Discovery documentary explains how the drugs affect person’s body by conducting the series of experiments to test coordination, concentration stress-resilience and strength, as well as general health condition of regular drug users. Some of the experiments’ results and body’s reactions were well-known and predictable, while the others were quite surprising.
I found the experiments very informative, as they explained the biological aspects of drug effects. The most unexpected behavior for me was the heroin abuser, as she does not look as an addict, and what is more, does not act like one. She is driving a car and assembling a bookcase without showing any particular signs of intoxication. However, it may be explained by the fact that she is functional addict, and cannot perform actions without the drug. I was also surprised by the methamphetamine abuser behavior. While doing any kind of physical work, he gets overheated, and burns the calories, as people, who work out intensively.
Testing of stress-resilience also has shown unexpected results. Not only it was difficult for the addicts to cope with the stressful conditions, while they were on the drug, but also when they did not, as the abuse causes long-lasting effects. All four participants started panicking, their systems crashed, and they got physically and psychologically unstable. The other symptoms were also potentially dangerous: the lack of urgency and motivation to escape in marijuana smoker and aggressiveness in meth and cocaine users. The last thing that was difficult for me to comprehend was the reaction of the participants on the doctor’s explanation of the consequences of regular drug abuse. They were unaware that they harm themselves or they thought that the doctor is joking, as the drugs make them better, rather than cause problems with lungs and heart. The film gives a chance to find out how the drugs work and what their influence on our body and mind is that is essential for understanding of the drug addiction.
History of drugs
The documentary “Hooked: Illegal Drugs and How They Got That Way” explains how the drugs affect a person and shows how they were discovered. It also concentrates the attention on the history of the drugs becoming illegal, the addiction issues and the consequences connected with the abuse that we face today. The drugs that are mentioned are cocaine, ecstasy, LSD, marijuana, methamphetamine and others. People have used different kinds of drugs from the beginning of the civilization. Since then the drugs and their perception in the society have greatly changed, but the war of drugs has not finished yet. The history of drugs use reveals interesting facts about the ancient world, for the use coca leaves in Inca civilization and painkillers in the army of Alexander the Great to modern medical and recreational use.
What I found interesting is that every drug discovered was considered to have useful or highly appealing properties at first: opium as god’s medicine, cocaine as miracle drug or ecstasy and LSD in the rave culture of 1960s. Nowadays, it is well known that the drug abuse has dramatic effect on person’s health, so it is unusual to see some of the modern illegal drugs being widely advertised and openly used. I have not thought about the long process of making the drugs illegal, so watching Nixon’s war on drugs and putting the drug control under federal jurisdiction was unusual. The thought that there is no room in prisons for rapists and murderers, because the majority of people sentences are drug offenders is terrifying. The presented scientific research on drugs’ addictiveness has proved that the monkeys choose cocaine over food and social contact after just one usage. The number of people that have been addicted in the 19th century was nearly one million people, and most of them did not know about the addiction, as the drugs were perfectly legal. The information presented in the film is thought-provoking and questions society’s perception of the drugs in the modern world.
References
Yaroschuk, T., Tera Media (Firm), History Channel (Television network), & Arts and Entertainment Network. (2008). Hooked: Illegal drugs and how they got that way. New York: A & E Television Networks.
