 Substance abuse is not something that you should take lightly. It occurs when a person consumes alcohol on a heavier dosage or take any sort of prescription medications, legal or illegal substances on a heavier dosage. And Dr. Satish, I am here to talk about the substance abuse and the harmful effects of it and how to deal with them. Substance abuse is a term given when a person is over-consuming any sort of a substance which affects a person's brain and body that can range from a lot of different substances like alcohol, even caffeine and many other medications. In fact, if a person who has pain and doctor has prescribed pain to a person and this person is over-consuming the pain medications like morphine or any other medication which is also called as a substance abuse. In a lot of cases, if a person has cough, like codex was kind of a cough syrup which people were over-consuming and which can also give them some sort of a high because it contains opioids. So this way there are a lot of medical prescriptions which is over-consumed which is also called a substance abuse. Or any substance which makes a person feel high in the informal term or intoxicated is the formal term which is called a substance abuse. Most commonly the peer pressure. So when we talk about teenagers, most commonly teenagers in college wants to feel more cool to be accepted in a peer supported by the peers. People depend on consuming alcohol and marijuana nowadays which is most commonly available with the teenagers and young adults. So after the peer pressure, we can talk about the stressors and the major stressors for a teenager probably comes from academics and for a young adult can come from family and also the work life and on a longer stressors when we talk about some sort of a work commitment or when people are going through. Marriage can be a long committed stressors when people are into a marriage not able to deal with it can also be a stressors. So like the social causes is the major reasons for substance consumption. Majorly like alcohol which we spoke earlier and the second can be cannabis which is like ganja or marijuana or weed, grass, many names given to it. And there are many others like hallucinogens, inhalants, something like you know inhalants are those vaporized form of a substance when inhaled a person can feel intoxicated which also includes whitener which is the most commonly available thing. And when we talk about hallucinogens there are many sorts of drugs like LSD and many other things. It can also include morphine which is as simple as pain medication given these are the most commonly available most commonly known substance. So when we talk about substance every substance can give various different signs and symptoms but when we club them up and put them under the umbrella term talking about the emotional aspect the person most commonly shows anxiety and irritability. When we talk about the behavioural part the person can show restlessness the person has difficulty in focusing on something and the person can definitely not be able to complete tasks without any substance. They can show severe difficulties in adjustment in different places they can show a lot of tantrums they can show a lot of aggression behaviour towards people. On a severe levels when we talk about there can be hallucinations when a person is consuming some severe form of an hallucinogens. So when we talk about alcohol it was on a different lines but substance other sort of a substance can be more severe in its nature. In fact the symptoms the signs can even be more severe here which can be which can even be like a memory disruption and the person can show a lot of issues where they can show forgetfulness so these are the most common signs and symptoms when we talk about the emotional and the cognitive part physiological part are definitely a person can sweat very often a person can show increased heartbeat and the person can sometimes even show shortness of the breath vomiting nausea etc. On a checklist level we use the duration so say a person who is consuming alcohol for a substance for a month or two months the severity of it how many number of hours in a day the number of days in a week to the number of months together so the duration is the first checklist that we use and the second thing is how much is it affecting a person's occupational life societal life, personal life and even the physical health so now talking about the physical part there are various different tests that a psychiatrist prescribe mostly like a blood test or a urine sample test or probably even an MRI done in some cases or a CT done in some cases to identify the organic involvement or the impairment that is there and then there are many other neuropsychological assessments like a cognitive assessment also that we use to identify the level of impact it has the organic impact it has these are the various different assessments done to identify them mostly for a severe case medications for sure the pharmacotherapy so a psychiatrist will identify to what extent is the severity and then probably start with the medications when we talk about substance it is more of a rehabilitation it's more of a deaddiction activity that we talk about here so which means there are various different it's a multimodal approach so a person who is taking medications probably kept in a rehabilitation or probably who is visiting a psychiatrist and psychologist on an OPD basis so let's say medication is the first part then comes psychotherapies and then comes cognitive therapies some relaxation techniques and how to deal with the stressors because we identified stressors is the main reason why a person depend on alcohol so these are the different ways of assessing and then working on them which we call it as psychotherapies so it's the medication and the psychotherapies we also appreciate the person to participate in yoga practice in pranayamas make a better social support find better social support and also we appreciate people to spend more time with the family develop a relationship if they are single because being in relationship the person can feel more committed develop a better aim and objective towards the future so these are all how we look at it as a holistic model so when we talk about the substance consumption the person who is consuming it in the very initial stages there is science that your body gives you like you are falling sick or there are some issues that your body is going through is an indication for a person to know it's time to visit a professional or the person can understand that they are not able to live their life they are not able to be functional even without consuming this substance for probably a longer period of time that is another sign where the person has to know that they need to visit a professional or when the person can identify that they are not able to be friendly with the people not able to maintain relationships not able to have a good sleep so when the person's routine is disrupted the person has to understand it's high time to visit a professional