Perception of substance abuse: prevalence, causes & socio-economic status.

Substance abuse is a serious problem adversely affecting the social fabric of the country. Psychoactive drugs when taken by a person can modify perception, mood, cognition, behaviour, or motor functions. Addiction to drug not only affects the individual's health but also disrupt their families and whole society. The present study is descriptive in nature. 100 drug abusers from three different rehabilitation centers based in Guwahati city were interviewed. Purposive sampling technique was used to collect the data. The present study infers that the substance abused youth were more in urban areas than rural areas and most of them were living with their family. Alcohol and heroin were found to be main substance abused by the youths. Curiosity, for fun and peer pressure were the predominant reason for using psychoactive drugs Majority of drug abused youthswerein the age group of 18 to 21 years and they mostly unemployed. The majority of the substance abused youthswere living with family.