Understanding Drugs
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What Are Drugs?
Drugs are substances that affect your body and mind. They can change how you feel, think and act. People take drugs for different reasons and in different ways. Some people use them for medical reasons, religious or ceremonial reasons, personal enjoyment, or to cope with stress, trauma or pain. All drugs have the potential to cause harm.
Legal and Illegal Drugs
Drugs can be:
- Legal – for example, alcohol, caffeine, tobacco, and over-the-counter medications
- Illegal – for example, cocaine or magic mushrooms
Legal drugs usually list all their ingredients, so you know what you are taking when you buy from a legal source. Legal drugs can still be dangerous – especially if you take too much.
Illegal drugs can contain almost anything so you can never be sure what you are taking. These drugs can be very dangerous – different batches of an illegal drug may have different amounts of the drug and other unidentified potentially deadly substances.
Illicit Drugs
Illicit drugs (street drugs) include:
- illegal drugs
- legal drugs (like cannabis) obtained from an illegal source
- prescription medicines obtained illegally
- prescription drugs not being used for medical purposes
- other substances that are being used dangerously – for example, sniffing glue or huffing gas
WARNING: Buyer Beware! A person using illicit drugs can never be sure of how strong the drug is, or what is actually in it. Many illicit drugs in the NWT now contain opioids, benzodiazepines, and other dangerous substances.
Types of Drugs
Addictive drugs are often classified into the groups below:
Stimulants (“uppers”) are drugs that speed up the body’s system including brain activity, making the mind more hyper and alert. Examples include:
- Cocaine & Crack
- Methamphetamines
-
Caffeine
Depressants (“downers”) are drugs that cause the body and mind to slow down. Examples include:
Hallucinogens are drugs that disrupt a person's perception of reality and cause them to imagine experiences and objects that seem real. Examples include:
Dissociative Drugs are drugs that produce a sense of mind from body separation (dissociation). Examples include:
Some drugs fall into more than one category. Examples include:
- MDMA/Ecstasy/Molly (stimulant & hallucinogen effects)
- Cannabis (stimulant, depressant & hallucinogen effects)
- Tobacco (stimulant & depressant effects)
- Salvia (hallucinogen and dissociative effects)
Wondering about a drug you don’t see listed here? Visit the Health Canada controlled and illegal drugs pages for more information.
Inhalants
Inhalants are usually found in liquid, gas or aerosol form. They are not, technically, illegal or legal drugs, but are chemical products with real-life purposes, such as fuel, household cleaning, spray paint or hair spray, for example. They are not meant for human consumption, and they have immediate, often permanent, and sometimes fatal effects on anyone who uses them.
There are a few different kinds of inhalants:
- Volatile Solvents (markers, paint thinner, gasoline, cleaning supplies)
- Aerosol/Spray cans (hairspray, cooking oil spray, spray paint)
- Gases (propane, ether, butane/lighter fluid)
Drug Harms
Substance use can cause harms in many areas of a person's life, including:
Physical Health and Safety
Substance use can lead to illnesses, injuries, and death.
Mental Health
Substance use and mental health concerns are often connected and experienced at the same time, with both influencing the other. Substance use can impact a person’s mental health in many ways. It can lead to memory loss, mood changes and paranoia, poor self control and impulse control, sleep disruption, decline in brain function, and more. Substance use can also trigger mood, anxiety, or depression disorders and can increase the risk of developing a serious mental health illness, like psychosis or schizophrenia.
School
Using substances can make it hard to concentrate and to keep up with schoolwork. Substance use often leads to poor performance in school.
Work
Substance use can have several negative effects on the workplace including loss of productivity and job performance, workplace accidents and injuries, missing work, and job loss.
Relationships
Substance use can seriously impact relationships with family, friends, and peers. It can present challenges around trust and secrecy, isolation, communication breakdowns, physical or emotional abuse, enabling, and more.
Money
Using substances can impact a person’s finances due to impulsive spending, getting into debt, losing income, unemployment and more. Substances can also be expensive and lead to having limited money left to pay for essentials like food.
Sex
Using substances can make people forget to practice safer sex, participate in riskier sexual behaviour, and can put them at risk of sexual violence.
Legal Problems
Legal problems can include things like arrest for drug use or selling, driving under the influence, or substance related violence. When thinking long term, criminal records can present problems with future employers or options to travel out of the country.
Drug Terminology
Below is a brief glossary of some important drug-related terminology.
Substance Use Disorder:
A substance use disorder is a mental health condition in which people use drugs in unhealthy ways despite the drugs' negative and harmful impacts on their lives.
Tolerance:
Tolerance is when the body or brain does not respond to a drug the way it used to. For example, a person might need to take more of the drug to get the same effect, because they have built up tolerance to it over time. Tolerance can go down quickly, and a person’s usual dose may be too much for them after a break or change in use. Things that can affect tolerance include:
- Taking a break from using.
- Reducing the amount they use, or taking less than usual.
- Recently starting using drugs, or using new drugs.
- Lung, liver, heart, or other health issues (e.g. Asthma, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder, Hepatitis).
Dependence:
Dependence is when a person’s body gets used to a regular supply of a drug and relies on that drug to feel good or normal or to cope with everyday life. When people become dependant on a drug, lowering the amount they take or stopping use completely can result in withdrawal symptoms. This can make it hard and even dangerous to stop using the drug.
Quitting “cold turkey”:
Quitting “cold turkey” means suddenly stopping using a drug rather than slowing or reducing the amount being used. This can be dangerous and may lead to withdrawal symptoms for many people. It is important to talk to a health care provider about how to quit safely.
Withdrawal:
Withdrawal is a natural reaction that may happen when a person reduces or stops taking drugs after using regularly for a long time or after using high doses. In some cases, and depending on the substance, withdrawal symptoms can be extremely rough and make it very difficult to stop or lower the dose. Symptoms can include nervousness, irritability, agitation, chills, sweating, diarrhea, nausea, stomach pain, insomnia, body aches, and widespread or increased pain. Severity and length of withdrawal depend on:
- which drug was used,
- how much was taken, and
- how long the drug was used.
Overdose versus Poisoning versus Toxicity
“Overdose”, “poisoning”, and “drug toxicity” describe the harms that can occur when a person’s body is overwhelmed by a toxic amount of a drug or a combination of drugs. These words are often used to describe the same thing, but they have different meanings.
- An “overdose” is what happens when a person takes too much of a drug or takes a combination of drugs that their body can’t handle. Overdoses can happen with many types of drugs and are usually accidental. A person using illicit drugs can never be sure of how strong the drug is or if there are other unidentified lethal additives in it that they do not want or mean to take.
- “Poisoning” or “drug toxicity” are often more accurate words to use, since they explain what a drug is doing to a person’s body.
Need Help?
Help is always available. Reach out to your local health centre, community counsellor/mental health professional, or call 8-1-1.
Visit Getting Help for more information.