Drug and Alcohol Abuse: A Comprehensive Research Study

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Table of Contents

Objectives
Tasks
Expected Difficulties
Procedure
Discussion
Bibliography

Objectives

The research, which has been carried out is aimed at studying the causes and effects of drug and alcohol abuse. Moreover, it investigates the effectiveness of various treatment modes.

Tasks

The research should solve the following tasks. First, it is necessary to indentify the age groups, most inclined to drug and alcohol addiction, and ascertain the major reasons for it. Secondly, the research has to describe physical, psychological, and social effects of drug and alcohol abuse. The final stage is to discuss various treatment modes, especially their effectiveness.

Expected Difficulties

The data, provided by this research may not always be valid or reliable because respondents may be reluctant to discuss such highly sensitive issue as addiction with other people. For this reason, we have employed various research methods, such as qualitative and quantitative ones.

Procedure

The research should discuss the problem of addiction from various standpoints therefore the combination of research methods is needed. As regards, qualitative research methods, we may single out interactive or unstructured interview, written interview, and observation. As a research method, interactive interviewing has its advantages and disadvantages. First, we should mention the so-called “interviewer effect”. The interviewee’s response can be influenced by the presence of the interviewer. People are usually disinclined to discuss such issues with other person. Besides, the interviewer may have a prejudiced attitude, and therefore may distort the answers, that respondents give him. Another drawback of this method is that it is time-consuming. However, interview has certain advantages. First, an interviewer is able to ask qualifying questions the interviewee. In this research the preference was given to phone interview, in order to minimize “interviewer effect”.

According to the data, obtained by this research method, we can draw the following conclusions. Almost eighty percent of respondents believe that addiction is mostly connected with the great number of stress situations. Thirty percent of respondents say that it is caused by some family conflicts that they have. Ten percent ascribe it to the problem of overwork.

It should be taken into account that only ten percent of addicts admit that the main cause of their disease is the longing for new sensations and experiences. As we have already mentioned the validity of this method can be easily questioned, because an interviewer as the participant of this process can be biased in his judgment and his assessments of the results can be predetermined by his attitude.

Along with oral interview, we have employed the method of written interview, because the respondents tend to be more open, when they are able to commit their thoughts to paper. It enables to reduce the “interviewer effect” to a minimum. Additionally, the researcher cannot distort the response of the interviewee. However, this method has certain drawbacks, the interviewer cannot intervene in this process, and therefore he or she cannot ask any qualifying questions. It should be taken into account that the results received by means of these research techniques do not coincide. Judging from the written interview, approximately thirty percent of people suffering from addiction say that it is connected with their longing for new experiences. They state that the monotony or routine of daily life induces them to take drugs.

Therefore, we may see the discrepancy between the results, obtained by these research methods. In this case, the preference should be given to the “written interview” because it minimizes the “interviewer effect”.

Another qualitative method, employed in this investigation was observation. Overall, it is used to describe, verbal and non-verbal behavior of people. This method can be very helpful while exploring the physical, psychological, and social effects of addiction. There are two types of observation, structured and naturalistic. Structured observation implies setting some conditions in order to gain to more information about some particular aspect of behavior. Natural observation is used to watch the subject in the environment, which is habitual to him. It helps to minimize the “observer effect.”

According to the results, gained by this research technique, we can draw a conclusion that an addicted person loses control and becomes the slave to an overwhelming, compulsive desire to consume the drug or alcoholic beverage. The realization that one has become dependent is usually a big blow to ones self-esteem. A person may feel out of control, worthless and unable to control his life. This prompts him or her to sink into depression and he or she may even attempt suicide. It is worth mentioning that some people (approximately 25 percent of respondents), do not admit that they are actually dependent on drugs or alcohol. In fact, some respondents (5 per cent) do not perceive taking drugs taking drugs as an addiction or disease.

Regarding the social effects of addiction, we can say that a person, dependant on drug or alcohol, withdraws form social life, as because he or he does not want to be found out by his friends and relatives. Such people may fail to fulfill certain promises that they had made to their friends or any responsibilities that they may have towards their families and this in effect, alienates them from their loved ones who may not understand their sudden change of behavior.

It is difficult to summarize physical effects of drug and alcohol abuse, because different types of drugs can produce various effects on the body. Marijuana has been linked to liver damage, increased heart rate, and anxiety. Cocaine causes chest pain, seizures, respiratory and cardiac arrest. Prolonged use of sedative hypnotics such as tranquillizers can result in memory impairment and opiates such as heroin can elevate blood pressure and cause pulmonary complications (Changeux, 158).

Thus, we can arrive at the conclusion that observation is one of the most efficient qualitative methods, because it can explore practically every aspect of human behavior. However, it also has several shortcomings; an observer can be biased in his judgment, because a human being always sees that he or she expects to see. Therefore the data, collected may be distorted. In addition to that, the information can be sometimes mediated, in other words, it often comes from the third person, because it is not always possible to maintain the contact between the observer and the person who is observed. We should also mention the “observer effect”. It means that people are inclined to change their conduct, when they know that they are being watched.

Overall, speaking about qualitative research methods, it is worth mentioning that practically all of them are time-consuming and highly subjective. For these reasons, we were forced to use some of quantitative methods, like for instance Likert scale or a multi-item scale. It proved very efficient while obtaining and analyzing data. The essence of this technique lies in the following, while answering the questions the person has to choose from different alternatives, which are gradated like for example “strongly agree, agree, neither agree not disagree, disagree, and strongly disagree”

For example:

The causes of drug and alcohol abuse	Strongly agree	Agree	Neither agree nor disagree	Disagree	Strongly disagree
The addiction is caused by the constant pressure of everyday life	1	2	3	4	5
The addiction is caused by family problems	1	2	3	4	5
People, addicted to drugs or alcohol seek escape from mundane routine	1	2	3	4	5

Each respondent has show how he agrees or disagrees with some statement. The persons answers are based on the scale from 1 to 5. This fife-item scale is more preferable in this case than the so-called forced choice scale. There is some difference between these two methods. The thing is that the forced-choice scale does not include such item as “Neither agree nor disagree”. Thus, it cannot fully describe the attitude of the respondent to the issue in question. The main advantage of Likert scale is that it allows to associate verbal labels with numerical rates. According to the data, received by this method, we can conclude that the main reason of drug addiction is the every day routine; approximately 40 % of respondents believe so.

In order to measure the effectiveness of various treatment modes, we have also used quantitative research method such as statistical survey. To a certain degree, it reminds a questionnaire. There are several types of surveys, depending on the types of questions. In this case we can give preference to scaling questions like for example “Strongly Agree, Agree, Neither Agree nor Disagree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree”. Such technique is also known as Likert scale. According to the statistical survey Alcoholic Anonymous (AA) helps to reduce alcohol consumption among alcoholic dependent individuals, suggesting that it is advisable for Alcoholics to join support groups. It is however not clear if this can be generalized to other drug users. Approximately 50 percent of alcohol addicts prefer such way of treatment. Moreover, statistical survey shows that those, who successfully completed treatment in a therapeutic community, have lower indication level of drug abuse than before treatment. In addition to that, the research has pointed out that behaviorism can be successfully applied to the treatment of alcoholism and drug addiction through the process of counter conditioning (Baum, 132). If the conditional stimuli are paired with a negative response, say, nausea and vomiting the result will be an aversion to the unconditional stimulus, which is the taste of the drugs. Some rehabilitation centers have successfully used this treatment method, and approximately, 30 percent of their patients showed signs of marked improvement (Pettinati, 145).

However, statistical survey or structured interview can also have certain drawbacks. The respondents do not have an opportunity to ask for explanation, because the interviewer is not allowed to give it. Nevertheless, it proved to be very useful for this particular research, because it enabled to conduct research by various means of communication, for instance e-mail, on-line survey, personal in-home survey. It can be very helpful, especially considering the sensitive nature of the issue in question. The structured interview allows studying beliefs, attitudes, and experiences. In addition to that, this qualitative method is not as time-consuming as the interactive interview.

Discussion

The major challenge that this report faced was the discrepancy of data obtained by various research techniques, as for instance, qualitative and quantitative research methods show different results as to the causes of drug and alcohol addiction. In this case, the preference should be given to quantitative methods, because they are more objective and less time-consuming. However, qualitative research techniques such as interview and observation should no be disregarded.

Bibliography

Baum, W. (2004). Understanding behaviorism. Blackwell Publishing.

Helen M. Pettinati. (2005). An Investigational Approach to Combination Pharmacotherapy for the Treatment of Alcohol Dependence. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 66.(4) , 145.

Helen M. Pettinati. Roger D. Weiss (2005). A Structured Approach to Medical Management: A Psychosocial Intervention to Support Pharmacotherapy in the Treatment of Alcohol Dependence. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 65.(5), 122.

Jean-Pierre Changeux. (2002) Drug Use and Abuse. Daedalus, 127(2), 158.

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