2011-08-20
In DRUG REHABILITATION / Tags: actual, drug, World, worst /
Question by MrBuuuuttt: What is the actual worst drug in the world?
If you’ve heard “the kids” by eminem, he says ecstasy is. I don’t think that’s true. I just wanna know what is the most harmful drug for someone to consume. I have a paper for a summer school class do and my topic is drugs and their effects on your body. Knowing the most harmful one will really give me a jump start
Best answer:
Answer by Tilly Jensen
Depends
Add your own answer in the comments!
8 ResponsesLeave a comment ?
Heroine.
Meth. I suggest you watch the worlds most dangerous drug from national geo on netflix it’s really good and shows you before and afters of meth users
yea it depends but ecstasy isnt . i think dust is.. my friend has done chock crack weed ecstasy acid .. everything but dust because he says its the wrost and hell never do it
Meth is the kind of terrifying that stands on its own. Do not ever mess with that sh*t.
Edit: I feel like elaborating.
Things that go into “harm” include availability, how easy it is to get addicted, short term side effects, long term side effects, and cost because being a broke, hungry addict is harmful too. As for side effects, some people tolerate certain drugs better than others and that makes it hard to quantify for certain which is the worst. I would say the worst drugs are meth, heroine, and crack in that order. There are lesser-known things that are worse for the body (some drugs just kill you instantly), but those drugs I just listed are the ones that are infamous for ruining lives.
cigarettes kill more people a year than illegal drugs do, but here are some of the things that other drugs do:
- heroin is the most addictive because it actually replaces the myelin sheath on your nerves, so that when you stop taking it, the sheath disappears and it can be extremely painful to come off the drugs that people actually die from going cold turkey.
- Meth and other amphetamine based drugs like ice and speed not only eventually kill you as well, but if you’ve ever seen a brain scan of someone on meth it looks like they’ve had a lobotomy.
-weed can cause schizophrenia and other mental illnesses like depression in the long term but personally i think its the lesser of all the evils.
- alcohol can cause mental illness and disability with long term or binge use. it can also kill.
personally i think heroin is the worst because the chances of recovery are very slight and it can be a torturous existence.
Crack or meth.
Ecstasy is far from the most dangerous drug.
If I had to choose one drug, I would choose heroin.
Check out this chart: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=168_1186040936
(The chart is all over the place so you can find a good place to source it.)
And check out how LOW ecstasy is on the scale!
Tilly Jensen got it right; it depends on the circumstances.
“Worst” is a very subjective term. Are you referring you to the physical damage, mental damage, addiction rate, or potency of the drug? These are all mutually exclusive variables.
Some drugs certainly stand out as having caused the most damage to society, but this is due mostly to culture surrounding the chemical, and the not the chemical itself. For example, Opium (which contains Morphine & Codeine) is infamous as being a major source of income for Mideast terrorist organizations, and less recently, as having hooked thousands of Chinese in the 1800s, and there is even a war named after it: The Opium Wars. Truth be told, I know little about the history of that war though.
The Prohibition of Alcohol resulted in Alcohol being the number one source of income for gangsters like Al Capone in the U.S., yet nobody would say that Alcohol is the worst drug.
Today, the number one killer in the United States is nicotine. So if you consider only the actual direct damage that drugs cause, nicotine comes out as first by a big stretch. You can research the numbers easily; I don’t know them by heart.
Today, Marijuana trafficking is the main source of income for the Mexican Drug Cartels. Yet, in comparison to nicotine and heroin, it is a relatively benign substance.
Clearly, the potency of a drug has no correlation to it’s relation to organized crime. If that were the case, LSD would be fueling evil worldwide; yet, it is classified as one of the least addictive drugs known, although the dosage usually used to achieve desired effects is a over a thousand times smaller than that of Heroin.
So what is the actual worst drug in the world? It depends on what you are measuring.
If you are measuring actual physical damage, Heroin would be near the bottom of the list. Opioids are relatively benign in this regard, even when abused heavily. Cocaine jumps to mind; it puts a lot of stress on your cardiovascular system, while also increasing your temperature and increasing the likelihood of a stroke.
Mental damage? That also depends on what is meant by mental damage. If you are referring to simply the craving the drug leaves the addicted user, then that is very hard to measure, being entirely subjective and affecting each individual very differently. But for the sake of the question, let’s generalize. Opioids are infamous for leaving the user with a potentially life-long craving the dreamy euphoria, but generally leave their emotional facilities intact. Methamphetamine, on the other hand, will not only leave the user craving the drug, but in the worst cases, will actually destroy their ability to feel emotional pleasure, and destroy their motivation to do anything.
If by mental damage, it is meant permanent psychological damage like going insane, then that is actually very rare. Methamphetamine can leave the user in a state of psychosis, similar to a schizophrenic episode, but this is usually temporary. Alcohol can make a person stupid, or retarded. Dissociatives (like Ketamine, DXM, or PCP) can have a similar effect as Alcohol with abuse. And very rarely, Psychedelics, like LSD or Magic Mushrooms, can scar the user for life, leaving them in a surreal world where they aren’t sure if they are even real, or if the world they live in is real. Marijuana can do this too, to a certain extent. But, this is very unlikely.
Addiction rates to psychedelics like LSD and magic mushrooms are usually at the bottom of the scale. Ecstasy (MDMA) is like a mix between Methamphetamine and LSD, but that is just my way of describing it. It too, ranks low on the addiction scale. Heroin, Methamphetamine, Nicotine, and Alcohol would be at the top. (By the way, did you know that there are drugs over a thousand times more potent than Heroin?) Dissociatives would be near the bottom, regarded as generally unpleasant. Marijuana at the bottom.
I could go on and on with generalizations, but I will end it on this note: Permanent adverse effects are usually due to extended abuse of a drug. Overdoses are actually very rare. And responsible use, whether medicinal or recreational, or ‘spiritual’, is relatively safe, when compared to other completely legal activities like Bungee Jumping, Mountain Climbing, Racing, and even Driving.
I hope that was coherent enough for you.
If I had to recommend a drug for your school paper, I would say go with either Nicotine, or Cocaine. They are both popular in our society, and a lot of research has been done about them. And it would be cool to start of your paper saying something like, “My report is on the number one killer in the United States. In terms of deaths, it beat out car crashes, murder, AIDS, and even overdoses from all other drugs COMBINED. Nicotine: It kills you slowly.”