Through examination of five addicts seeking treatment in the San Francisco substance abuse treatment arena in the late 1990’s, Dr. Lonny Shavelson provides a stark and thought-provoking insight into substance use treatment in the United States. His book, Hooked: Five addicts challenge our misguided drug rehab system, documents the journey of the five addicts: Mike, Darrell, Darlene, Glenda, and Crystal. Through examination of these stories as documented in Hooked, we can journey through the book and begin to examine the underlying structures which are creating blockages for addicts seeking treatment in the United States. In 1997 when the book starts, Mike Pagsolingan was a 34-year-old Italian man with a history of childhood sexual assault and PTSD who had been addicted to heroin and cocaine for 20-years (Shavelson, 2001).…
Deconstruction of an Angel Deny it or not, we all have an addiction to something. Whether it be to something physical or mental; our brains are wired to seeing that object as a reward or a motivation for our bodies to crave and want more. In the music video “A Team” by Ed Sheeran, he makes it known to the world that addiction can easily take over our entire being and even tear us apart. Ed Sheeran is an amazing artist that is known for his metaphorical ways of approaching all types of generations and subjects that society are concerned about. In the music video of “A Team” Ed Sheeran portrays the cold reality that everyone is not perfect.…
Neither John, Gwen, nor Miguel began taking drugs with the intension of harming others. Nor were they aggressive or abusive by nature. Yet their long-term substance abuse harmed others, including family members, friends, and the communities in which they lived. John’s substance abuse had negative consequences for his family and community. During his senior year of high school, however, he began smoking marijuana and drinking with his buddies.…
Ruled by the Emotions Once we start loving someone, we never treat them the same as others. Along with other people, we can also get strong feelings towards animals. In the article “Let Them Eat Dog,” Jonathan Safran Foer provides a critical point of view on the contemporary taboo about eating dog. On the other hand, comedian Rob Delaney gives us an insight to struggles of various kinds of addicts in his essay “Drugs Will Kill Your Friends.” Writing about controversial themes by using the controversial language, they grab the reader’s attention, but also make us realize how emotions usually have a greater say in the matter than reason.…
The life of Stoner is governed by several perilous events, ignited by the lack of decisiveness in key events that he has faced during his lifetime. However, these decisions were not poor decisions, some were also coragous and beneficial. The horrendous decision have began at the beginning point of his youth and spanned throughout his entire life, these event may have caused his early death due to immense stress. However, these events are not generated randomly, in fact stoner’s careless resolutions to meaningful occasions ignite these difficulties Stoner faces during his life. These decisions could have been redirected towards a positive outcome supposing that Stoner had chosen the cautious path instead of expressing his actual beliefs.…
Anybody can be trapped by addiction. Addiction is a habit of activity that targets and transforms people who have endured pain in their heart. There are a few factors that make some people more vulnerable to addiction than others. Moreover, Joseph Boyden depicts a certain character, Elijah, in the novel, Three Day Road, that is more vulnerable to addiction. Encountering bad experiences in one’s childhood, possessing a desire to fit in and a greed for power makes people more vulnerable to addiction.…
People in our society harshly judge those with drug problems; they are viewed as a burden on the community. A majority of abusers had goals and wished to succeed in life until, all of the sudden, they were trapped in a perpetual cycle. The song, “The A Team” by the British alternative singer, Ed Sheeran, narrates the unfortunate story of a prostitute fighting a battle against her addiction to cocaine. Sheeran uses comparisons and clever expressions to narrate the girl’s story, consciously using ambiguous lyrics such as, “Stuck in her daydream” (Line 9) which are open to different interpretations. He keeps an upbeat tune from beginning to end in attempts to hide the depressing tale.…
Why do so many people rely on drugs to forget about all their problems that they face? In Denis Johnson’s short story Emergency the topic is highly discussed, as how the characters use drugs in order to not think about their normal everyday life and how they try to escape reality by getting high off the pills from their work. In doing so, Johnson presents a conflict of man vs. himself, in which he tries to forget about his problems and act as if everything is okay when in reality it is not. Fuckhead doesn’t have a good life, and he is making it harder on himself for the fact that he continues to screw up and do drugs, but doesn’t think about the consequences it can face him later on in life.…
The story Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction was a painful and heartfelt depiction of a broken family and the destruction of a boy, Nic Sheff, who encountered a fight with a drug addiction. This autobiography was written by his father David Sheff, who has a complicated life of his own that played a part in his son’s development of a love hate relationship with methamphetamine. After David began the process of divorce with his wife Vicki, the custody battle took an emotional toll on Nic, starting childhood therapy at the age of six years old. Some teachers reported him feeling somewhat depressed and looking tired throughout the school day. A turning point was when Nic reached the eighth grade and his dad discovered he was smoked marijuana.…
It is curious, that neither Dwight Gooden nor Alec Baldwin seem to have studied chemical dependence; rather, they both – at least jokingly – compare chemical dependence to “process addictions,” bandying about the word addiction, as many people do, until it loses its meaning. It is difficult to examine this podcast using the theories of dependence that we have learned, given the above, and that the segments dealing directly with Gooden’s experience are short and scattered, and often interrupted by Baldwin’s enthusiasm for hearing his own voice. Despite this, some conclusions can be drawn from Gooden’s experiences with dependence. It seems as though the Incentive Sensitization Theory best explains his lived chemical dependence, and that he himself…
Great authors use characterization to develop a character. In High Fidelity, Rob Fleming, a single 35-year-old man, uses music as a coping mechanism. Owning a record shop in London, Rob’s life revolves around music. The way Rob uses music to cope with his life characterizes him. In his novel, Nick Hornby uses characterization to develop his ideas of Rob’s dependency, emotions, and relationship with music.…
Music is a powerful language which speaks to us, move us, and fills us with emotions. In “Sonny’s Blues”, the voice of jazz reflects the relationship between two brothers. The unnamed narrator who represents one of the one of the sides of the African American experience. Sonny the titular character of the story, Sonny represents the other side of the African American experience. In “Sonny’s Blues” we find an important description of how a musician can express his feeling through his music.…
In the short story “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin, we see the situation through the eyes of Sonny’s unnamed brother who is narrating it and living it. The two brothers live in two different worlds, with the narrator living a mundane life of a teacher, and Sonny living a life of struggles with becoming a famous musician and his addiction to drugs. Sonny’s addiction to drugs has caused a lot of problems which not only affected his life, but also the life of his brother. In the start of the short story Sonny’s problem with his heroin addiction can already be seen take place.…
Nic Sheff’s memoir Tweak discusses his story of meth and heroin addiction. He narrates between the a time of his life that leads to a violent relapse, before addiction, and life with addiction prior to the violent relapse in California. The book starts with Nic finding a drug dealer after eighteen months of being sober.…
A social problem that is present in our current society would be drug usage. Drug usage is a common social problem that affects a tremendous amount of people on a daily basis. It is considered to be a problem because it intervenes with the drug user’s life as well as anyone else around that person’s life. As a drug user, that person’s reality is now wrapped around the drug. A drug abuser’s life is now socially reconstructed around that drug, leading to his entire reality to change dramatically.…