Drugs affect many parts of your body. Many drugs affect the brain. The brain is the control center of your body. Drugs which are not considered medicines, such as caffeine, tobacco and alcohol, will also change the way the body works.

Medicines cause changes in your body or body organs that help you fight disease and feel healthy again.

Medicines make the body work differently. Sometimes they make you sleepy or make a pain go away. Medicines that help to reduce pain are called anesthetics and are used during operations. They make the person unaware of the pain caused by the surgery.

Other drugs, such as caffeine, alcohol and tobacco are not medicines, but they also cause changes in the way your body works and the way you think, feel and/or act.

These changes occur only while the drug is working in your body. Once you stop taking the drug, and after the effect wears off, your body returns to normal.

1.	The drug
	dose
	type
	other drugs
	speed of taking?

2.	The person
	experience – e.g., how often you drink alcohol and how fast you drink
	mood – how you feel
	health
	age
	whether you are male or female
	size

3.	The setting
	place
	time
	company
	food – how much you’ve eaten

4.	You can control:
	the kind of drug you take
	how much of the drug you take
	when you take the drug
	how often you talk the drug

Once you have taken a drug, you cannot control its effects. It will continue to work in your body until the body breaks it down and removes it. For example, if you take a drug that makes you dizzy, you will continue to feel dizzy until the drug wears off.