Proposals for the Treatment of Users of Alcohol and Other Drugs: A Psychoanalytic Reading

Abstract

However, this conception was strongly challenged from the seventeenth century on, with the development of medical studies, when certain vegetal products that have psychoactive effect started to be valued as a source of energy, stamina, humor and temper balance. As examples, we can mention the opium, originated from the poppy, which was for a long time prescribed as a painkiller, antitussive and antidiarrheal medication, and the marijuana, prescribed as a general sedative, for the specific treatment of rheumatism, neurosis, insomnia, headaches, diarrhea, seizures and anorexia as well as in the therapy of tetanus and cholera (Carneiro, 2006).