Course: Ethical Thinking in the Liberal Arts
Date: February 17, 2013
Instructor: Alicia Plant In the area of psychology which involves around mental functions can being about many ethical issues, but the area of study within the psychology ream that I personal seen ethical issue in are substance abuse and alcoholism. I have been working in this area for 6 years now and I see firsthand everyday how unethical people see and judge an addict or an alcoholic. In this area you have to fist understand that it is a disease that the affect person will have to fight the rest of their lives just as a cancer patients, or people with diabetes. When I first started working in this felid I could not understand why people would choose to behave like that, but once I gained the knowledge of how drugs and alcohol affect you, I begin to comprehend the concept of an addict and an alcoholic. Being dependent on a substance to alter your mood is when the issue of ethics comes into play. Not only is it illegal to do this but it is also wrong to do. There are a lot of reasons why some choose to alter their mood with these substances. Some do it want to mask their feelings of events taken place n their life; some do it out of curiosity, and some just do it to fit in with the crowd or should I say society. It does not matter why they choose this life the fact is that when you become dependent on something to make you feel different in an illegal way it is ethical issue. You should live life to the fullest meaning enjoying the good with the bad. You should not have to drink or use drugs to feel better about your life; you should be grateful that you were allowed another chance on earth to live to see another day because a lot of people were not given that chance. Dealing with issue such as this one can be very challenging because getting sober for addicts and alcoholics is not an easy task. People die from this disease everyday. Once these chemicals are in your body they cause an imbalance that make you feel like you cannot live without them, and because of these the relapse rate is high. The important factor in dealing with this issue is having the proper support and tools it take to stay clean. Most cases they encourage the addict or alcoholics to find a higher power, but because not everyone believe in a higher power there are also options such as Alcoholics Anonymous supports groups. These groups are basically fellowship group that consist of other alcoholic and addicts. They talk about what they have been through in the disease, what it took for them to change, and what they are like today. The moral theory to deal with ethical issues like this is to treat others as you wish to be treated regardless if they have made mistakes in life because no one is perfect. Just because someone has lost their way, or made bad mistakes does not mean that they are the