Before we start discussing why some professionals turn to drugs to solve their problems, there are a lot of stereotypes about the types of people who abuse drugs. For a start, many people assume that people who abuse drugs are lazy, weak and morally flawed. They believe that the list of drug abusers would never include people in high up places, whether they work in business, politics or any other part of a stable American society.

The usual culprits that abuse drugs are thought to be the drop outs, losers and people who don’t have anything going for them. I am here to shed some light on the reality of drug abuse: the truth is, all different kinds of people abuse drugs, no matter their age, income level, social status, race or personality. There is not one class of people that are more susceptible than others, as many people with working jobs are just as stressed as those looking for their next dollar. Every person’s situation is different and, therefore, who are we to judge only what we see on the surface level?

Drug abuse is a serious problem in the United States for millions and millions of people, and many of these people are working professionals. Their jobs cause them to be stressed on a daily basis, giving them a reason to look for a way out emotionally from the pressures of their everyday life.  Although these people with high paying stable jobs may appear to have everything under control, they actually might have a higher potential to abuse drugs than everyone else. The pressures and demands of a career-driven life can lead people to make very bad decisions in deed.

Why do working professionals abuse drugs?

Some of the reasons many working professionals turn to drug abuse relates to their desire to self-medicate. To show how deeply rooted these issues are, we will take a look at some facts that were found in a report reflecting some doctor’s behavior across the United States.

As doctors, you would expect them to be the smartest when it came to drugs and what not to do. However, the toll they pay to do their job is so great that even these people sometimes turn to illegal drug abuse to get by. There was an interesting report found by Naueru that doctors may illegally self-prescribe drugs to cope with the stresses of their everyday life. Being a doctor is a very serious and tough job. Witnessing death every day, having lives rely on you, and having so many what-if scenarios play on your mind daily would never be an easy thing to handle, no matter how mentally strong you may be. Therefore, it was found that a few doctors use prescription medication illegally to self-treat the following problems:

• Emotional pain and psychological conditions: these were two of the most widely-reported reasons that doctors self-prescribed. In an attempt to help their own mental health condition, the doctors prescribed themselves drugs to try and treat their anxiety and depression.

• Physical pain: a large portion of the doctors in the study started using drugs illegally to try and numb pain. Directly after being prescribed medications for chronic pain, the study found that doctors had a tendency to prescribe other medication they were not supposed to be on to subdue this pain.

• Stress: this is one of the most obvious reasons doctors would begin to abuse drugs. Most doctors experience a high level of stress in their professions, and some of them find it difficult to manage it without the help of drugs.

• Drug withdrawal: this is the final step in the relative process of an addiction. Once they are hooked, there is no going back and will have to keep prescribing drugs to get through the withdrawals they have every so often. Since the withdrawal symptoms of some drugs can range from extremely uncomfortable to life-threatening, many doctors in the study admitted to treating these withdrawal symptoms with illegally obtained prescription medications.

This shows you just how susceptible some of the most knowledgable people in the drug field are to their own drugs. Remember that even working professionals become addicted. If doctors are turning to these medications for help while knowing the dire consequences, imagine the chances of another type of professional with half the knowledge of a doctor who turn to drug abuse. Doctors see the dangers of these drugs every day and still decide to take them, this gives people outside this profession that are still in a high stress situation much less of a chance in saying no to drugs.

I hope this post showed you some of the main reasons why people turn to drugs, and how we should never judge a book by its cover. Just because someone is in a highly respected position from years of work, doesn’t mean they will always be in their most stable mind at that stage in time