents become mentally paralyzed through overdose, including many drug addicts.

Drugs can be addictive, and this is not a new thing. Opioids extracted from the poppy can be both powerful painkillers and used as drugs. Previously, some media reported on the "little shake" active in the Northeast Disco. "Little shakers" often "start" with cough water, followed by overdoses of certain painkillers, some of whom end up in meth and heroin.

Han Li accidentally learned that a certain cough suppressant had hallucinogenic effects on social platforms, but at the time, he did not know that it was a synthetic morphine derivative.

Angie is a brave girl. In April, she posted a video online about substance abuse experiences and feelings as a witness, trying to persuade people who also abused drugs to get lost.

"After drug abuse, your pleasure threshold changes, the (before) happy things don't make you happy anymore, and after that you only have drugs in your life." She said in the video.

The video garnered more than 400 comments after its release, attracting many people like Han Li who had overdosed experience. Some people left comments with palpitations, after overtaking the drug, they trembled, their heartbeat was fast, headache and insomnia, and finally ended with a feeling of vomiting and weakness in their limbs that lasted for three or four days, and they will definitely not do it a second time; Some people say, never believe in willpower, don't touch what you can't touch.

In the information released by the former State Food and Drug Administration, drug abuse is defined as: repeated and large-scale use of drugs with dependent properties for non-medical purposes, and users become dependent on such drugs (addiction), bringing serious personal health and public health and social problems. Taking Han Li's excessive cough medicine as an example, relevant studies have shown that excessive abuse of the drug will produce confusion, movement disorders, harm to others and self-harm behavior, and in addition to bringing mental and physical damage, overdose even has the risk of death caused by acute drug poisoning.

In the eyes of a small percentage of teenagers, overtaking medication is still a form of self-harm.

Xiaoshun also has the experience of overtaking medication, but she started out just to "hurt herself". She once tried to swallow medicine to commit suicide, but stomach irritation made her vomit most of the swallowed medicine. She once joined the "reopening group" of suicide, where she made a friend and promised each other on their last ride. She still regretted that she hadn't been able to see the friend's farewell message of "asking for medicine" in time, and when she found out and wrote back to the other party, there was no reply.

intervene

In June 2019, Wan Kaihua et al. of Jiangxi Adverse Drug Reaction Monitoring Center published an article in China Pharmacovigilance, introducing that the current intervention methods of drug abuse in China are mainly drug rehabilitation intervention and preventive intervention.

Drug rehabilitation interventions are mainly carried out in specialized drug rehabilitation institutions. Drug rehabilitation institutions will manage drug abusers admitted in stages according to three stages: acute detoxification, rehabilitation and consolidation, so that they can gradually return to normal from body to psychology and integrate with society.

Blocking drug abusers from access to drugs is the first step in drug rehabilitation intervention. In fact, the issue of youth substance abuse has received attention from multiple sectors.

In February 2023, the General Department of the State Food and Drug Administration and other three departments jointly issued a document pointing out that recently, there have been abuse problems of drugs such as compound diphenoxylate tablets, compound tramadol tablets and dextromethorphan oral unilateral preparations in some parts of China, and the abusers are mainly teenagers, seriously endangering the physical and mental health and life safety of the public, especially adolescents.

The circular pointed out that it is necessary to further strictly control the production volume of drugs, strengthen the supervision of drug production links, strengthen the supervision of drug trading links, and strengthen the inspection of delivery channels, so as to effectively curb the abuse of the above-mentioned drugs and the flow into illegal channels.

During the implementation process, there are still loopholes in the control of related drugs. The author visited three physical pharmacies in Beijing's Haidian District, and two of them said that drugs containing dexdemethorphan had been out of stock since last year. At the third pharmacy, the author successfully purchased an oral monomed preparation of dextromethorphan on the grounds that he wanted to buy cough medicine. "This medicine is particularly effective." The clerk added.

There are also imperfections in the drug purchase process on online shopping and takeaway platforms. Xiaoshun once wanted to buy and overdose on a prescription drug, which is usually used to treat Parkinson's disease, and in the online follow-up session to supplement prescription information, she could not successfully buy the drug due to her young age. This drug is sold on Taobao, Pinduoduo and other platforms, and you only need to provide identity information in the online prescription link, and choose whether you have taken the drug in the past to buy it.

Mixing multiple drugs is also a common scenario. In these teens' self-statements about substance abuse, the drugs involved also included drugs to treat mental illnesses and even motion sickness drugs.

Although drug addiction is rare among adolescents, the control of specific drugs is clearly not sufficient to combat drug abuse.

Withdrawal

The addictive mechanism of drugs acting on the human body is mostly related to the mental receptors of the brain medulla. Taking some cough drugs as an example, they inhibit the cough urge of the cough center by stimulating the relevant receptors, thereby producing an antitussive effect, but also bringing a certain recreational mental effect.

In February 2021, Wu Shiyou, assistant professor at the School of Social Work at Arizona State University, and others conducted a systematic review of the harms, causes and countermeasures of drug abuse among Chinese adolescents based on Chinese literature published from 2 to 1996. Among them, doing a good job in psychological counseling for adolescents, improving the family environment, and strengthening anti-drug publicity and education are the three countermeasures and measures with the highest frequency.

The article pointed out that many adolescents who abuse drugs are still in junior and senior high school, so they need to work together with family, school and society to guide teenagers to make friends correctly and learn to refuse drugs and bad behaviors.

On the other hand, the monitoring of drug abuse is also crucial. At present, China has established a relatively complete drug abuse monitoring system, but the monitoring work is mainly carried out for the personnel admitted to drug rehabilitation institutions, the scope of monitoring groups needs to be expanded, and the scientific nature of monitoring work still needs to be improved.

In August 2017, the former State Food and Drug Administration released the Annual Report on National Drug Abuse Monitoring (8) (hereinafter referred to as the Report). The Report collected 2016,276980 effective drug abuse monitoring questionnaires, and 35.51 per cent of drug abusers were aged 7 and under, including 25.15 per cent of those aged 5 and under. The report remains the latest official report on drug abuse monitoring.

Han Li was lucky, his first overdose, and the last. Today, Han Li's mother accompanies him in the treatment of bipolar disorder.

Angie is experiencing a fourth drug withdrawal, this time, she has been on for nearly two months. She wants to quit completely and return to normal life.

(At the request of interviewees, Han Li, An Qi, and Xiaoshun are pseudonyms)

Intern Liang Nan Source: China Youth Daily