Habits that Handicap

Description

CHAPTER I



THE PERIL OF THE DRUG HABIT



IT is human nature to wish to ease pain and to stimulate ebbing vitality. There is no normal adult who, experiencing severe pain or sorrow or fatigue, and thoroughly appreciating the immediate action of an easily accessible opiate, is not likely in a moment of least resistance to take it. Every one who has become addicted to a drug has started out with small occasional doses, and no one has expected to fall a victim to the habit; indeed, many have been totally unaware that the medicine they were taking contained any drug whatever. Thus, the danger being one that threatens us all, it is every man’s business to insist that the entire handling and sale of the drug be under as careful supervision as possible. It is not going too far to say that up to the present time most drug-takers have been unfairly treated by society.[Pg 4] They have not been properly safeguarded from forming the habit or properly helped to overcome it.

It has been criminally easy for any one to acquire the drug habit. Few physicians have recognized that it is not safe for most persons to know what will ease pain. When an opiate is necessary, it should be given only on prescription, and its presence should then be thoroughly disguised. A patient goes to a physician to be cured; consequently, when his pain disappears, he naturally believes that this is due to the treatment he has received. If the physician has used morphine in a disguised form, the patient naturally believes that the cure was effected by some unknown medicine; but if, on the other hand, he has received morphine knowingly, he realizes at once that it is this drug which is responsible for easing his pain. If he has received it hypodermically, the idea is created in his mind that a hypodermic is a necessary part of the treatment.
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