Problem
How to convince the individual using of the dangers? Imagine that you walk into the garage to retrieve a tool, and stumble upon a younger sibling engaged in the practice of using an inhalant. Should you intervene? After all, you are not the child's parent, although a counter argument is that now that you know the dangers of inhalant misuse, a delay might result in organ damage to your sibling. If, in the hypothetical example discussed above, the child were a half-sibling or step-sibling, would your response to this discovery be any different? Why, or why not?
It is often difficult to convince many who misuse inhalants of the dangers, because the brain itself does not have pain receptors. It is easy to convince a person not to hit their hand with a hammer: they feel pain when they do so. But when individual neurons or even entire regions of the brain die, the person experiences no pain. In certain neurosurgical procedures, the patient is anesthetized while the skull is opened, but then the patient is allowed to regain consciousness so that he or she might be able to tell the surgeon the subjective experience of having the surgeon touch different regions of the brain. When the exact seizure locus is identified, the patient then is re-anesthetized for the remainder of the procedure as that part of the brain is removed in the hopes of reducing the frequency and severity of the patient's seizures.
Task
i. How to convince your younger sibling that the use of inhalants will possibly result in brain damage, especially when their subjective experience appears to indicate no brain damage? "I have not felt anything like that!" such children often reply when told of the dangers of inhalant use.
ii. Is this an argument worth starting with your younger sibling, and, if so, why, or why not?