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Show MENTAL HEALTH MATTERS ; Stanley F.Yolles, M.D. Director National Institute of Mental Health HARD FACTS ABOUT "HARD" NARCOTICS You hear much these days about drug abuse and addiction; addic-tion; and these columns have dealt with such subjects as marihuana, LSD, amphetamines ("pep" pills), and barbiturates ("sleeping" pills). These are all mind-affecting drugs, and are widely misused or abused despite their hazards. Only the last two, the amphetamines ampheta-mines and barbiturates, have any real medical treatment uses. Although all these and other drugs that affect the mind are narcotics in a sense, the core of the problem is what some authorities au-thorities call the "hard" narcotics. nar-cotics. The term generally refers to opium and pain-killing drugs made from opium, such as heroin, her-oin, morphine, methadon, paregoric, pare-goric, and codeine. Several man-made or synthetic drugs, such as demerol and dolophine, are also classed as narcotics. They are very much with us, as headlines frequently proclaim. pro-claim. Some authorities feel that narcotic addiction is increasing; in-creasing; others think that it remains at about the same level. Whatever may be the case, the hard fact is that the narcotics problem is unduly large, has One encouraging development is the Federal Narcotic Addict Rehabilitation Act, which is now being put to work to benefit bene-fit both the public and the addict. ad-dict. Next week's article will deal with this Act. Write to NIMH, Box 1080, Washington, D.C. 20013 for a free leaflet on narcotics. i many ramifications, and is a despairingly difficult matter to . solve. Of the narcotics, heroin appears ap-pears to be the drug used by most addicts today. More than 60,000 known addicts are listed by the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. Most of these live in the cities and figures show that more than half of the addicts are under 30 years of age. What is the life of an addict like? Getting a continued supply of the drug often becomes the main object of his life. This frequently prevents him from continuing his education or his job. His health is often bad. His life span may be shortened by 15 to 20 years. Narcotic addicts are sick people. peo-ple. They need treatment for their physical addiction, then for the difficult withdrawal period, pe-riod, and then they desperately need help to keep from going back on, drug use. We are just beginning to look upon narcotic addition as a disease, di-sease, to provide facilities to provide treatment, and to develop de-velop adequate research to find answers to the many unknown factors about both narcotics and their users. |