Alcohol Rehab

Drugs are categorized according to the effects they have: stimulants, depressants, narcotics, and hallucinogens. Stimulants speed up the activities of the brain, producing feelings of well being and alertness. Depressants slow down activities of the brain, producing a sedating effect. Narcotics alleviate pain and affect the brain’s pleasure-control center, causing feelings of well-being. Hallucinogens cause hallucinations, or distortions in the perception of reality, and produce a sense of detachment from reality. Different as their specific effects are, all substances of abuse share one characteristic in common, in addition to their addictive nature: Almost any drug taken for one effect will end up having the opposite. “It’s like backlash—you use cocaine [a stimulant] to get high and then you get depressed,” as one addict puts it. And as addictive substances, each of those drugs requires increasing amounts to achieve the same result.