Trabalho e uso de substâncias psicoativas: um estudo sobre a categoria dos advogados

Abstract

The main goal of this research was to investigate the relation between work and the use of psychoactive substances, also showing the links between the adopted practices in a specific professional activity and the substances used in it. Furthermore, the results should be spread by organs connected to public health care and work, to representatives of the here-studied professional category, as well as supporting institutions to the chemically dependent to help in diagnosis, treatment and possible preventive measures to the problem. The methodology used here includes quantitative and qualitative dimensions to verify epidemiological and psychosocial data concerning the use of psychoactive substances in a professional context. The research was focused in the lawyer's activity, from his academic formation, through his insertion in the profession, reaching his relation with the representative institutions: Advocate's Order of Brazil (OAB), the syndicate and the Assistance Office. The research data show a professional category thorn by stress, by the difficulty in entering the work market and by the constant adversities in the jobs day-by-day, which often lead the worker to frustration and impotence. The class fragmentation and the loneliness, preventing a collective organization of work, allied to the taboo that covers the matter of the chemically dependent, may weaken the lawyer's action power, driving him into silent and unseen sickness.