Drug and alcohol addiction is a particularly gruesome and worrisome crisis of the very worst kind, and it has been an ongoing issue in this country for some time now. Substance abuse is a very real crisis, to say the least, and it is something that only gets worse and worse as the years go by, as opposed to something that could possibly get better with time. The sad truth of the matter is that drug and alcohol addiction is indeed a very real crisis and a very real problem that only seems to grow more severe and problematic as the years go by. If major action is not taken on both a personal level and on a nation-wide level, then this is a problem and a crisis factor that will undoubtedly become a lot more terrible as the years go by.
One of the biggest drug and alcohol addiction problems in the country today that is also very gruesome and scary is that of drug and alcohol addiction amongst pregnant women. This has become a lot more prevalent than anything that is even remotely acceptable. For some of the data and statistics on it from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health:
- Perhaps one of the most disturbing of all substance abuse problems that has come to the forefront of the addiction crisis in the United States has been with pregnant women who are addicted to drugs and alcohol. Its true severity is almost too frightening to comprehend.
- When a pregnant mother, no matter where she is at in her pregnancy, abuses drugs and alcohol she is not only destroying her life but she is also destroying the life of an unborn child on top of it, effectively destroying two lives with one person’s addiction.
- When it comes to drug and alcohol addiction and pregnant mothers taking part in such habits, this is a particularly difficult incident too because it is not easy to rehabilitate a pregnant mother from drug or alcohol addiction without risking the life of the unborn child. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health looked into this and found that the odds are about 50/50 that the unborn child will even survive the withdrawal period, much less the rehabilitation process itself.
- According to the NSDUH, there are several hundred thousand mothers in the United States who are either currently pregnant or who have a very small and young infant child and the mother is currently experiencing addiction of one kind or another. The numbers rank in the tens of thousands of women who are addicted and pregnant, and in the hundreds of thousands of mothers who are addicted and who have an infant child.
Addressing the Problem with Intervention
Drug testing and screening would be a brilliant intervention technique to use on pregnant women. Essentially, if drug testing was done in addition to other tests in a women’s first trimester, then it might be possible to rehabilitate the mother and to remove the addiction from the mother’s life without damaging the fetus. A lot will, of course, depend on the mother, what she is taking, how much she is taking when she takes it, how often she takes it, and for how long she has been taking it for.
The bottom line is that more action is the answer to doing something about drug and alcohol addiction, not less action. Less action is not the answer. Less action will not do anything about the problem. Taking more action like implementing more drug testing of pregnant women will have a positive result.
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