Drug problems

    If you're worried about your own or someone else's drug taking or misuse, it's good to know the facts.

Why take drugs?

    Drug users don't start using drugs with the intention of becoming addicted. But many drugs contain addictive substances(物质) and even people who use them occasionally can become dependent and need to use them regularly.

    Reasons why people start using drugs can include: to escape problems they may be having in other parts of their life, peer pressure and fitting in with another group of people, being curious about the effects of drugs.

    If you start to use drugs on a regular basis, or if you become dependent on them, it can affect your family and friends as well as having a serious impact on your own physical and mental well-being.

    Drug overdoses can be fatal. You can die instantly from misusing substances and drugs that you can buy over the counters.

Signs of drug abuse and misuse

    There is not a common list of symptoms that you can use to tell if you or someone you know is misusing drugs. That's because drug use affects different people in different ways, depending on the type of drugs they're using.

    Although anxiety, tiredness and a change in sleeping habits can be signs of drug use, they can also be caused by changes in your body, stress or other problems.

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    Drugs are categorised into three classes based on their overall level of harm. Class A drugs are the most dangerous, however, all the drugs in all three classes are harmful and addictive.

    Remember that all drugs are illegal, even Class C drugs like cannabis(大麻烟). If you're caught selling them to other people, or carrying a small amount in your pocket, it's likely that the police will get involved.

    If you're found guilty of any of these offences, you may face a fine or time in custody(拘留), with Class A drugs carrying the most severe sentences.

Worried about a friend?

    If you think that one of your friends or relatives is misusing drugs, you may want to approach them and talk about it. It's not your responsibility to make them stop, but you can tell them about how their behaviour is affecting your relationship.

    If they ask for help with their problem, then it's important to listen and help them find the right information and treatment.

National Drugs Helpline

    If you're worried about drug abuse and addiction you can call the National Drugs Helpline on 0800 776 600 for confidential advice—lines are open seven days a week. Calls are free and they won't show up on your phone bill, but you may be charged if you use a mobile.

More useful links

Information about addictions from need to know

Information about drugs, the law and human rights

    Believe it or not, school uniforms are absolutely not only clothes for students. They stand for the culture or beauty appreciation standard of a country. To wear uniforms has become a trend in most countries in modern society. Well, let's take a look at school uniforms in different nations. This will be interesting. And here, you will detect diverse allure (魅力)！

    The style of England school uniforms is rather classic, simple and respectable. Middle school students must wear traditional western-style school uniforms. Boys wear traditional western-style clothes, regular leather shoes and must wear neckties. Girls also wear western-style clothes, regular leather shoes and must wear bow ties. This classic clothing style unconsciously affects England students' temperament(性格)and also sense of beauty.

    Both boy and girl students in Australia are required to wear black leather shoes and white socks. They wear school uniforms all the time except the physical education, when they need to wear gym suits.

    Students in Malaysia obey rather strict rules. Girls' dresses must be long to cover the knees. Shirts must cover the elbow. Comparing with Thai students, they are much more conservative. School uniforms in most schools of China are only different in size. You can't find big differences between boys' uniforms and girls' uniforms only from the appearance. Both of them are loose sport suits.

    During the holiday season, many of us feel pressure to find our loved ones the “perfect” gift. Why? Because gift-giving has long been considered a prime way to express love. However, recent research suggests that small acts of kindness, like a kind word, hugging a child or receiving sympathy, make people feel most loved and supported.

    In the study, 495 men and women between the ages of 18 and 93 completed a questionnaire evaluating 60 possible ways that people can feel love. The storyboards included situations like spending time with friends, receiving gifts, and spending time in nature. The survey also included negative interactions, like being controlled and criticized (批评) by others.

    The findings highlight the psychological benefits that close relationships can offer. In fact, study participants ranked human interaction as a more significant expression of love than receiving material items, like presents. Connecting with others was also rated more highly than getting positive feedback on the Internet, indicating that people get the most support from personal human contact.

    “ During the holidays，anxiety rises, making it harder to remain present with ourselves and others. However, the power of spending time with another person is a gift we can give at any moment,” says Dr. Carla Naumburg, a mindfulness coach and social worker in Newton, Mass. He suggests balancing party planning and online shopping with moments of human connection. Activities like reading to a child, meeting a friend for a walk, or taking a moment to call a family member, are ways to express love and care and can keep us emotionally grounded.

    While the idea of offering loved ones the gift of our time may pale in comparison to giving them a generous present, recent research shows shared human experiences can tighten social bonds. Despite personality differences，most people agree on what makes us feel loved—the presence of our loved ones.

    I have a pair of pants. Tell me: How many different ways can I put a pair of pants to use?

    Now imagine you're Lady Gaga. Bill Gates. A scuba diver. An architect. You still have the pants. What other uses come to mind?

    What you just practiced—the conscious act of "wearing" another self—is an exercise that, according to psychiatrist Srini Pillay, MD, is essential to being creative.

    One problem about our understanding of creativity is that we tend to connect it to our concept of self: Either we're "creative" or we aren't, without much of a middle ground. "I'm just not a creative person!" a frustrated student might say in art class.

    Dr. Pillay, an assistant professor at Harvard University, has spent a good part of his career challenging these ideas. He believes that the key to unlocking your creative potential is to reject the old advice that urges you to "believe in yourself." In fact, you should do the opposite: Believe you are someone else.

    Dr. Pillay points to a 2016 study where the authors – educational psychologists Denis Dumas and Kevin Dunbar-divided their college-student subjects into three groups, instructing one group to think of themselves as "poets" and another to imagine they were "librarians" (the third group was the control). The researchers then presented all the participants with ten ordinary objects, including a fork, a carrot, and a pair of pants, and asked them to come up with as many different uses as possible for each one.

    Those who were asked to imagine themselves as poets came up with the widest range of ideas, whereas those in the librarian group had the fewest. Meanwhile, the researchers found only small differences in students' creativity levels across academic majors. In fact, the physics majors pretending to be poets came up with more ideas than the art majors did.

    These results, write Dumas and Dunbar, suggest that creativity is not an individual trait but a "product of context and perspective." Everyone can be creative, as long as he or she feels like a creative person.

    Positive thinking is a significant element of happiness. In order to become a positive thinker, determination and consistency are important. The first thing to know about positive thinking is that everyone can do it.  With certain cognitive (认知的) and behavioral changes, we can all become positive thinkers. Another important factor is that being a positive thinker does not mean you become numb to anything that is not working properly in your life or is negative - it just means that you approach life and face challenges with a healthier outlook.

    Instead of selectively attending to negative events, focus on the positive ones. Then pay attention to the delayed consequences of your behavior rather than the immediate ones. For example, if a job is not going like you want, focus on the fact that you have a job and how you can take your time to make the situation better.

    Challenge any internal attributions and see if you compare your behavior to standards that are excessively rigid and perfectionistic. If so, change these and be reasonable with your comparisons. For example, if you constantly compare your weaknesses with other people's strengths, then switch this and compare yourself with those who are doing poorer than you as well. Overall, people who focus more on their strengths than their weaknesses but at the same time are aware of their weaknesses have a healthier self-evaluation result.

    When faced with too much fear about a situation, imagine the worst case and visualize a solution for it, then let go of fear. This way, you will be prepared for anything and your fear will not block you from being open and creative to different solutions. For example, if you are constantly worried about losing your job up to a point where it is creating a lot of anxiety and fear and is effecting your performance and your happiness negatively, then think of losing your job, visualize how you will handle it, find solutions in your mind and then let go of the thought and the fear attached to it.

    So positive thinkers are better problem solvers and have better interactions. In addition to that, people who are positive thinkers are happier and more satisfied with their life.

    Hawking died early Wednesday at his home in England at the age of 76. Throughout his career as one of the world's most recognizable cosmic(宇宙的) thinkers, he regularly threw himself into pop culture's comedic ring with cameos(客串)on programs such as The Simpsons and Late Night with Conan O'Brien.

    These appearances defined(使明确) Hawking's personal life as much as his universe-shaking theoretical work. Humor, however, was not just one side of his personality, but a key to overcoming the disease he struggled against since 1963.

    "Keeping an active mind has been vital to my survival, ashas been maintaining a sense of humor," Hawking said in a 2013 documentary. "I am probably better known for my appearances on The Simpsons and on The Big Bang Theory than I am for my scientific discoveries."

    At 21, Hawking was diagnosed with a condition similar to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis(肌萎缩性侧索硬化症), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. According to the ALS Association, "Half of all people affected with ALS live at most three or more years after diagnosis. Twenty percent live five years or more; only ten percent will live more than ten years."

    The disease would eventually shut down Hawking's motor functions, making him speechless and unable to move without a wheelchair. Doctors initially(最初) said he would be dead in two years. His condition, however, proved to be a rare slow-acting version.

    But Hawking fought through his worse physical state, rising to a position as a celebrated professor of mathematical at the University of Cambridge and altering the popular conception of physics with his 1988 bestseller, A Brief History of Time.

    "When I turned 21, my expectations were reduced to zero," he said in a TV show. He added, "It was important that I came to appreciate what I did have. It's also important not become angry, no matter how difficult life is, because you can lose all hope if you can't laugh at yourself and at life in general."