Summary
Contents
How do we understand drug use? How are drugs related to our social worlds? How should drug use be understood, approached and dealt with? Insightful and illuminating, this book successfully discusses drugs in social contexts. In an elegant manner, the authors bring together their different theoretical and practical backgrounds, offering a comprehensive and interdisciplinary introduction that opens up a wide scientific understanding moving beyond cultural myths and presuppositions. Powerful and engaging, this book discusses main questions within the field of psychoactive drugs research, such as: Why do people take drugs? How do we understand moral panics? What is the relationship between drugs and violence? How do people's social positions influence their individual involvement in drug use? This is an invaluable reference source for students on criminology, sociology and social sciences programmes, as well as students and drug service practitioners in social work, social policy and nursing.
Prescribed and Over-the-Counter (OTC) Drugs
Prescribed and Over-the-Counter (OTC) Drugs
Psychoactive substances or medicines that are prescribed by a physician or other health professional are referred to as prescribed or prescription drugs. Prescribing and dispensing regulations vary considerably across countries. Over-the-counter drugs are medicines that can be purchased without a prescription.
Our interest in prescription drugs focuses on those medicines that produce psychoactive effects; prescribed drugs that alter our level of consciousness or our way of thinking. These drugs include: stimulants (for example, Ritalin, intended for use with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), sedatives or anti-anxiety medication (for example, Xanax, Valium, Ativan), sleeping aids, and opioid-based pain medications (for example, hydromorphine, oxycodone). The substances are legal when prescribed by a physician and are used by a patient ...
