Ann Ukachi Madukwe
A.U. Madukwe. Imo State University, Owerri, Imo State, Nigeria
Background: In Nigeria, many researches have been conducted on alcohol and drug use among young people to establish their prevalence. However, studies to evaluate or estimate the rate of polydrug use have been mostly overlooked. Making it difficult to ascertain how these drugs interact and the effect of such interaction on the health of users. The focus of this study was to ascertain the prevalence of polydrug use among university students across gender and age, to verify how drugs are combined and to identify drugs considered to be problematic by users. Five different drugs (tramadol, codeine, cannabis, refnol and shisha) and alcohol were considered in this study. Polydrug use is defined as simultaneous use of two or more psychoactive substances.
Method: Respondents in the study were 247 alcohol and drug using undergraduates purposively selected from ten different hostels of Imo State University, Owerri. They were 122 males and 125 females with age ranged between 16 and 30 years. Respondents were assessed using the substance use section of the Drug Use Screening Inventory-Revised and a structured interview to measure simultaneous polydrug use. The study adopted a descriptive design.
Result: In general, 64.8% were involved in polydrug use, more males (51.3%) were polydrug users. Polydrug use occurred most (60.6%) among respondents aged between 21 and 25 years. Report showed that aside alcohol, most respondents used four other drugs (cannabis, shisha, refnol and codeine) and cannabis was reported as the most used drug followed by Shisha a tobacco-based product. Refnol, codeine and tramadol were the least used in that order. The four most simultaneously combined substances reported were alcohol and cannabis, cannabis and refnol, codeine and cannabis, and alcohol and shisha. Lastly, most respondents reported experiencing problems with the use of tramadol (29%), shisha (19%), codeine (16%) and Refnol (14%).
Conclusion: The findings showed that polydrug use was common among university students and this could be the major reason for increasing substance use related problems occurrence among the student body. The finding of greater occurrence among older students shows that drug use prevention programmes targeted at younger and incoming students could help reduce polydrug use and consequent drug related problems in this population. There is also need to create awareness about the growing use of prescription opioids in combination with alcohol and cannabis in the society.