Intake and Abuse of Psychoactive Substances and Its Relative Consequences: A Review

Substance abuse has been a thorny public health concern throughout human history. Manifestly, prevention and treatment are the two main strategies commonly adopted to tackle the problem of substance abuse. They are in fact cross-disciplinary, and they relate to the various domains of heredity, biology, psychology, cognitive science, family, social development and cultural structures. Almost everyone, directly or indirectly, comes in contact everyday with drug/substance use or abuse. The drug scene is a varied one that includes licit and illicit drugs, street drugs, prescription drugs, over- the-counter drugs, drugs for pleasure, and drugs to ease pain. This special issue, “psychoactive substance abuse”, has been reviewed going through the global world and Nigeria in particular to enhance a re-think on processes and influences of substance abuse across different domains, through which a multilevel perspective is considered more helpful for analyzing its complex nature, courses and consequences which include mental illness, liver and kidney related diseases, low productivity, child abuse, sexual abuse, loss of individual integrity, destruction of nasal tissues, lesions in lung unpredictable effects such as convulsion, respiratory paralysis and untimely death. This in turn checked the possible negative consequences of excess intake of these psychoactive drugs in order to discourage the users and alert the necessary authorities to seriously act to this effect.