Receiving professional training, taking a class, attending an inservice workshop, speaking with colleagues and supervisors, and reading books and journals can help you learn about this extremely complex behavior. As a supplement to such training, this article provides you with some of the fundamentals of drug and alcohol abuse and dependence, their effect on individuals and families, how abuse and dependence may be recognized, and their implications for child welfare practice. According to the Alcohol and Drug Council of North Carolina, there are nearly 700,000 people addicted to drugs in North Carolina. Among them are parents and children, athletes and actors, homeless men and women, and lonely adolescents. Some just drink alcohol, others smoke pot and sniff cocaine.
People abuse prescription drugs like valium, codeine, and dilaudid, and people sniff gasoline.
People who abuse drugs can be loving parents, hard workers, next-door neighbors, bank tellers, janitors, students, lawyers, nurses. Use simply means drinking, smoking, inhaling, injecting, or swallowing a chemical substance. If one drinks a beer with dinner, one is using alcohol, but not necessarily abusing it. Abuse can occur over a period of hours, days, months, or years. Abuse is not dependence.