Not everyone with emotional pain or stress seeks professional help. Intermittently or regularly, recreationally or addictively, they use their drug of choice to alter their mood. Different people use different drugs for different effects. Some use stimulants such as cocaine and amphetamines to make themselves feel more alert, awake and energetic, and to heighten their sexual feelings and arousal and lower their inhibitions. Some use narcotics such as opium or heroin to calm themselves down and feel relaxed.
Narcotics kill sensitivity to pain and reduce unwanted feelings of anger, irritability, and anxiety.
Hallucinogens distort normal perception and can evoke psychotic states such as hearing voices, seeing unusual images, and losing perception of time, place, and self. With all drugs the normal boundaries of self and society are blurred, stretched, or obliterated. Increased and progressive use means increased and progressive damage. Similar to illicit psychoactive drugs, psychotropic medications also alter feeling, such as reducing anxiety, depression, irritability, and mood swings, but they do so in a slower and safer manner under the watchful eye of a physician. This anti-medical bias creates additional obstacles and issues that must be addressed in treatment.