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Paper Abstract: Examines their abuse by young adults. Life-span developmental theory. Erik Erickson. Influence of drugs on psyche's development. Destructive effects of mind-altering drugs. Variety of impact young adults drug abuse may have on optimal development. Psychosocial and medical issues. Somatic dysfunctions. Widespread drug abuse culture. Role of family & counselors. Paper Introduction: This research examines the subject of abuse of street drugs by young adults. The research will set forth the topic in the context of life-span developmental psychology and then discuss the variety of impacts that young-adult drug abuse may have on optimal development, with a view toward identifying psychosocial issue fronts that the phenomenon may present in the practice of counseling. Focus on the context in which the human psyche emerges, including the social and personal relationships that it encounters, is the starting point of analysis in developmental psychology. The traditional assumption is that human psychology has universality by reason of "central processing mechanism" and that there is "a fundamental division" between that mechanism and the "context," or external environment in which the psyche is made Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Of particular note: cerebralinfarction or hemorrhage, i.e., stroke, in young adults (Lowenstein, 1989).The substances implicated in stroke and other neurological disordersincluded cocaine, heroin, amphetamine ("speed"), and phencyclidinehydrochloride (PCP). Primary-care doctors are often called upon to refer patients to substance-abusetreatment. Typically, these are young adults, whom Erikson (198 ; 1968)classifies as being between ages 18 and 3 , a time when the focus ofpersonal development is on social and personal relationships. The Department of Justice reports that about 6 % of all youngadults who are arrested are regular marijuana users and that, among allpersons over age 18 who are arrested the rate of marijuana use stands at37% (Klug, 2 1). New York: Basic Books.Roche, T. (2 2), conducted cognitiveand intelligence tests on rehab young-adult clients three weeks and twelveweeks after admission to a program. In that regard,Brook, et al. (1989, May). Psychology of the child. Sometimes the "stuff" is pathological and self-destructive to thepsyche. Cultural Practices as Contexts for Development. That is, the people who behave towarddrugs in this way, having as they do physicians, medically sanctionedinjuries, and the like, are not curious seventh-graders or "seasoned"adolescents, but fully functioning -- more exactly poorly functioning --adults. Kaestner (1994) uses a "laborsupply model" to chart a correlation between use of marijuana and cocaineand the loss of working hours, with marijuana being implicatedproportionally more than cocaine among young-adult workers. Drug use inadolescence compounds this pattern. Some patients have sought prescriptions for tranquilizers as a way ofaltering consciousness by legal means, while avoiding the "drug culture"stigma of using illegal drugs to alter consciousness (Marino, 1997, p. Physicians can help thwart growing prescription scams. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 35, 1584-1592.Brook, J.S., Whiteman, M., Finch, S.J., & Cohen, P. (1996, December). W. 132).Kaestner's study, which relied on self-reports of drug use by young adults,found that among users and nonusers of street drugs, a significantdifference was that employed persons had higher levels of usage than theunemployed. (198 ). The potent perils of a miracle drug: OxyContin is a leading treatment for chronic pain, but officials fear it may succeed crack cocaine on the street. The fact that patterns that harden inadolescence carry forward to young adulthood also suggests that the originpoint of drug problems is in the childhood family. What is most important about Erikson's stage theory, however, isthat it has as much to do with environment and culture as withidiosyncratic ego psychology per se. The quality of an adolescent's relationship withfamily members may suffer because of drug use, which in turn couldnegatively affect the development of coping and social skills that would berequired of an adult. Focus on the context in which the human psyche emerges, including thesocial and personal relationships that it encounters, is the starting pointof analysis in developmental psychology. America behind bars. Retrieved from the World Wide Web 1 December 2 2, at www.ncjrs.org/txifilesl/ojp/188 86.txtPiaget, J., & Inhelder, B. (1998), report a longitudinal study showing thatunconventionality (a.k.a. New York, W. Erikson (1968, 198 ) puts young adulthood between theages of 18 and 3 , a stage of cognitive and ego development at which thepersonal focus is on forming relationships, both personal and social.Implicit in Erikson's discussion of the development of ego is the issue ofone's sense of place in the world as a social being. (1999, May 1 ). 913). The traditional assumption is thathuman psychology has universality by reason of "central processingmechanism" and that there is "a fundamental division" between thatmechanism and the "context," or external environment in which the psyche ismade to function (Shweder, 199 , p. The sociology of drug abuse among young adults has been givenattention in the professional literature. 22). Reinforcement of this finding is in a study ofrecovering adolescent substance abusers, which found that a common patternis a failure of parental nurturing, not least because of parental substanceabuse (Vaughn and Long, 1999). H. Cessation of illicit drug use in young adulthood. Further to this point, Yamaguchi andKandel (1993) report a tendency of married young-adult drug users to copyeach other's drug-use patterns in marriage and even to engage in"assortative" mating, or selection of mates according as they share drug-use patterns. Cultural Psychology: Essays on Comparative Human Development. D. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1995. Kandel and Raveis (1989) cite the normal courseof the "maturational process." Additionally, they document certain use andabuse tendencies among specific demographic groups. Stigler, R. Block, et al. Meanwhile, adultdelinquency and lack of religious attachment have been cited as"significant predictors" of marijuana and cocaine use that continues inmale adulthood. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Herdt (Eds.). Identity: Youth and crisis. (199 , December). More important, whatthey also share is adult status. J. Shweder, & G. (1993, December). According to Erik Erikson, an individual experiences stages ofpsychosocial development based on successive crises of ego development thatare successfully or unsuccessfully navigated, according as individualsappropriately identify with or liberate themselves from external influences(society, family). Meanwhile, an estimated 26 million Americans useillegal drugs every year, half of them at least once a month (Fox & Miller,1997). deviance) in a youngster is a function of a weakquality in the parent-child bond, which itself reinforces aggression, apredictor of early-adolescent drug use and continuation of such use intoyoung adulthood. Brook, et al. A caution about this particular study is that although Blockattempted to control for the fact that young adults in a rehab or a controlgroup would have achieved different stages of intellectual and socialdevelopment during their childhood and adolescence, it is impossible tofully account for developmental differences. In the late 198 s, there was significant clinicalobservation of drug-related neuropathies. Young adult drug use and delinquency: Childhood antecedents and adolescent mediators. (1999, Spring). Goodnow, Peggy J. (1969). Adolescence, 34, 9-24.Weaver, M.F., Jarvis, M.A.E., & Schnoll, S.H. The effect of illicit drug use on the labor supply of young adults. Chiefly, this is thought to be a consequence of "the deviantadolescent's selection of drug-using peer groups" (Brook, et al., 1996, p.1585). Cultural psychology--what is it? Treatmentis not always an option, however. Journal of Human Resources, 29, 126-49.Kandel, D.B., & Raveis, V.H. US Catholic, 63, 1 -17.Erikson, E. It is associated both with individual behavior and withprofoundly influential cultural cues. Identity and the life cycle. Adult substance offenders who arearrested for drugs and who have other charges outstanding areprogrammatically excluded from rehabilitation programs and instead arefunneled into incarceration. Surrender to win: How adolescent drug and alcohol users change their lives. 5).Abusers of (say) Demerol may not consider themselves part of the drug-abuseculture (Burton & Brown, 1997), but the fact of their addiction isdistinguished from the addiction of cocaine or heroin users only in that itis pretty much opaque to the law-enforcement apparatus. New York: Norton.Goodnow, J.J., Miller, P.J., & Kessel, F. The research will set forth the topic in the context of life-spandevelopmental psychology and then discuss the variety of impacts that young-adult drug abuse may have on optimal development, with a view towardidentifying psychosocial issue fronts that the phenomenon may present inthe practice of counseling. Archives of Internal Medicine, 159, 913-24.Yamaguchi, K., & Kandel, D. Apart from the social stigma that may attach to drug use in youngadulthood is the growing body of evidence that it is implicated in avariety of somatic dysfunctions. What the addicts in mainstream and drug-abuse culture share is atendency to seek out the mind-altering rather than therapeutic propertiesof a drug to which they have developed a tolerance. While the symptomology may be spontaneous, presentingas a vascular rupture or aneurysm, the effects of drug use may becumulative, aggravating what in some persons may be a predisposition toneural and circulatory weaknesses in the brain. In the contemporary anti-drugenvironment, the so-called war on drugs positions drug dealers and usersamong the youth demographic, particularly impoverished minority youth. W. The implications for economic losses due to drug use areobvious. However, there is compelling evidence that the drug culture is notconfined to the impoverished minority underclass: "Patients with substanceabuse problems are common in general medical practice and include people ofall ages and socioeconomic groups" (Weaver, et al., 1999, p. E., & Zunguze, S. Every year, about 5.5 million persons areso severely affected by drugs that they need clinical treatment (Fox &Miller, 1997). Rehabilitation, meanwhile, may not be an effective cure-all for youngadults who stop abusing drugs. Treatment services in adult drug courts. Single men exhibit the greatest frequency of drug use; over 38 percent have tried cocaine by 1988, and over 72 percent have reported some marijuana use (Kaestner, 1994, p. According to Brook, et al.(1996), aggressive behavior in childhood can be interpreted as a predictorof both adolescent delinquency and drug use in young adulthood. Erikson sees adolescence as the pivotal stage of development becauseit is the stage at which the individual is undergoing permanent physicalchanges while also being decisively engaged in both ego formation andextending the self into the social realm. (2 1, January 8). (1998, June). That has implications for the utility of developmental psychology inaddressing risk factors for drug use in young adulthood. Human development does not discardthe individual central processing mechanism but also does not valorize it.Rather, context per se is the point of analytical departure. (199 ). Rockville, Md.: Department of Justice. . It can exert far-reaching influenceon the psyche's development and well-being, even though individuals maydeliberately engage in drug use and even though they may be aware of thepotentially destructive effects of drugs. "I was desperately addicted to prescription drugs." Cosmopolitan, 222, 154-5; 2 4-5.Clarke, K. Young-adult drug use has been linked, perhaps unsurprisingly, to druguse in early adolescence, which has itself been linked to more generaldifficulties with psychosocial development. T. Chronic drug use and cognitive impairments. Recreational drugs and stroke in young adults. Jacqueline J. 1-43.Strickland, D.A. Medical World News, 31, 14-15.Vaughn, C., & Long, W. (1989, September). 5-16.Jenkins, J. Thepopular conception that drug crime is a "black" or "brown" problem tends toencourage "vibrant support for increasingly punitive sentencing policiesand program reductions inside of prisons" (Clarke, 1998). (1995). Norton.Erikson, E. This research examines the subject of abuse of street drugs by youngadults. Otherwise, those who experimented with drugs at a later age have beenfound to be more likely to eschew their use in young adulthood than thosewho had used them as children and young adolescents (Kandel & Raveis,1989). The Western Journal of Medicine, 15 , 575-6.Marino, G. . A. According to emerging clinical opinion, patients of 18 years or olderwho have experienced two or more nonsports-related injuries or other trauma(e.g., dislocated bones, traffic accidents, fighting) are to be consideredas possible addicts and hence candidates for intervention by primary-caredoctors (Weaver, et al., 1999). What is important about the developmental line of thought is that thelongitudinal study implicates a fairly consistent pathway from childhoodaggression, a failure of parent-child mutual bonding, adolescentunconventionality, and young-adult drug abuse. (1998, November). In addition to valorizing early intervention into earlydrug use, they advocate decisive interventions along developmental lines,notably against aggression and in favor of parent-child bonding. Weaver, et al., also cite the "medicalsequelae of drug abuse," i.e., associated dysfunctions, ranging fromhepatitis, AIDS-related infections, and evidence of injection sites beinghidden by those attempting to conceal their addiction -- such as under thetongue, breast, legs, or even genitalia -- to nasal/respiratory tissueatrophy, which is symptomatic of crack or cocaine use. Among women, adult delinquency is linked to continuedmarijuana use (Kandel & Raveis, 1989). Drug abuse is an example of an intersection point between cultureand individual. Cultural practices: toward an integration of culture and development. According to Kandel and Raveis, however, women whosespouses abused drugs were more likely to do so as well, which shows theinfluence of environment on behavior. Compared to the nondrug-using controlgroup, the abusers produced scores markedly inferior on a battery ofcognitive tests after three weeks in rehab. Relationship of family structure to adolescent drug use, peer affiliation, and perception of peer acceptance of drug use. (1998, Winter). Genetic, Social, and General Psychology Monographs, 124, 492-5 7.Burton, I., & Brown, R. 5). (2 1). Amongwomen, a stronger predictor of stopping drug use was pregnancy, and amongboth men and women, the assumption of adult family roles appears toinfluence a decline in drug use. Adolescence, 33, 811-822.Kaestner, R. Other psychological theorists(e.g., Piaget, 1969) identify early childhood as the pivotal developmentalperiod. (1994, Winter). In that connection, a study of eighth-graders andtenth-graders by Jenkins and Zunguze (1998) suggests that the verystructure of the family (nuclear or "intact" family, single-parenthouseholds, divorced parents, blended "stepparent" families, etc.) can be apredictor of drug use. (1997, January 1). More significant was that evenafter 12 weeks in a program the abusers still performed poorly relative tononusers. By the same token, social approval or disapproval appears toaffect drug-related behavior, with cocaine and marijuana use far morelikely to be true of both men and women whose friends use drugs (Kandel &Raveis, 1989). Between one-fourth and two-fifths of all hospital inpatients are related to substanceabuse in some way, as well as up to 16% of general-medicine outpatients(Weaver, et al., 1999). Pharmacol Biochem Behavior, 73, 491-5 4.Brook, J.S., Whiteman, M., Finch, S.J., & Cohen, P. However, the larger pointremains, that the effects of drug use have the potential to exert long-terminfluence even in survivors. Role of the primary care physician in problems of substance abuse. The linkage between youth aggression, drug use, and social modelingsuggests that intervention in behavioral deviance at key developmentalstages could correspond with a decline in drug use during both adolescenceand young adulthood. Use of street drugs has, of course, long been implicated in criminalbehavior. (2 2, October). Weaver (Trans.). That confirms Kaestner's 1994 studyshowing that single persons were more likely than married ones to use drugsin young adulthood. Women tend to stopusing both marijuana and cocaine more than men, although higher-incomewomen appear to be more likely to stop using marijuana than cocaine. Further, young-adult drug use is muchmore likely to be a behavior pattern that continues in a stable manner fromadolescence. (1998) takethe quality of family interaction to be decisive, and note that culturalfactors, from ethnic identity to family identification with conventionalreligious and civic institutions, which tend to devalue drug use andviolence, tend to predict drug nonuse by young adults--even if these sameyoung adults experiment with drugs in middle and late adolescence. within their local communities" (Office, 2 1). The Brown University Digest of Addiction Theory and Application, 8, 5-7.Lowenstein, D.H. Thefamily and cultural environment, in other words, can help explain childhoodaggression and early-adolescent drug experimentation, which tend to farmore to predict adolescent unconventionality and young-adult drug use than(mere) late-adolescent drug use. Social Forces, 72, 5 5-28. Mutual attachment, personality, and drug use: pathways from childhood to young adulthood. Miller, and Frank Kessel (Eds.). Time, 157, 47.Shweder, R.A. Strickland (199 ) describes the appearance of "pseudopatients," or con artists who "are well-dressed, affable, and apparentlymiddle-class" and who "do their homework" on symptoms, then visit doctorsto obtain prescriptions for barbiturates, amphetamines, benzodiazepines,beta-blockers, and other narcotics that are then sold on the street.Especially popular as a street-drug conversion is OxyContin, an addictivepain-killing opiate properly prescribed to cancer patients, and in somecommunities arrests for trafficking in that drug have become as routine asthose for trafficking in crack cocaine (Roche, 2 1). It is also apparent that single individuals engage in more drug use than married people, and men have a greater frequency of use than women. 2) in their description of human-developmentpsychology as providing "a unified view of development and culture asintertwined processes." In Shweder's formulation, the culture provides avenue for human cognition, learning, and selfhood but also interacts withthem: "you can't take the stuff out of the psyche and you can't take thepsyche out of the stuff" (Shweder, 199 , p. (1968). (1997, June). The challenge to service providers,counselors, and psychotherapists is not confined to clinical observation ofyoung adults, who may arrive at a clinical stage with habits already wellformed. ReferencesBlock, R.I., Erwin, W.J., & Ghoneim, M.M. For some young adults, the growing-up process yields a gradualdisinterest in using and abusing street drugs, irrespective of legal orcounseling interventions. In the drug culture. The least likely users of tobacco, alcohol, or so-called "gateway" drugs such as marijuana were found to be eighth-gradersfrom intact families. Christian Century, 114, 5-6.Office of Justice Programs. That fact is adopted by Goodnow,Miller, and Kessel (1995, p. Rather, the challenge comes with regard to early-stage development,when practitioners must be alert to discern evidence of dysfunctionalbehavior patterns and family culture established in preschool andelementary school that could harden in secondary school and complicateadolescence and young adulthood in many ways. However, drug use may also interfere with normaldevelopmental patterns. Department of Justice guidelines for dealing with drug offenders whohave entered the legal system tend to favor treatment over incarceration.However, even though so-called "drug courts" are a medium of exchange,providing substance-abuse offenders access to treatment while minimizingjail time, "they depend on the quality and quantity of services andresources . Marital homophily on illicit drug use among young adults: Assortative mating or marital influence? H. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.