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The impact of drug abuse in teenagers
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“Crank” by Ellen Hopkins tells the story of a teenage girl, modeled after her own daughter, who becomes addicted methamphetamine, known on the streets as “crank”. The story follows Kristina's downward spiral as she attempts to feed her addiction and copes with the consequences of the decisions she makes. Kristina starts using drugs during a trip to visit her birth father in Albuquerque. Kristina is already feeling unaccepted by her family. She describes her mother as distant, her step-father as heavy-handed, her older sister as distracted, and younger brother as spoiled; however, thinking of her father, she is hopeful. She is deeply disappointed when she learns that her father is not the prince that she imagined him to be. Instead, he is distant …show more content…
Kristina settles in with a new crowd, ditching her childhood best friends Trent and Sarah. She meets Brendan, her first drug dealer, on a family trip to the water park. She quickly realizes that he is bad news, but doesn’t turn him away in fear of losing her connections. Soon after, she meets Robyn, a bubbly cheerleader who uses crank to stay skinny and give her extra pep. In the end Robyn is one of the few characters that leaves Kristian better than they found her. Then Kristina meets Chase, the schools refuted “bad boy”, and falls in love with him. At the novels close she is still in a relationship with Chase. Sneaking out in the middle of the night lands Kristina in juvenile hall, where she meets a girl with a connection to the Mexican Mafia and becomes a drug dealer. For a while she is happy with her steady coke supply and new found fame at her school. However, as Newton’s law of universal gravitation suggests, what goes up must come down. Kristina learns that she is pregnant from a man who raped her while she was under the influence. At the end of the book, Kristina expresses that she is grateful for her son, Hunter. Despite the realization that drugs have only brought destruction to her life, Kristina still is unable to break her meth
The first character who is unlikely to get off the street is Amber. Amber is street smart and incredibly alone. Amber can’t go one conversation without saying every bad word known to man. Amber struggles with prostitution, and she is pregnant. When she talked to Dylan, she was very mad at him for leaving
Donna has quit working as a prostitute and is currently on the road to recovery from years of addiction and abuse. As a child she suffered from years of neglect and sexual abuse from her immediate family members. Donna admits to using drugs when pregnant with her youngest child and suspects that he may have fetal alcohol syndrome as he is unable to control his emotions and has a difficult time in forming social bonds.
She dedicates this book to her “..family, and all the families whose lives have been touched by the monster.” Kristina talks about what a horrible person her mother is; a wannabe writer who never spends enough time with her daughter. A step dad who always has a stick up his butt. A brother who is spoiled and is too caught up in sports and video games to notice any change. Her sister is wonderful, but recently came out as a lesbian and caused distance between them so she moved away. Kristina was alone, until she met “the monster”. “The monster” is just a metaphor Ellen uses to describe the drug Methamphetamine, better known a Crystal Meth. Crystal meth can be eaten, snorted up the nose, or
The novel sets up for Kristina’s destruction when she goes to New Mexico to see her father. There she meets Adam, (also known as Buddy), a boy with an addiction to crack. Adam turns into her first love interest and in becoming more interesting and daring, Kristina begins to morph into Bree. Such causes her to have occasional internal wars with herself on what is right and wrong, since while Kristina does not welcome change, Bree does. Furthermore, one night Bree is in charge and Adam introduces her to the monster. She states that she has never felt anything near amazement like that in her life, hence falling in love with the drug and bringing the addict...
It was very hard to discover an article that experienced similar problems as this book, because most people aren’t open with their drug abuse. Feeling rather embarrassed I understand why some wouldn’t dare. The article I did notice was surprisingly one about Pattie Mallete. Most would know her as Justin Bieber’s mom. She had an extremely difficult childhood that relates to this book which is very astonishing. Pattie Mallete’s sister was struck by a vehicle while crossing the road when she was 5 years old. As in the book she was also raped but instead of once it was consistent. From the youngest age of 3 by a baby sitter, a fries grandfather and a neighborhood boy. This continued till she was about 14 years old. Later on she became so comfortable with it she felt it was a normal thing that accrued.
...heir product they were supposed to sell. Trey spends all of their saved up money gambling at casinos because he was trying to make profit. Desperate for cash, Kristina and Trey "fake" a break in to her old house and steal her mothers checks and jewelry. They make a run for it when Kristina sees her picture in the newspaper, tooken in one of the banks she cashed her mothers checks in. Sleeping off a monster buzz, they get pulled over by a cop for parking somewhere they are not supposed to. The cop asks to search the car, to find a a open lockbox, full of meth. Kristina’s mother also turned them in for stealing from her. As the author states in the end of the book, Kristina and Trey will no longer share an apartment, a car, a bed, a pipe, a cigarette, a kiss, promises, dreams or vows. The only thing they will share is a baby. That is, if they get out of jail in time.
The first thing that hits her mind when she arrives in the airport is where can she find Meth. She starts having really bad anxiety because she fears that she will not be able to get a fix, at least not as soon as she wants it. Bree starts having withdrawal symptoms because she goes a whole week with out having Meth in her system and she starts acting out a lot. When her friends try calling her to talk about her trip and she’s very irritable she blames it on Jet lag, which for a while makes sense because she was in New Mexico but it was only a couple of hours in difference. She starts suffering from Sleep Deprivation because she has no access to Meth, and without it she’s falling apart. Kristina looks for a source and when she finds one the same dose that used to get her high no longer does. A stronger Tolerance to the drug has occurred and she needs to buy a larger amount of Meth to feel the high. Without a job she starts dipping into her savings and saving up for a car is no longer her goal. Kristina fiends for the monster so much that it’s affecting her relationship with her friends, parents, and siblings. Her mom tried to sit down and ask her what was going on, at one point she thought she was depressed because she would just stay locked inside her room. But once she would go from happy because she had just gotten her fix to angry when it wore off her mom feared she was
Alyssa’s life started out as one of sadness, Alyssa, her younger sister and her twin brothers were awarded to their grandmother due to their mother’s battle with drugs and alcohol. Their father was in prison for three felonious assault charges on their mother and multiple counts of illegal drug violations.
To start off, mental illness is a big theme of this book. Cassie and James, both best friends at the mental hospital. The only difference is Cassie got the help that she needed and James did not. Kletter writes about the harsh reality of mental illnesses and that some people do not find the light that others do. James got released from the mental hospital and a couple days later he killed himself. Cassie
From his first real crush, Sarah Stevens, to whom he now believes is the women he is going to marry, we see Josh grow in his relationships and in himself. The several characters in this book, however fleeting, are all essential to his story. Among several of the people we come to see in his novel are: Sarah Stevens, Josh’s first crush and girlfriend for less than 24 hours (who, by the way, is now an actress in New York), Francesca Marcelo, his junior year summer fling who was the first girl to experience his, “We should hang out sometime,” line, and many other girls he forms an almost romantic relationship with throughout his college and highschool
The first day that the kids go back to school after The Slowing was announced, we see how things are starting to change for Julia. Because her best friend, Hannah, who in the beginning is her only friend, is no longer attending their school Julia is forced to pay attention to other classmates. One of the boys at the bus stop is persistent in annoying her in addition to another female classmate. While being forced to deal with the boy’s antics, Julia decides that “Hanna would have known what to do… [b]ut I was on my own that day and unaccustomed to getting teased.” (39, Walker). At one point the boy pulls her shirt up and exposes her to all of the kids at the bus stop, but Julia doesn’t stand up to him. However, when Julia finds that her father has been having affair with Sylvia, their neighbor and Julia’s piano teacher, she confronts him about it in a way she never would have before The Slowing or the events that had taken place since. As she grows older and matures Julia learns how to have and keep relationships that would have been out of her comfort zone
CRANK written by Ellen Hopkins is a story about a young girl named Kristina and her journey of meeting the monster (crystal meth) and the aftermath of decisions while battling her addiction. Her life spirals out of control from experimenting with the drug with her father and first love, being raped by a boy who provided the drug to her, finding the love of her life while living the life of the monsters alter ego, Bree, and ultimately trying to control the monster when she finds out she is pregnant with the rapists child. The following paper explores my reaction and own experiences and how they compare to Kristina’s decisions while dealing with the daily struggles of teenage life.
No matter how hard she tries to separate herself from her family, she still feels an obligation to take care of them. When she was younger, Sara believed “[she] could escape [home] by running away” (295), but when she visits her father, she “realized that the shadow of the burden was always following [her], and here [she] stood face to face with it again” (295). Sara no longer views home as merely a location, but a sense of tradition that had been enforced by her father. Over the years, her father put his family through poverty and caused anguish for Sara and her sisters because of his unwillingness to stray from Jewish traditions. Sara developed a loathing toward her father and left him after he was cheated by the grocery store owner. However, Sara's anger and hatred toward her father dissipates once she understands that he is a true part of her. The values and ideals he always tried to impose upon her are the legacy of generations before him. Sara realizes that she had gained everything from him regardless of her hatred and therefore maintains her sense of family obligation. In understanding the motives of her father’s actions, Sara learns to love herself and the duty she feels toward her family. She concludes that she could no longer hate herself by hating her father, “Can I hate my arm, my hand that is part of me? [...] If
She kind of abused the substance to the point where she used prostitution to get the drugs and later died of a drug overdose. This book was published in the form of a diary in entry form of a girl’s drug addiction. The characters in this novel are introduced to drugs, sexual activities and abuse.
Alienated and angry, he believed that his father always took his stepmother’s side and favored her children and his half-brother. This was one of the factors that led to Kurt experimenting with drugs and he pushed himself farther away from his family. He became more isolated from his family and began going a different direction.