The Body's Response to Cocaine

 

(Creativa Images)

It is very important to educate students about drugs and their effects. I feel that educating at a younger age is the most beneficial because instilling that drugs are bad early will follow them as they grow up and hopefully deter them from trying them.

I wanted to discuss the lesson about The Body’s Response to Cocaine because I think it’s an excellent lesson. This lesson is geared towards grades 5-9. This lesson first starts out by discussing what cocaine is. I like how it also included other names for cocaine like blow, coke, or snow. I think it is important to educate students that there can be other names or nicknames for drugs. It is important because if they only know one name, they may try it if someone introduces it as an unfamiliar name. The lesson also includes how people use cocaine and how it works. This information is important for students to look out for incase they see their friends or people they know doing acts like snorting powder through their nose or rubbing it on their gums. Learning how it works is very beneficial as well because they need to know how it affects their body. Cocaine affects your dopamine levels and if you use it all of the time, your body will crave more of it to feel happy and normal. The lesson also discusses how you can become addicted to cocaine because it changes how your brain works. I really like how the lesson also includes short, long, and overdose effects. Instilling these effects like nose bleeds, seizures, light sensitivity, high body temperature, etc. can scare the students at a young age so they won’t have a desire to try it at any point in their lives. 

One way I would improve this lesson would be to include a list of resources for help. At the end of the lesson, it briefly mentions that if you know someone who needs help, talk to a trusted adult. Although I do agree with this, I think there should be a phone number for a hotline listed or maybe even lists of websites for additional help resources. I feel that having this information available can allow the student to feel more comfortable with getting that struggling individual help. I feel this way because if the person that needs help is a family member, they may be embarrassed to tell someone they know. Therefore, having a stranger hear about your situation and offer help can be different and possibly more effective.

Here is the direct link for the lesson:

https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/parents-educators/lesson-plans/mind-matters/cocaine

This picture is included in the lesson and I think it is a great visual of cocaine's effects (Johnston et al., 2020).

Here is a link to the PDF booklet of the lesson as well: 

https://nida.nih.gov/sites/default/files/NIDA_MindMatters_508_Cocaine_2022.pdf

References

Johnston, et al. (2020). Monitoring the Future national survey results on drug use: 1975–2019: Overview, key findings on adolescent drug use. Ann Arbor: Institute for Social Research, The University of Michigan

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