12. Drug abuse and dru addicts.

Drug abuse is one of the most important problems nowadays for many people all around the world. Lots of people, especially teenagers and young people get addicted to drags for manyreasons which can be their dissatisfaction with the world and society surrounding them, someproblems in relations with relatives and friends or totally strange people, bad psychologicalsituation in the family or in professional sphere, negative influence of the milieu. Though itdoesn't really matter what causes the problem itself - it's more important that the problem doesexist and doesn't seem to be fading at all and something has to be done about such situation. Thesigns of drug-abuse are rather common and the main of them are anxiety, nervousness, inability to concentrate and be serious about anything, different pupils or the eyes, the marks on the armsand veins.

Witnessing of those signs can be the reason to associate a person with the problem ofdrag abuse thus the sign to do something and help this person somehow (mostly in case youknow and care about that particular person because it's hardly possible that anybody would bewilling to help an addicted to drags they barely know). It's important to help those peoplebecause they can become a real disaster and problem if not for the society in whole but at leastfor their families and friends. Those addicted people can steal, lie, in the worst way - even tocommit crimes just for the sake of drugs. That's not good at all and must be prevented.

Talking about the attitude of the society to the problem of drug abuse it proves to be negative of course. There're all kinds of social advertising and so on warning us against the possible problem and its outcome but in whole it's obvious that people don't tend to think about such bad and troublesome things till the moment they touch them exactly. So I'd say that people have an indifferent rather than negative attitude to the problem.

One of the main problems of drug abuse isn't even the fact that it's harmful and destroying but that it's really difficult to prove to all those addicted people (who are not criminals but sick ppl, btw) that being addicted is bad and unnecessary - for them it's not so. they feel more relaxed and happy with drags, they don't bother and don't take care of any problems, life is much more easier for them this way. So it proves to be rather difficult to get any one out of the pleasant imaginary world to the severe reality.

13. National identity

The question of national identity seems rather difficult to me mainly because I don't really care about nations and all those cliches given to people only due to the fact of their belonging to some particular nationality. But most part of the people agrees that national identity does exist so here's what these words mean: national identity is the depiction of a country as a whole, encompassing its culture, traditions, language and politics. Such an example can also be shown in the dictionaries: "Each of the new republics tried to establish a national identity".

So if we are talking about what it is to be Russian taking into account the terms of national identity, I suppose we can mention the following features: rather severe character and facial expressions, a stupidly-admirable attitude towards all the western things and countries, rather low culture level despite of having lots of possibilities to touch the real art, the habit of wide celebrations and lots of heavy food eaten and alcohol drank both during the holidays and routine days. But even though I was able to name some of the features of the Russian national identity that doesn't mean at all that all Russian people possess all those qualities to the same degree.

And for pointing out those things that differ us from Americans we should first of all think of those qualities which make people from the US special. From my point of view the main feature here seems to be the knowledge, feeling and realizing of freedom which was in fact the main reason for creating the US. Here, in Russia, I don't feel the sense of freedom anywhere at all, we're too constrained and orthodox. The next thing which I think is important when we're talking about Americans is the American Dream whereas in our country I wouldn't say there's any common goal for each and every one. And whereas people don't tend to talk about government, money and religion in the USA in Russia those themes aren't prohibited at all and you'll witness everybody and everywhere chatting, especially in an amateur way, about these things. From my point of view people in the USA also have to work more and can't afford spending so much time drinking as people in Russia do.

So according to the theory of existence of lots of national identities all the nations around the world tend to differ in particular ways which can be due to the differences in the history of their countries, the history and life of their traditions and customs, the area and climate they live in, the food and drinks they are used to, the whole level of culture and self-confidence of the nations.