Psychological Impacts of Drug Addiction on Criminal Behaviour

Secondly, drug addiction gives rise to a myriad of psychological issues at personal level, of which if they go unabated, they diverge to chronic issues that affect the society at large. Therefore, understanding the psychological impact of drug addiction and how they influence criminal behaviour provides a framework to understanding the whole concept of drugs and behaviour as it provides the psychological insights of drug addiction. One of the chronic issue of drug addiction is criminal behaviour, with which psychologists view as the aggregate formation and adoption of antisocial traits and forms of interactions of individual self and other society members in a manner to suggest criminal intent (Glenn & Raine, 2014). Customary, drug addiction and criminal behaviour tend to take a moral character perspective, whereby individuals get “social labels” from the society’s regard of morality, rather than understanding the psychological connection.

In a broader perspective, criminal behaviour results from the prolonged intoxication and loss of control of substance abuse that come with personality and character distortion; greatly influenced by poor moral and emotional judgement. In addition, by appreciating the fact that crime is in most cases learned through association, then, understanding the nature of association and the contributing factor towards drug addiction forms the benchmark for analysis and formulation of mitigation strategies. Logically and from social positivism approach, addressing the key factor that might push an individual into the brink of relying on drugs to socially abscond their moral obligations or evade realities in life. In the same fashion, understanding the specific drug related crimes; the use-related crimes, system-related crimes, and economic-related crimes gives this paper a comprehensive trajectory of understanding the connection between drug addiction, psychological impacts, and how the impacts influence on criminal behaviour.

Psychological Impacts of Drug Addiction From a psychological perspective, the impacts of drug addiction stems from the mental changes that take place whenever and individual starts taking drugs, to a point of reliance and addiction in later stages. In other words, evaluating the psychological impacts of drug abuse and addiction requires comprehensive analysis of mental alterations in the brain; that in turn changes the normal functioning of individuals in coping with day to day activities, emotions and feelings, and the general reaction to or point of susceptibility in times of mental distress, pain or physical distraction (Everitt & Robbins, 2016). Notably, psychologists link the rapid mood swing to the aggregate changes in individual’s energy levels, concentration, sleep patterns, bipolar disorders, epilepsy, attention deficit hyper-activity disorder, and self-esteem.

Logically, the causes emanate from excessive abuse of drugs and other substances that alter the hormonal functioning of the body, resulting to these factors that in turn contribute to rapid mood swings. Anxiety, on the other hand, constitutes a psychological impact of drug addiction, whereby an individual develops some disorders with time due to excessive use of drugs. For instance, due to excessive use of drugs one develops a panic disorder characterises by quick and unprecedented feeling of terror that comes with unregular and strong heart beats or chest pains and excessive sweating. The common one is the social and specific phobias whereby due to excessive drug use and addiction, individuals tend to develop overwhelming worry and over-consciousness over every day situations, thereby having a fixated judgement of betrayal, ridicule or embarrassment, before one attempts on the situation.

From a broader perspective, addicts with hallucinations and confusion traits tend to possess delusional tendencies that worsen with neglect or paranoid feeling of it, resulting to scary and disruptive reactions by the victims. Drug addiction and thoughts Notably, drug addiction affects one’s thoughts in myriad ways, starting from addiction itself whereby reliance on drugs takes advantage of the normal functioning of the body. From biological and physiological perspectives, human brain is wired to reward the other body parts for normal and healthy behaviour, but whenever addiction takes precedence in one’s life, the resulting impairments lead to the breakdown of normal operations (Treanor, Brown, Rissman, & Craske, 2017). For instance, physical addiction and dependency to drugs affect tolerance and withdrawal, while the emotional dependence creates formal attachment to the craving or needing of drugs to stave the feeling of guilt and depression or the need to shy away from realities of life.

Importantly, long term drug use and addiction leads to memory loss and increased susceptibility to developing risky brain related diseases such as dementia and stroke; which affects the cognitive ability of the user, and ultimately clouding thinking processes. The innocent-in this case, the offender or the addict takes the thoughts of playing innocent such that they will not claim responsibility of their decaying social and psychological behaviours. The godfather- with this attitude, the addict develops thoughts of importance, more so, their relevance in heading criminal gangs or strategizing on ways to instil fear as the to end up as the protagonist in criminal activities and behaviour. Drug addiction and Criminal Behaviour The complexity of drug addiction and criminal behaviour lies in the investigative aspects of whether drug use automatically leads to criminal behaviour or whether the use of illegal drugs predisposes one to criminal activities.

In essence, the correlation between drug use and criminal activities and behaviour exhibit a significant positive index in that drug use and addiction amplify the pre-existing criminal behaviour. In other words, addicted drug users tend to find themselves in wrong side of the law for various criminal activities, from a jurisdiction perspective, compared to non-users; with the common denominator being economic disadvantages and affluence (Koob, 2015). For instance, the unruly aspects of excessive drug use lead people to develop risky patterns of social behaviour such as driving under influence, engaging in risky and unprotected sexual encounters, criminal activities at juvenile stages and the general rise in the levels of social problems. Focusing on the parallels between addiction and criminal behaviour, the study can deduce that a majority of the addicts focus on “getting high” and on devising ways to financially maintain the statuses, hence the high chances of social and economic crimes and the general moral decadence.

Intervention Strategies Treating addiction requires comprehensive approach of first understanding the nature of addiction and causes, and later devising mechanisms to treat and mitigate the prevalence. Clinical strategies involve a combination of clinical studies and psychological evaluations of the addicts in a bid to identity the levels of damage to the brain and subsequent prescriptions. Psychological evaluations or program strategies involves identifying the specific aspects of addiction and devising appropriate mitigation strategies or therapies to cure or mitigate the prevalence of the condition. Dimoff, J. D. , Sayette, M. A. , & Norcross, J. L. , & Raine, A. Neurocriminology: implications for the punishment, prediction and prevention of criminal behaviour. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 15(1), 54. Hawk, K. Koob, G. F. Antireward, compulsivity, and addiction: seminal contributions of Dr.