Drug of Choice
From Drug Rehab Wiki
The phrase, “drug of choice,” is often used to refer to the drug that an addict has chosen as his or her latest or one that best helps the addict achieve a desired state. The term is also used to refer to the drug that first-time users, particularly adolescents and teens, gravitate toward.
Addicts and Drug of Choice
What usually happens is that the individual starts off using one type of drug, say, alcohol or marijuana, and may then experiment with various other drugs. Over time, the type and duration of a particular “high,” or euphoria, achieved with a new drug in the mix may lead the addict to prefer using that drug over any others.
Addicts will often say that they’d much rather get high using one particular drug, perhaps a painkiller such as Vicodin or Oxycodone, to using anything else. Availability may dictate that they veer from their preferred drug of choice to using an alternate, but, in the end, the addict will always return to what he or she feels gets the job done the best and quickest. That is, until a new drug enters the mix that works even better.
Teens and Drug of Choice
Another way of looking at drug of choice is the drug that young people begin using. This has more to do with availability and peer pressure than any particular high. When adolescents and teens first start experimenting with drugs, it’s usually alcohol. That’s because this drug of choice is readily available at home in parent’s liquor cabinets and in the refrigerator or on the shelf. There’s often not much monitoring of alcohol at home and it’s easy enough for teens to ferret small quantities away without their parents noticing.
According to findings from the 2009 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), the average age at first use of alcohol is 15.9 years.
Another teen drug of choice is marijuana, which is often called the gateway drug, the drug that teens use until they’re introduced to another illicit substance, including Ecstasy, heroin, cocaine (including crack cocaine), hallucinogens, inhalants, or prescription drugs used for non-medical purposes.
Results from the 2009 NSDUH show that the average age at first use of inhalants was 16.9 years. For marijuana, the mean age of those who initiated use prior to age 21, it was 16.3 years.
Methamphetamine is concerning for two reasons: The number of new users is increasing and the age at first use is 19.3 years, even though that is not dramatically different from previous NSDUH estimates for 2002 and 2008. In addition, there are both underground meth labs cropping up all over the country and increasing drug trafficking of meth to the U.S. from Mexico. Cocaine, Ecstasy and heroin average age of first use was a bit higher, at 20.0, 20.2, and 25.5 years, respectively.
The Younger the Age at First Use, the Greater the Risk of Dependence
Research shows that the younger a person is when first using drugs or alcohol, the greater the risk they have of becoming dependent. In the 2009 NSDUH, marijuana was the illicit drug of choice with the greatest past-year dependence or abuse in 2009, followed by pain relievers (such as OxyContin and oxycodone) and cocaine.
Relating dependence to age at first use, among those who first tried marijuana at age 14 or younger, 12.6 percent were classified with illicit drug dependence or abuse, higher than the 2.1 percent of adults who first used marijuana at age 18 or older.
With alcohol, among those who first began drinking at age 14 or younger, 17.5 percent were classified with alcohol dependence or abuse, compared with 3.7 percent of adults who started drinking at age 18 or older.
--Suzannekane 15:57, 15 August 2011 (MDT)
