During quarantine, I got myself addicted to video games. I put them above other activities that mattered more, such as school. My grades dropped but I still didn’t put any real effort to get them up. I went through the year just barely evading any Fs. In the past year, I have been doing better without my addiction. My grades are better, I'm feeling happier and sleeping longer. I know from personal experience that life without addiction is far improved, as I have started to feel better altogether. Addiction is more than just drugs and alcohol; it is something that a person desires and puts ahead of more important things like school or a job. Addiction is a fact or condition of being addicted to a particular substance, thing, or activity. In those words, a teen can be addicted to anything from drugs to an activity. Stopping teen addiction should be an important goal to reach as a world to stop things before they get worse. Addictions for teens have major life consequences, they can hurt families for a lifetime, and it has a lasting effect on life that will take a long time to heal.

The consequences of addiction can vary for different addictions. Maybe it's being addicted to a certain activity, something like looking at a phone constantly or constantly playing video games. Habits like that will show a loss of sleep and make emotions run wild. According to an article written by Parsanta Raut “Smartphone addiction for teens; signs, causes, effects, and solutions” on Aug. 18, 2021, say teens after being addicted to smartphones have mood swings and become less interested in other activities, even things they used to love. Drug abuse is even worse especially in teens due to the chemicals in their brain as they grow older. The CDC Teen Substance Use and Risks on February 10, 2020, reports that kids from 12 to 20 that have been drinking underage, can risk them becoming addicted to alcohol and lead to drugs. Addiction like this can destroy someone's future, jobs will be harder to get since they will always be looking for more drugs and need to pay for them. This and the huge cost of these drugs can be devastating.

 The price of drugs is high and hard for someone who can't get a good job. Drug addiction often takes more than money, it takes people's lives. “Maps & Graphs on U.S. Drug Overdose Death Rates” February 22, 2022, says that 841,000 people have died from a drug overdose since 1999, and in 2019 over 70% of drug-influenced deaths were from opioids. “The NCDAS 2022 Drug Overdose Death Rate,” says the rate of ODs nationally is 21.6 deaths per 100,000 people. Doesn't sound like much does it, but the fact is many more abusing drugs that have yet to die and are suffering from them right now. People from 15-24 years old that die from drug abuse make up 12.6 out of the 21.6 deaths per 100,000 people, which is almost half of all the deaths. These are the consequences of addiction, of course, there are still more because we need to know that drugs and addiction are no joke. 

The lasting effects of addiction can vary from body changes to mental and mood changes. Drug addiction can make major changes to the body. The Better Health Channel, December 18, 2017“How drugs affect your body” says Doing drugs can make people more prone to accidents and may find everything harder to do such as sleeping and other everyday things. Addicts will always look for more money for more drugs to fuel an addiction. The cost of drugs can often be more deadly than the drugs themselves. When the money runs out they end up living on the street begging and trying to pay for more and more. Getting clean is harder than it sounds, addiction is told as a type of brain disease, according to the NIH health organization. Even after quitting, the addiction can come back, this is called a “relapse”. People will say that it’s easy to get rid of an addiction, but this is not true. The brain changes after addiction and it takes tremendous amounts of effort to rid the brain back to a normal state. The NIDA said in an article on March 15, 2021 “Brain and Addiction”. The 3 areas most commonly affected by addiction in the brain are the brain stem, limbic system, and cerebral cortex. Having these things happen to a body can be life-changing. There will always be consequences for taking and abusing drugs, even to a family.

Having a family is an important thing, losing it can make a big impact on a life and mind. Drugs can break families apart, whether it's from a family member doing drugs and keeps asking for more and more money from the family or something worse. The Burning Tree “The Impact Of Substance Use: 7 Ways Addiction Affects The Family'' says that siblings of struggling addicts get less attention than the other sibling causing them to feel invisible. When the sibling is ignored they become angry and feel lonely and sad. These things begin to happen at school and they lose a social life because people will think if their sibling is an addict they assume they are too. Parents often forget that addiction is not just teens being stupid but it is a chronic disease that affects and changes the brain. Families might disown their children after addiction, this is a horrible idea seeing as without the care and love needed to fight against addiction they will keep doing it ruining the rest of their lives. A Parent will also feel embarrassed about their child being a drug addict as it might affect their social life. They will also blame themselves for it, they might think that they drove their child into it. Addiction is often not the parent’s fault unless they do or take drugs themselves, at which point they aren't fit to be a parent. When a child has an addiction the siblings or parents fall under the responsibility of the caretaker to watch over and protect them from doing any more drugs or falling back into it. Putting all of this together not only are drugs bad but any addiction can greatly affect the family.

Drugs are a big thing that affects the way people live and they shouldn't be. There are many actions that we as a community need to take to help other people that are affected by both drugs and addiction. We need to make them a lot harder to get and sell, we need to make them especially harder for kids to get their hands on drugs making them affected for life. Drugs have been hurting people for centuries but we didn’t start noticing that they are a bad way of life until the 1900s, that took us way too long. To this day we are still not really restricting kids from any sort of addiction as much as we should be. Drugs are not the only thing that is hurting us but addiction in general whether it's from drugs or video games/cellphone we need to start fighting addiction. We have to have easy to access rehab centers for people to recover from addiction. There are so many things that we can do to fight addiction but we seem to be too lazy to do anything about it.

There are many consequences of addiction, someone can lose family and friends and it will have lasting effects on the body and mind. It's not always drug addictions that will affect someone but maybe it’s something like me with video games. Overcoming an addiction can be a very difficult task, it takes time and effort put into it, and quitting cold turkey or maybe another treatment is very serious. Always feeling like they should be doing that and thinking to themselves this is the last time I do this. It never is. Then every time becomes the last time, even though in the back of the mind a voice says that it won’t be. Strong actions have to be taken to help with this disease and people need to be informed of how powerful and bad it is. Not enough people know that this isn't just some stupid kids but it's a real disease that needs to be treated with some medicine and lots of care for the struggling person taking it. Addiction is more powerful than the drugs causing it and we should take action to help and care for those with this disease.