Critical Analysis of Drugs

Drugs and alcohol use has been a common and consistent problem in the United States for quite a long time. From the prohibition era in the 1920’s to the common drug use seen in the 1970’s, we have always seen a problem that needs to be addressed. An array of scholars, from all the disciplines, have each experimented and researched this topic in their own unique ways.

The natural sciences take a purely scientific approach by hypothesizing and using the scientific method to research and made evaluative claims based on experiment and observation as shown in the article “Relationship between Vigorous Exercise Frequency and Substance Use Among First-Year Drinking College Students”.

Social Science is similar because it also uses hypotheses and the scientific method to observe and evaluate experiments, but at the same time uses theory critique and discussion methods as seen in the article “Decisional Balance and Collegiate Drinking”.

The Humanities take a very difference approach to experiments and research than the natural or social sciences.

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The Humanities utilize analysis and interpretation in their approach and provide very subjective results to their studies as seen in, “Associations Between Aspects of Spiritual Well-Being, Alcohol Use, and Related Social-Cognitions in Female College Students”. All of these techniques give us a better understand of the subject as a whole by exposing us to all the different views of a single topic.

See more: how to write a critical analysis outline

Drugs and alcohol use, particularly in college students, in a continuously rising issue in our current society and is gaining more notice in recent years because of the rise in college student awareness.

It is a pressing issue that affects people’s health, lifestyle, and general well being and needs to be treated with attention and an open mind to help resolve its current issues. Part I. From the scholarly point of view, drug and alcohol use in the college setting is covered by all the disciplines with different attention on certain aspects by each respective discipline.

A social science article, “Decisional Balance and Collegiate Drinking,” by Dr. Morgen delves into college students drinking habits, and why they act as they do. The articles purpose is to show the relationship between how students perceive their drinking and how bad it actually is. Dr. Morgen focuses on identifying the problem and evaluating it. This isn’t far off from the approach the Natural Science article, “Relationship between Vigorous Exercise Frequency and Substance Use Among First-Year Drinking College Students” by Dr.Moore and Dr. Werch.

Their focus is to compare exercise habits among self identified drinkers and to come up with scientific explanations for their habits. Like Dr. Morgen, the study included asking questions about the students drinking habits and perceptions of their actions. But, unlike Dr. Morgen there is a more objective approach to the results and less room for interpretation. The Humanities article compares more with the Social Science article and contrasts with the Natural Science take on the subject.

The article, “Associations Between Aspects of Spiritual Well-Being, Alcohol Use, and Related Social-Cognitions in Female College Students” focuses strictly on discussion and results to questions they presented to the women in their study. When comparing the Humanities article to the other two, you can see a difference in the materials covered and analyzed. The Humanities support its findings through their discussion and thoughts on the results, while the two science articles find support from empirical data. When looking at all three sources it is easy to realize how complex and broad drugs and alcohol are among the three disciplines.

When we view the Natural Science article is it clear that the use of scientific sources are more prevalent than in the Humanities article. The Humanities utilize primary sources, where the Social Sciences use a mixture of methods found in both the Humanities and the Natural Sciences. All of these scholarly discussions demonstrate the complexity of the subject, while also exposing it from many different angles. Each article seems to approach the topic of drugs and alcohol by exhibiting several different opportunities for argument.

Given that all three articles deal with three different disciplines it’s no surprise that each article comes to its respective conclusion by different rhetorical means. “Relationship between Vigorous Exercise Frequency and Substance Use Among First-Year Drinking College Students,” by Moore and Werch, works to indentify factors in college students drinking and exercise habits and link them together. Moore and Werch rely on logos to convey their results, given that the article is in the Natural Sciences it uses facts, statistics, and experiments to argue its results.

This differs greatly from, “Associations Between Aspects of Spiritual Well-Being, Alcohol Use, and Related Social-Cognitions in Female College Students” by VonDras et al. because VonDras et al. make up the framework of their approach and argument by using credibility and reliable sources (ethos). The Social Science article, “Decisional Balance and Collegiate Drinking” by Dr. Morgen, is a combination of both approaches. The use of logical reasoning and experiments yield to logos, but at the same time the exploitation of reliable sources and trustworthiness demonstrate ethos as its rhetorical choice.

The point of view of the three articles is first person because the authors are directly explaining the experiments methods, process, and discussion to the reader. Throughout the three sources there is a certain ethos connection because of the experimenters relying on honest input from their subjects in each experiment. Overall, all three articles state the importance of the positions they take, and relate their topics to some degree. All have in common a kind of moderation in how they appeal to an audience rhetorically. Each source uniquely represents its particular discipline through textual evidence, and its take on the subject at hand.

The Humanities article, “Associations Between Aspects of Spiritual Well-Being, Alcohol Use, and Related Social-Cognitions in Female College Students” by VonDras et al. represents humanities perfectly because of its strong use of interpretation and analysis. This approach differs greatly from the “Relationship between Vigorous Exercise Frequency and Substance Use Among First-Year Drinking College Students” article, which uses more observation and the scientific method, which is very representative of the Natural Sciences.

Once again incorporating some of both of the disciplines to represent its take is the Social Science article, “Decisional Balance and Collegiate Drinking”. There is clear use of scientific method and experiment, but you can also see interpretation and analysis in the conclusion discussion which talks about the students drinking habits and perceived benefits from consuming alcohol. The Natural Science article strays from its disciplines approach at times and seems to come across as a Social Science article.

Its uses analysis and observation along with its hypothesis. The Social Science article, “Decisional Balance and Collegiate Drinking” is most typical to its specific discipline. It exemplifies traditional Social Science approaches to the experiment and discussion more wholly than the Natural Science and Humanities articles represent their topic. The least typical to its discipline is the Natural Science article, “Relationship between Vigorous Exercise Frequency and Substance Use Among First-Year Drinking College Students”.

Though, as stated, it does use scientific approaches which represent the Natural Sciences, it also incorporates some Social Science attributes in its structure. This is dissimilar to the Humanities article, “Associations Between Aspects of Spiritual Well-Being, Alcohol Use, and Related Social-Cognitions in Female College Students” because as previously stated, VonDras et al. stuck to the proper methods in their research and represented the Humanities in a proper fashion.

Taken as a whole, these three scholarly sources predominantly stick to their discipline and properly represent their respective disciplines. Part II. The importance of drug and alcohol use in the college setting has never been more important and relevant than it is now. Drug and alcohol use at the college level can have many detrimental effects on the future of our society. We, the college students in America, are the future of this country, and if we cannot be responsible enough to drink not in excess then how can we be trusted to continue to run this country smoothly.

The three sources used from the three different disciplines all touch on important ideas related to the topic at hand. As stated in the Social Science article, “Decisional Balance and Collegiate Drinking” by Dr. Morgen, most of the college students that claim they have their drinking habits in control and receive lots of benefits from drinking fall into the DSM-IV-TR category for alcoholism. This is a relevant issue because it shows that college students who think they are responsible for their actions could easily have a disease and not even know it.

We must strive to fix or at least help the issue that is in front of us by going straight to the matter. In the Natural Science article, “Relationship between Vigorous Exercise Frequency and Substance Use Among First-Year Drinking College Students” it states college students who exercise more are more likely to drink heavily. That seems highly counterproductive, but from the student’s point of view, they feel that if they work out and exercise they can drink as a reward for their efforts.

This is a skewed way to look at it and should also be addressed. We don’t need to promote no drinking because that will simply not work, but we can push to inform people of the health risks and harm they do to their bodies by drinking heavily on a regular basis. This is a very relevant take on the subject because it alerts the reader of the things they found and provides unbiased, correct information on the topic of drinking amongst college students.

The Humanities article, “Associations Between Aspects of Spiritual Well-Being, Alcohol Use, and Related Social-Cognitions in Female College Students” approaches the subject from a different angle but still covers useful and relevant material to use and discuss. Its main idea is talking about how religion and spirituality effect their views and habits of drinking. The study found that religious affiliation and aspects of spiritual well being are moderators of behavior that lead to alcohol prevention.

The level of awareness of the issue of alcohol use of all three scholarly sources seems to be very high. They all selected their topic of research to find definitive results about the use of alcohol and its effects on the people who abuse it. There seems to be a suitable amount of attention given, which is good because it seems that a large group of people are unaware of the negative aspects on their lifestyle and health of heavy drinking and drug use. We should be focused strongly on the issue more than the discipline we are reading it from.

All the disciplines have unique approaches to their discussions but they still head towards the same issue that we should be focused on. All three of the sources seem to stay focused and never stray from alcohol use as their main topic. The Social Science article, “Decisional Balance and Collegiate Drinking” seems to be most relevant because of its practical explanations. It includes input and thoughts from the Natural Sciences and the Humanities, and that’s what makes it a Social Science article. The practicality of its subject, why students drink, is easy to understand, but at the same time is very in-depth.

We learn so much from it such as, why people drink, how much they drink, their perceived benefits from consumption, and the effects of all those things added up. As stated earlier, this issue is very important in our society at this moment. College should be fun, but at the same time we must learn to be responsible and focus on what we are in college to do. That is learn and get an education so that we can later because the leaders and innovators that push this country to greatness. Only so much can be done, but the first step to changing anything is raising awareness on college campuses.

Overall, drug and alcohol abuse is portrayed in all the disciplines with each one having an important input on the matter as a whole. It is a pressing issue that affects people’s health, lifestyle, and general well being and needs to be treated with attention and an open mind to help resolve its current issues. We cannot stray from this pressing issue in the near future and must continue to research and experiment so that we may better understand drug and alcohol use from all different points of view.

As stated in the Social Science article, “Decisional Balance and Collegiate Drinking”, students who perceive their consumption as normal have in reality worse habits than the average person. We have to strive to expose this issue and correct it as best we can in the future. From the Humanities article, “Associations Between Aspects of Spiritual Well-Being, Alcohol Use, and Related Social-Cognitions in Female College Students”, we can conclude that religious affiliation and sense of spiritual well-being seem to have a positive effect on drinking habits.

Simply put, morals seem to have an effect on if a person abuses alcohol or drugs. Also, as found in the Natural Science source, “Relationship between Vigorous Exercise Frequency and Substance Use Among First-Year Drinking College Students” people seem to be negatively reinforcing themselves because it was found that people how exercise more reported consuming more alcohol than the average person. That finding is a sad thing because it is so counterproductive to the body. From the sources as a whole you can easily find the connection that this is a pertinent issue today and will continue to be in the future.

Its importance cannot be stressed enough but even with that, people will continue to not listen and use substances more than is considered responsible. We will see the consequences of this in the coming years, and determine if the issue really is as big as it seems, or if people finally grow up when they get out of college and realize they can’t have such destructive behaviors and continue to contribute to society in a positive way. In conclusion, we cannon stray from this issue, but we must continue to research it and learn from it to help fix and explain it to coming generations.

Moore, Michele Johnson, and Chudley Werch. "Relationship Between Vigorous Exercise Frequency and Substance Use Among First-Year Drinking College Students. " Journal of American College Health Vol. 56. No. 6 (2008): 686-690. Morgen, Keith, and Lauren Gunneson. "Decisional Balance and Collegiate Drinking. " Journal of Alcohol & Drug Education (2008): 18-36. VonDras, D. , R. Schmitt, and D. Marx. "Associations Between Aspects of Spiritual Well-Being, Alcohol Use, and Related Social-Cognitions in Female College Students. " Journal of Religion & Health Vol. 46 (2007): 500-515.