Hi there, I'm Mrs. Kemp and welcome to today's lesson about recreational drugs.

And this one is depressants.

It fits into our disease and drugs unit.

Okay, let's get started then.

So our main outcome for today is I can explain the effects of alcohol on the body in both the short and the long term.

These are some of the key terms that we're going to be using today and if you would like to read those in more detail, please do pause the video.

Otherwise rest assured that I will be going through each one of these as I talk through the slide deck with you.

We've got three learning cycles today.

Recreational drugs, stimulant or depressant, the effects of alcohol.

And of course, we'll start with recreational drugs.

So there's actually many different kinds of drugs and you probably already know quite a few names of some different drugs.

Let me point some out to you.

There's nicotine, paracetamol, antibiotics, ecstasy, cannabis and heroin.

You may know some of these already and you probably know some names of other ones, but these are some of the ones that we are going to discuss today.

Let's think about then how we can categorise those drugs from the previous page into either medicinal or recreational.

Now, medicinal drugs are anything that can help you when you are feeling unwell.

Okay, so you probably recognise paracetamol and this is a painkiller that can help you make you feel better if you've got sort of a cold or headache, something like that.

Antibiotics are drugs that are prescribed to treat people with bacterial infections and you would only be able to get those from your doctor.

These ones then fit into recreational drugs.

So these are things that people are doing for fun.

They want to do them 'cause they make them feel good, all right? Not because they're gonna make them better or take away some symptoms of illness.

So we've got nicotine, cannabis, ecstasy and heroin that are falling into that recreational drug category.

Some people then, these recreational drugs that have taken them as they make them feel in a certain way.

And in our society we have some of those drugs that are legal, okay? You are allowed to consume them things like caffeine, okay? Caffeine is really not particularly regulated.

We find it in lots of different products.

We've got coffee there, but it's also found in tea and fizzy drinks.

Nicotine, now nicotine is found in anything that is a, comes from a tobacco plant and actually it is legal, but it is controlled.

You have to be a certain age in order to have it.

Similarly, with alcohol, then there is an age limit on it from when you can start drinking it.

Some of those recreational drugs though, like cannabis, cocaine and ecstasy, those are all what we would class as being illegal, all right? You are not allowed legally by law to consume these products.

Let's do our first check, then.

Which of these are recreational drugs? A: Antibiotics, B: Cannabis, C: Paracetamol, or D: Heroin.

I'll give you a moment to think about it, but if you need more time, please pause the video.

Okay, did you think of B, Cannabis and D, Heroin? Excellent, well done.

So sometimes drugs that are used for medicinal uses can also be abused.

Okay, so that means like taking them when you shouldn't be taking them.

Under these circumstances, these drugs that are legal for medicinal use become illegal.

An example of that is Valium.

Valium is a benzodiazepine, okay? And it is a drug that is prescribed to people if they have some kind of anxiety or seizure disorder.

When they're prescribed by the doctor then, they are legal to use.

However, if people are selling those illegally or getting them from anywhere other than the doctor and then using them, actually they become illegal and that's because they can cause psychological dependence.

So that is where somebody feels that they need to continue taking them even though they know they may be not good for them or that they know that it's illegal.

Illegal drugs are classified into three different categories by law, okay? A, being the one that people consider being the most dangerous and harmful, B and C, then follow.

How we know that they are then that you can find out the different classes of drugs by looking 'em up.

And A is things like cocaine, ecstasy and heroin.

And if you got caught trying to supply or produce these drugs, you would have up to life imprisonment.

So that actually has a really long sentence attached to it.

B, then we've got amphetamines and and cannabis and that is up to 14 years imprisonment for supplying and producing.

C are things like anabolic steroids and benzodiazepines, both of those are examples of drugs that are actually legal for medicinal use.

But then if they are used for any other reason, they become illegal.

And again, they have a sentence of potentially up to 14 years in prison if you supply.

So you give them to other people, sell them to other people, or you actually produce and make them.

Okay, onto our next check, which drug is class A and therefore considered the most dangerous and harmful? A: Alcohol, B: Cannabis, or C: Cocaine? I'll give you a moment to think about it, but if you need more time, please pause the video.

Okay, did you get C: Cocaine? Well done.

That's a correct answer.

Onto our first task of the day then, you might want to get your worksheet out for this so you can record it on there.

So underneath each drug, can you write any words from the word bank that can be used to describe it? You can use each word more than once.

The words in the bank are illegal, legal, medicinal, recreational, and class B.

We are assigning those to cannabis, paracetamol or nicotine.

I'll give you a moment to think about it, but if you need more time, please pause the video.

Okay, let's have a look at what we could have put under cannabis, then.

It's illegal.

People use it for recreational reasons, and it is in class B.

Paracetamol is legal and people only use it for medicinal reasons.

Nicotine is a legal drug, but it's used for recreational reasons.

Okay, well done, I hope you got all of those.

If you need to add a couple more, please do that now.

Onto our next learning cycle then, stimulant or depressant: So as well as being legal, illegal, recreational and medicinal, we can also classify drugs into how they actually affect the body and we're going to look at stimulants and depressants.

Stimulants do as they sound, they stimulate the body.

What they do is they speed up the messages that travel from the brain to the rest of the body.

We can see the nervous system there in the image and those impulses that will be travelling through those nerves will be sped up, okay? So firing a lot more actively.

They can make a person feel a lot more awake.

They might feel more confident in themselves and they might feel more energetic.

So they maybe wanna dance or move around a lot more than they would do normally.

Some examples of stimulants then, that we find, caffeine.

This is obviously a legal drug, okay? That's used for recreation and people might have a cup of coffee in the morning to try to make themselves feel a little bit more awake.

MDMA is the chemical name for the drug that's found in ecstasy and people take that recreationally, but it is illegal.

Similarly with cocaine then, this is also a stimulant and it is also illegal, but both of those drugs people might use to make them feel more confident and to feel more energetic.

Okay, so onto our next check, how might stimulants make people feel? A: More awake or energetic, B: More confident, C: Tired and lethargic? I'll give you a moment to think about it, but if you need more time, please pause the video.

Okay, did you get A and also B, they make you feel more awake and energetic and more confident? Excellent, well done.

Hope you got those right.

So depressants then have the opposite effect, all right? What they do is they actually slow down those messages from the brain to the body and this can make a person feel really relaxed and also less inhibited.

So inhibited is when you maybe feel like you can't be yourself or you feel less confident.

Actually by having those feelings inhibited, it might make you a little bit more gregarious, a little bit more confident to kind of behave in the way that you feel.

They also slow down a person's reaction time, which is really important to think about when we talk about those later.

And they can also alter a person's perception of the world.

So how they're seeing things, how they're interpreting those things that are coming into them.

It can cause hallucinations.

Hallucinations are where you are seeing or hearing or feeling something that's not really there.

It's affecting your senses and how you are interacting with the world.

They can also slow a person's speech, okay? And make them sound very drowsy.

Some examples of depressants then, alcohol is actually a depressant.

So when people drink lots of alcohol, they can often get slurred speech and now we understand why, it's because those messages are slowing down from the brain.

Benzodiazepine then, that example with Valium that is used to help people with anxiety disorders, but they can also be abused.

And then we've got a drug called GHB, okay? Which also has a similar effect to alcohol.

Which of the following are depressants? A: Caffeine, B: Alcohol, C: Benzodiazepine, or D: GHB? I'll give you a moment to think about it, but if you need more time, please pause the video.

Okay, did you get alcohol? Well done, benzodiazepine? Well done.

And of course, GHB.

GHB is also illegal.

All right, then onto another check.

True or false: Cocaine is a depressant.

Is that true or is that false? Can you justify your answer? A: Cocaine slows down the messages from the brain to the body, or B: Cocaine speeds up the messages from the brain to the body.

I'll give you a moment to think about it, but if you need more time, please pause the video.

Okay, that is of course false, and that's because cocaine is actually a stimulant.

It speeds up the messages from the brain to the body.

Excellent, well done.

So onto our next task of the day, this is task B.

And again you can record that on your worksheet.

So number 1: Give some examples of drugs that are classified as depressants.

Number 2: How do they affect the body? And number 3: How can they make a person feel? I'll give you a moment to think about it, but if you need more time, please pause the video.

Okay, let's have a look at what we could have included then.

Of course, there was a picture of alcohol.

So hopefully that one gave you a a little hint there.

There's also benzodiazepine, but you may have written Valium and that's okay.

And GHB, how do they affect the body, depressants slow down the messages from the brain to the body.

How do they make people feel? They can make a person feel more relaxed and less inhibited.

They slow down a person's reactions and can cause hallucinations.

You might have also put slurred speech, as I did mention that as I was talking through it.

Okay, so onto our final learning cycle of today.

This is the effects of alcohol.

So alcohol is a controlled legal recreational drug that is classed as a depressant.

Let's have a think about what all of those different words mean, 'cause we have mentioned them already.

So it is a legal drug, okay? But it's actually controlled, so you've got to be over 18 in order to buy it, okay? So that's why it is controlled.

You can't just go and buy it whenever you wish, but you won't be arrested for it if you are over 18.

Recreational then, people are using it because they like the way that it makes them feel and they're doing it for fun, they're not using it because they feel ill and they need some sort of medical help.

It's depressant, so it slows down the messages to the brain and consequently it also slows down a person's reaction time.

So reaction time is how quickly somebody responds to something that happens in their environment.

It might also make them sort of lose control of their muscles and maybe not be able to walk particularly well and it also might slow down a person's speech.

All of these are physical effects of somebody drinking too much alcohol.

So why is reaction time important? Well, actually because alcohol slows down a person's reaction time, if they are driving or actually carrying out any sort of behaviour at work or something like that, actually it will increase their risk of having an accident.

In 2021, an estimated 6,740 people were killed or injured in drink drive collisions in Great Britain.

That is an absolutely massive number when actually it's something that we can control.

We don't have to drive when we have been drinking.

This number, unfortunately, has steadily increased since 2009.

So we are not seeing those numbers decrease with people understanding the effects of alcohol.

In the UK, there is a drink drive limit on blood alcohol levels.

So if you were stopped by the police or if you got in an accident, then actually what the police would do is they would take a level of your blood.

Now they might do a breath test or they can do urine tests to see whether or not you have alcohol in your system, and what level it is at to make sure that it is at a legal limit.

Alcohol is a drug, which of the following apply to alcohol? A: It is an illegal drug.

B: You must be over 18 to buy it.

C: It slows down reaction time or D: It is a stimulant.

I'll give you a moment to think about it, but if you need more time, please pause the video.

Okay, so did you get, "You must be over 18 to buy it." It also slows down those reaction times.

That's B and C.

Excellent, well done.

So alcohol is actually a risk factor, not just for when you're driving but actually for a range of different diseases that can happen to a person.

So first of all, it is actually highly addictive.

Although it is legal, actually people can find themselves needing to have alcohol all of the time.

It can cause liver cirrhosis, okay, where your limb liver becomes damaged.

Also, if a mother has been drinking during pregnancy, then actually the alcohol can pass across the placenta from the mother's blood and cause something called foetal alcohol syndrome.

It can also lead to many types of cancer, but including bowel cancer, which you can see there, we've got our large intestine.

So it would be where you've got a tumour growing in that area of your body.

So let's think a little bit more about what liver cirrhosis is.

So this is when the liver actually becomes significantly damaged and can no longer function properly.

Its main job is to actually remove toxins from your blood.

So make sure that waste is removed and taken out of your blood so that your cells can be healthy.

It is quite a resilient organ because of that then, because it's coming into contact with toxins all the time and it's actually capable of regenerating itself.

Unfortunately if you have prolonged alcohol abuse then, it can lead to scarring on that liver and therefore permanent damage that it can regenerate and make better.

Which of the following diseases is alcohol a risk factor for? A: Bowel cancer, B: Liver cirrhosis, or C: Lung cancer.

I'll give you a moment to think about it, but if you need more time, please pause the video.

Okay, did you think of bowel cancer and liver cirrhosis? Excellent, well done.

True or false then; alcohol can slow down the messages to your brain.

Is that true? Is that false? Can you justify your answer? Alcohol is a depressant, or B: Alcohol is a stimulant.

Again, I'll give you a moment to think about it, but if you need more time, please pause the video.

Okay, did you get True? Well done.

And did you get A: Alcohol is a depressant? Excellent, well done.

Alright, let's have a little look at this graph then.

This graph is here and it shows us some different types of lifestyle diseases that are associated with drinking alcohol and the lifestyle diseases that we've got.

We've got liver cirrhosis, which is the orange line.

We've got the dotted blue line, which is oesophagus cancer, and we've got the dashed orange line, which is stroke.

We can see some different points on our graph then that actually when a person drinks, on average, above 20 units of alcohol per week, and this is just for men, not for women, there is a sharp increase in the risk of liver cirrhosis.

You can see how the graph is kind of steadily increasing up to that 20 mark and then suddenly rapidly increases.

When we get to over 30 units then, there is a further increases a person's risk and actually ends up being around sort of 11% as being that increased risk of developing liver cirrhosis.

So we can see really that actually as you increase the number of units of alcohol drank in a week, actually you are increasing that risk of, in particular, that lifestyle disease of liver cirrhosis.

Okay, let's do another check then.

So which statement best describes liver cirrhosis? We've got A: Liver cirrhosis is a type of cancer.

B: Liver cirrhosis is when the liver has been significantly damaged and can no longer function properly, or C: Liver cirrhosis happens to everyone that drinks alcohol.

I'll give you a moment to think about it, but if you need more time, please pause the video.

Okay, did you get B: Liver cirrhosis is when the liver has been significantly damaged and can no longer function properly.

Well done.

Okay, so what we're gonna do now, we're gonna start our task C, and so you probably want to get your worksheet out so that you can record any answers on there.

And we're gonna have a practise at evaluating a claim.

So a national newspaper has released a headline stating that men who drink alcohol will develop liver cirrhosis.

We're gonna use that graph that we used earlier on that showed the average weekly units consumed by a man and how that affects their relative risk of getting liver cirrhosis, esophagal cancer, and also a stroke.

So when we're going to, first of all, evaluate something, we need to give supporting claims, claims against the headline, and then our conclusion.

So I've got a supporting claim here.

Even drinking small amounts of alcohol can increase a person's risk of developing liver cirrhosis.

Have a look at that data.

Can you think of another supporting statement? Okay, how about something like when men drink above 30 units of alcohol a week, they increase their chance of developing liver cirrhosis by 13%, compared to if they didn't drink any alcohol? Okay, here's one against, then.

So alcohol consumption can also increase a person's risk of developing other diseases, not just a stroke.

You have a little look there.

Can you think of another negative? Okay, risk only means there is an increased chance that a person will get a disease and not that they definitely will develop it.

Okay, so I've thought of two against points there for the headline.

We would always end in a conclusion.

So we take into account our for and against the headline and we would write about why we think that is.

So I believe the newspaper was right or wrong.

So you would choose that yourself because.

Have a little think.

Do you think that that newspaper headline was right or wrong and why? Okay, so this is my conclusion.

I believe that the newspaper was wrong as there are other lifestyle diseases related to alcohol consumption and not just liver cirrhosis.

You may have put something slightly different.

You may have even gone for, you think it was correct.

In this case, it is up to you.

Okay, let's put that into practise then.

So I've got some different data here.

This one is showing some different things that somebody might have as a risk factor in their life and then the percentage of patients that then had bowel cancer.

So the risk factors are eating too little fibre, eating processed meat, obesity, drinking alcohol, and too little physical activity.

Now the number of people in the UK dying from bowel cancer is increasing each year.

Cancer research collected data from bowel cancer patients in the UK between 2015 and 2019.

They found some common risk factors and published them in a medical journal.

Experts are calling for further restrictions on alcohol to reduce the number of cases.

Can you evaluate if experts are right to call for further restrictions on alcohol? I'll give you a moment to think about it, but if you need more time, please pause the video.

Remember, you should think of some for, against, and a conclusion for your answer.

Okay, so supporting statements might be, drinking alcohol can increase your risk of developing bowel cancer by 5%.

Drinking alcohol increases your risk more than too little physical activity.

Refuting statements then, so ones that are against, there are many other lifestyle factors that are associated with a higher risk than drinking alcohol.

Eating too little fibre is the highest at 28%.

So the government should focus on improving people's diets first.

Conclusion; remember this should be your own opinion, but you need to start with something along the lines of, "I believe that.

." Okay, excellent.

Well done.

We are very close now, then I just really want to go through those final key learning points with you.

So there are many different types of drugs.

People can use them for medicinal or recreational purposes.

Some drugs are legal and some are illegal.

Drugs can have different effects on the body.

Stimulants speed up the messages from the brain to the body.

Depressants slow down the messages sent from the brain to the body.

Alcohol is a legal recreational drug that has a depressant effect on the body.

Alcohol is associated with many lifestyle factors, diseases, sorry, such as liver cirrhosis and bowel cancer.

Thank you so much for learning with me today.

I've really enjoyed it and I hope that you have too.

See you again soon, bye.