Signs of Addiction: When It's Time to Seek Drug Treatment
Individualized Drug Treatment Programs for a Wide Range of Addiction Symptoms
Drug use is one of the causes of many social problems, leading to declining health among people who use, family conflict, crime, and much more. If you are struggling with addiction, or someone close to you is, you should seek treatment as soon as possible. Today, many drug rehabilitation centers have teams of doctors and specialists ready to provide care, to prevent further harm to the body and mind of the person using, as well as to the people close to them and society at large.
The Toll of Drug Use
1. Legal consequences: Schedule 1 and Schedule 2 — imprisonment of 6 months to 3 years, or a fine of 10,000–60,000 baht, or both.
Schedule 3 — for amounts not exceeding ministerial regulation limits, imprisonment of up to 1 year, or a fine of up to 20,000 baht, or both; for amounts exceeding those limits, imprisonment of up to 2 years and a fine of up to 200,000 baht.
Schedule 4 — possession for sale carries imprisonment of up to 5 years, or a fine of up to 100,000 baht, or both, when the amount possessed is 10 kg or more.
Schedule 5 — imprisonment of up to 1 year, or a fine of up to 20,000 baht, or both.
2. Toll on physical and mental health
This depends on the type of substance, but in general, drugs cause the body to deteriorate, damage the brain, and cause lethargy, an inability to eat, insomnia, and complications that lead to various illnesses. When a person’s physical health declines, their mental health follows — causing irritability, anxiety, agitation, and sometimes paranoia toward the people around them.
3. Toll on family and society
Wasted money, family conflict and breakdown, arguments, an unhappy household, loss of reputation, social rejection, and loss of friends — all of which make it easier to become involved in crime.
Examples of Symptoms Across Different Types of Drug Addiction
1. Yaba and Crystal Meth (Ice) — Both are stimulants that raise blood pressure, cause heart palpitations and a racing heartbeat, and produce hyperarousal. Once the drug’s effects wear off, withdrawal symptoms follow — the body feels drained, the mind feels foggy, leading to slower, poorer decision-making. Long-term use causes cognitive decline, hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, and mania, and can lead to loss of consciousness or death in some cases. Others go on to develop schizophrenia — a permanent psychiatric condition that persists even after they stop using.
2. Cocaine — A stimulant like yaba and ice, but stronger. Using it produces alertness, energy, unusual stamina, and heightened confidence. With prolonged use, it causes hallucinations, insomnia, and constant hyperarousal. In severe addiction, it affects the heart — raising heart rate and potentially causing seizures, irregular heartbeat, heart failure, and death.
3. Ketamine (“Special K”) — A hallucinogen. Users experience euphoria and a loss of normal sensory perception — vision, light, color, and hearing — along with blurred vision. With continued use, this can develop into a permanent perceptual disorder known as hallucinogen-induced persisting perceptual disorder, involving ongoing distorted vision, or light and color perception resembling hallucinations. These symptoms can persist for more than a year, even after stopping ketamine. Another common effect among ketamine users is urinary dysfunction — burning urination, a sense of incomplete emptying, frequent urination, inability to urinate, or blood in the urine. These result from ketamine damaging the bladder muscle, a condition known as ketamine cystitis or ketamine bladder syndrome. Once the bladder is damaged, the person can no longer fully empty it; the retained urine causes inflammation and subsequent infection. These effects are often permanent — some patients need a long-term catheter, while others require surgery to reconstruct the bladder using a section of the intestine.
4. Opium, Morphine, and Heroin — Known collectively as opioid derivatives, these are central nervous system depressants. Users experience euphoria, relaxation, drowsiness, slowed thinking, and easily shifting moods. People who inject heroin often wear long sleeves to hide needle marks on their arms. Stopping use causes severe withdrawal symptoms — bone pain, fever and chills, nausea and vomiting, restlessness, insomnia, diarrhea, and stomach pain, with some cases involving bloody stool, which is the origin of the Thai term for withdrawal, “long daeng” (literally “red descent”), referring to the red-colored stool some people pass. This makes it fairly difficult for people dependent on opioid derivatives to quit on their own. With proper detox and treatment, these withdrawal symptoms — including “long daeng” — become milder, making it easier to quit.
5. Alcohol — Like opioid derivatives, alcohol is a central nervous system depressant. It reduces anxiety and produces relaxation, while weakening emotional control. As drinking increases, control over speech, muscle coordination, and balance declines further; severe alcohol poisoning can suppress breathing, cause loss of consciousness, and lead to death. Some people don’t die acutely from drinking, but from years of chronic, heavy drinking that leads to cirrhosis, with death eventually resulting from cirrhosis or liver cancer. Withdrawal symptoms depend on the amount consumed and how long someone has been drinking. For people who have been drinking heavily and continuously for a long time, stopping can trigger severe withdrawal — seizures, confusion, agitation, hallucinations, and memory loss — which makes it difficult for long-term drinkers to quit on their own. With proper detox and treatment, withdrawal symptoms become milder, making it easier to stop drinking.
6. LSD — A hallucinogen like ketamine. Early use produces euphoria and excitement, but this is followed by hallucinations and paranoia, and can lead to suicide, since the person loses the ability to control their own actions. Long-term use can cause permanent schizophrenia — hearing voices, hallucinations, and paranoia that persist even after use stops.
7. Cannabis — A mixed-action drug. In its early effects, users become cheerful, quick to laugh, and talkative; this is followed by symptoms resembling intoxication — drowsiness and lethargy — and eventually hearing voices, hallucinations, and paranoia. Some people experience memory loss and lose the ability to control themselves, and some go on to develop schizophrenia — a permanent psychiatric condition that persists even after they stop using. In fact, cannabis is one of the more common causes of drug-induced schizophrenia. The fact that cannabis has been adopted for medical use doesn’t mean it’s free of harm, or that it can be used freely without risk of addiction — recreational use remains illegal and carries many risks to the body.
Treating addiction requires proper care from a team of specialists to prevent complications, both physical and psychological. Choosing a drug rehabilitation center that meets recognized standards is therefore essential, since it can properly assess symptoms, plan treatment, and provide structured, ongoing rehabilitative care. People in treatment receive a safe environment suited to recovery, which reduces the chances of relapse and helps them return to daily life with greater stability.
The substances described above, however they enter the body, all carry serious harm and danger, affecting health and, in some cases, proving fatal. So if you or someone close to you has already tried or is using any of them, you should seek proper drug treatment.
DAY ONE is a residential drug rehabilitation center offering a 28-day, 4-week program, where each person in treatment receives care tailored to their individual needs, with a team of doctors and specialists providing care throughout and tracking progress day by day, so that treatment goes smoothly and its results last.
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