Everybody has a definition for drug addiction in his mind. But in 1950, a subsidiary committee of World Health Organization (WTO) comprising the narcotics specialists presented a comprehensive definition for it.

According to the committee's experts, addiction to narcotics means acute or chronic poisoning that impairs the health of a person or a society and is caused by using natural or industrial drugs.

The features of the state a narcotic produces in a drug user are:

1- Feeling a pressing need in using drugs 2- Having a great inclination for increasing the consumption of drugs 3- Being psychologically or physiologically dependent on narcotics to the extent that its cessation causes trauma

Like the scientists, the sociologists have explored the factors causing addiction, which they call a social disease. The main reasons are:

A) FAMILY

According to the sociologists, the living conditions of a family play a major role in building the character and making the future of the children.

The children are more likely caught in the addiction trap when their parent(s) is (are) addicted to narcotics.

Followed by deprivation of health and education, poverty is also blamed for addiction while continuous parental quarrels and inappropriate atmosphere at home are responsible too for perversion and addiction of the children.

More surprising, the well-heeled families may also unknowingly cause their children to incline toward using drugs by letting them squander a huge amount of money on unnecessary and life-threatening entertainment including smoking, which is a prelude to addiction.

The sociologists argue that the family bickerings and differences as well as the social predicaments alone or together put some people particularly the youth under great psychological pressure that they think they have no alternative but to seek solace in narcotics.

When a parent rules the roost and all the family members must be obedient and do nothing without his (her) direct interference and permission, a lifeless atmosphere fills home and they have to observe a strict discipline.

The self-centered parent forces the children to do their obligations like a machine. The family members' relations with the parent are based on reverence, fear of physical punishment, and cruelty.

Growing up in a one-man family, the children learn to keep mum and be reserved. Since the self-contained progeny never dare put forward their problems, their characters are built unstably and they go through a lifetime depression after being ignored in their childhood.

Such children will turn to obstinate and aggressive youths, who love to bully the smaller or weaker people. Because they are all the time on tenterhooks and suffer from lack of parental affection, they find themselves unbalanced and inefficient that get on their nerves, compelling them to search for a tranquilizer.

That such children are attracted by the outlaws and addicts is not out of the question.

B) EDUCATIONAL ATHMOSPHERE

School is the second main character-building center that plays a major role in raising the children.

The schoolteachers and schoolmasters should shoulder greater responsibilities when the parents have not been successful in rearing their children.

Such schoolchildren are satisfied with their attendance in the classrooms and they are also motivated to consult and solve their social problems if the teachers observe mental health principles. But inattention to their attention deficit disorders is usually followed by repercussions that lead to irreparable individual and social damages.

The teachers and trainers will treat the children affectionately when they themselves had been behaved with love and fondness in their childhood.

In fact, the teachers can be both constructive and destructive. They have to be familiar enough with the children's needs, expectations, ambitions, and manners. They ought to help students overcome their difficulties.

Since the big problems arise from petty posers, the psychological or attention deficit disorders can be challenged more easily when their signs are identified at early stages.

Another important factor regarding training of the children is parents-teachers cooperation.

Unfortunately, these two often reach no understanding. A pupil is taught that gnosis and spiritual matters are the big asset of man while his family may blast the scholastic idea by telling him to think of lucrative business in the future. The situation is aggravated when the schoolchild perceives that money has the final say in today's society. Therefore, all the efforts will be futile if nobody explains the contradiction.

The off-school training and educational centers in which the children attend to learn foreign languages, music, painting, sporting fields like soccer, swimming, etc., should be also supervised by the parents.

Although short, the center-home way may give bad lessons like smoking to the children. Finding himself free of restrictions on school-home way, he is titillated to do the undone things out of curiosity.

According to the research, 80 percent of schoolchildren have experienced their first cigarette on their way home.

In addition to its destructive impacts on a drug user's inner feelings, addiction also make changes in his moral attitudes, character and appearance. Some come below, cluing the families in on an addict's habits:

1- An addict tries to sequester himself from his kin in particular his parents and siblings and be in contact with his new friends.

2- His sleeping time changes. He sleeps late at night and wakes late in the morning.

3- He asks for pocket-money persistently.

4- An addicted person often looks sleepy and depressed and his joviality is very short-lived.

5- A drug user refuses to do heavy tasks and exercise.

6- WC is the place that an addict frequents and stays in.

7- He turns into a big liar and has no commitment to his promises.

8- His room is full of various types of tranquilizers and codeine.

9- He loses all interest in education, job, etc.

10- The face and particularly lips of an addict lose color.

11- He will be energetic after using drugs and scratches his groins if he overdoses.

12- Burn scars can be found on his fingers, clothes and room's carpet, blanket, etc.

13- If he uses drug through intravenous injection, black or blue spots appear on his arm, ankle and also back of his hands

14- The addict does not care about his appearance any longer.

15- If the addict is deprived of drug for 12 to 24 hours, he will go through trauma.