Drugs and Substance Abuse: Psychoactive Substances, the Stages of Dependence, Aetiology, Withdrawal and the Assessment Tools

A community health module on the abused drugs and substances, the features a patient presents with and how to respond to a case. It defines a drug as any substance that changes how the body functions mentally, physically or emotionally and covers the psychoactive substances from alcohol, tobacco and caffeine to the solvents, the stages of substance abuse from experimentation and regular use through problem or risky use to dependence and addiction, the aetiology and the consequences, and withdrawal with its severe forms. It takes the commonly abused drugs and their properties, blood alcohol concentration, the spectrum of psychoactive substance use, the risk and protective factors, the causes and process of alcoholism, and the assessment tools - CAGE, the ten-item WHO AUDIT and the Obsessive-Compulsive Drinking Scale - with the diagnostic evaluation.