Adolescence and substance consumption
Introduction.
Substance consumption constitutes a phenomenon that has been present throughout human existence as a factor that affects the social dimension for public health. However, it constitutes a behavioral process whose incidence is merely individual, that is, identifying its use at a personal level and in the relationship established between the substance and the individual, and, consequently, manifesting itself in the social dimension in the form of a probleminherent.
Developing.
The authors Berger and Luckmann refer to the fact that reality is constructed socially, consequently, individuals build their own knowledge in line with the social context in which they are immersed, so that the realities of individuals are different according to the social contextin which they live.
Thus, substance consumption is a heterogeneous reality in addition to multifactorial, that is, when its consumption occurs in the social sphere, there are a diversity of factors that have an impact on the beginning or in the same substance consumption. However, it is a fact whose linkage is individual, that is, it is located in the full freedom of the individual, however, the inevitable consequences are related to the existing social problem.
Most preventive policies are directed towards the adolescence group, being understood as the only affected or risk collective in relation to consumption behaviors. In this sense, the adolescent is contemplated as the individual without notions to be guided in matters that affect their reality, the truth is that just some debates include the undeniable influence of the social, political and economic context on which theconsumption. However, they are not the only collective at risk of reproducing consumption behaviors that will be treated throughout this letter.
The structural system that encompasses the reality on which we will identify the main factors of influence throughout the theoretical analysis, promotes values related to those of individualistic societies, which leads to the fact that all the individuals who comprise it acquire attitudes and behaviorsrelated to addictive processes, in addition to falling the weight of your addiction under your individual responsibility.
The author Bauman refers to the concept of modernity in which the weight of the construction of guidelines and the responsibility of failure falls mainly on the shoulders of the individual, that is, the totality of an individual’s own behaviors are their responsibility. Defend the idea of liquid modernity, and adds the following idea: now, as before, individualization is a destination, not an choice. In the land of individual freedom of choice, the option of escaping individualization and refusing to take part of that game is something emphatically not contemplated.
It should be noted that the freedom of choice of individuals is a factor that is present in the social context where it develops, however, the reproduction of certain behaviors may be subject to unconscious assumptions that guide the decision of individuals. In this sense, as the author Beck points out, the way in which one lives becomes a biographical solution to systemic contradictions. That is, behind the elections that occur in the social environment are the stimuli produced socially, and the responsibility in the way of relating to these is entirely of the individual.
The truth is, that in industrialized societies the assimilation of addictive behaviors as an economic strategy is promoted, which leads to people to be influenced by these behaviors persé. The latent consumerism that encompasses postmodern societies and the tendency of the human being as being insatiable, implies that the individual is prone to satisfy external stimuli before a certain perceived need (or generated).
The addictive personality that characterizes societies where the capitalist system rewards, carries with it the assimilation of various behaviors linked to the processes that occur in cases of substance consumption. This leads to questioning the effectiveness and validity of structures at the social, political and economic level that make up the system where consumption occurs.
When we deal with the concept of drugs or psychoactive substance, it is convenient to highlight the two dimensions that this phenomenon addresses, on the one hand it is referred to the representation of drugs in society, that is, the predisposition on which the knowledgeable individual startsof its existence whose function fits the cultural issue, and on the other hand, the structural devices that the society formula to respond to certain issues and to what extent these are conditioned by the previously described cultural dimension.
The first of the stages has a place in the seventies, when the country is going through a state of social alarm due to the news about drugs and its consequences. This stage is related to the image of the drug addicts as the political enemy and is related to the young nonconformist whose way of expressing his rejection towards the system and culture is through the consumption of psychoactive substances. In the aforementioned era, he tended to link any type of political discrepancy with the phenomenon of drugjail.
The second stage is related to the linkage of toxicomaniac as the young man who is in a situation of exclusion in the neighborhoods with less social status, conditioned by the characteristics of the disorganized context in which it is developed and where criminal activities are at the order of the order of theday. At this time the distinction between the person who traffic and the person who consumes, declaring the immune consumer before the law by the Supreme Court to the person with drug possession for the consumption itself is determined.
Thus, the trafficker is considered a criminal and the institutional response is related to the penalty of jail, while the consumer becomes contemplated as a danger to society, but with legislative immunity for tenure for his own consumption. On the other hand, the promotion of the Law of Danger and Social Rehabilitation arises, where “deviant” groups are framed, where there are the so -called lazy, drug addicts and homosexuals, among others, among others.
This entails a change regarding the allegation to refer to the toxicomaniac, so the objective of the cure and the therapeutic objective arises, and the institutional response is related to criminal legislation as penitentiary hospitals and psychiatric sanitariums, in addition to prisonas social control instruments for the isolation and treatment of the toxicomaniac person.
In the third and final stage, the drug definition is related to the growing consumption of heroin, and the perception of the toxicomaniac is linked to the image of the person who commits to respond to the needs of drugs or money. In this sense, institutional responses such as therapeutic communities arise (in addition to criminal measures) that tend to perceive toxicomaniac as a sick person, in need of healing.
conclusion.
The stages mentioned above make, in a progressive way, a preconceived image in terms of the collective of toxicosmos people and the perception of these before the eyes of a society that perpetuates and reinforces its exclusion. The evolution in terms of the image before society of what is known as the toxicomaniac person, retains a limiting significance in addition to shear, which promotes and perpetuates the exclusion processes of the collective.
Leave feedback