The power to be able to fall into a trance where reality is destroyed and only emotions exist seems very attracting. However, using a substance to fall into the trance will only be harmful because the substance will create health hazards. This substance, a toxic liquid, known as “Alcohol” has destroyed many lives. For instance, Sherman Alexie, a Native American writer, experiences many sorrows from alcohol. He writes about the sufferings he experienced in his fiction novel, “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian” and talks about the struggle in his interviews. In addition to Alexie’s stories, Diane Sawyer, a reporter, investigates a Native American tribe and discovers that alcohol abuse is common in the reservation. Alcoholism is portray as an enemy to Native Americans; however, alcohol becomes a tool that matures Alexie as an individual. Therefore, alcoholism through the story of the author’s life can educate society to care for communities that struggle with alcohol abuses.
Alcoholism establishes sorrows in the native american’s community in Pine Ridge because many of the civilians endanger each other. The reservation is a small community where tribes live at, but because the place is very small, many of the adults are unable to use their money productively. As a result, many of the adults spend their money buying alcohols and drinks heavily. For instance, Sawyer claims, “over four-million beers are sold in the reservation” (Children of the Plains). Because many native americans consume alcohol, many deaths and child abuses occur. For example, Sawyer interviewed a young girl who had lost her father due to drunk driving (Children of the Plains). This quote from Sawyer’s video supports alcoholism as a problem ...
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...iety learns that the only way to cure a community that fights against alcohol is to start with the future generations because they are the one who will lead the community. Society can raise awareness about the danger of alcohol to young scholars in middle school and high school. Classes and advertisement can portray the cons of drinking, especially underage. These support services will allow young individuals to end the cycle of alcoholism as an enemy and change alcoholism to a means of celebration.
Works Cited
"Sherman Alexie | CONVERSATIONS AT KCTS 9."
YouTube. YouTube, 12 Nov. 2008. Web. 22 Apr. 2014.
Sawyer, Diane. "Children of the Plains."
YouTube. YouTube, 2020, 12 Nov. 2011. Web. 22 Apr. 2014.
Alexie, Sherman, Ellen Forney, and Mechthild Hesse.
Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian. Stuttgart: Klett Sprachen, 2009. Print.
People can easily excuse their disputes, violence or sexual offenses simply by saying “I was drunk and didn’t know what happened” and “I lost control of myself.” At the same time, the society will easily accept their excuses because people do expect and believe that drinkers shed their inhibitions under the biological effects of ethanol. But in fact, alcohol’s behavioral effect is more of a cultural influence, and people can totally be in control of themselves even if they are drunk. In Gladwell’s essay, he provides examples of the Camba ethnic group and Italian Americans who are both in integrated drinking cultures and have the habit of drinking heavily, but can control themselves and do not usually have trouble with alcoholism after consuming alcohol because their cultures believe they can. Gladwell also demonstrates the alcohol myopia theory and the related experiment overview to prove that in ambivalent cultures, people who are heavily drunk can remain in complete control of themselves and make rational decisions if they are given proper incentives. “I was drunk and I lost my control” is never a valid excuse for behavioral problems from alcohol; to solve the alcoholism problem, our culture should change its belief of alcohol’s behavioral
This paper will discuss the Native American culture and briefly review their history, some beliefs and roles in society today. A short description into their culture with References will be used to show how Native Americans have been affected throughout hundreds of years. The trauma this culture endured has created many barriers, yet one often seen today is their extreme problem with the disease of Alcoholism. The Native American culture has gone through endless struggles, which has cost them to lose so much and still continues to impact them today. They are slowly moving back toward getting benefits that should have been available long ago, but in today’s world Native Americans still battle with many barriers not only in society, but in getting appropriate treatment for mental health or addiction issues.
Sherman Alexie grew up in Wellpinit, Washington as a Spokane/Coeur d’Alene tribal member (Sherman Alexie). He began his personal battle with substance abuse in 1985 during his freshman year at Jesuit Gonzaga University. The success of his first published work in 1990 incentivized Alexie to overcome his alcohol abuse. “In his short-story and poetry collections, Alexie illuminates the despair, poverty, and alcoholism that often shape the lives of Native Americans living on reservations” (Sherman Alexie). When developing his characters, Alexie often gives them characteristics of substance abuse, poverty and criminal behaviors in an effort to evoke sadness with his readers. Alexie utilizes other art forms, such as film, music, cartoons, and the print media, to bombard mainstream distortion of Indian culture and to redefine Indianness. “Both the term Indian and the stereotypical image are created through histories of misrepresentation—one is a simulated word without a tribal real and the other an i...
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian which was written by Sherman Alexie, combines humor and tragedy to tell a first-person narrative story of Arnold Spirit Jr., a 14-year-old Native American teenager, and the events in his life about pursuing his dreams. This book is a semi-autobiographical novel and it has won the 2007 U.S. National Book Award for Young People's Literature and the Odyssey Award as best 2008 audiobook for young people. The language in this book is simple, humorous and spontaneous, however, tragedies have played a more important part than comedies.
Finally, one cannot easily undermine the experience of those who have read the book and changed. These are the ones who will agree most wholeheartedly with the assertion that Alcoholics Anonymous is a great unrecognized literary work. Indeed, these individuals are the evidence of this assertion as well.
“The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” is a humorous and intuitive novel written by Sherman Alexie. The reader gets an insight into the everyday life of a fourteen year old hydrocephalic Indian boy named Arnold Spirit, also referred to as Junior Spirit. He is living on the Spokane Indian reservation and is seen as an outcast by all the other Indians, due to his medical condition. Against all odds, Arnold expands his hope, leaves his school on the reservation and faces new obstacles to obtain a more promising future at a school off the reservation. The novel is told through Arnold’s voice, thoughts, actions, and experiences.
“80 percent of teen-agers have tried alcohol, and that alcohol was a contributing factor in the top three causes of death among teens: accidents, homicide and suicide” (Underage, CNN.com pg 3). Students may use drinking as a form of socializing, but is it really as good as it seems? The tradition of drinking has developed into a kind of “culture” fixed in every level of the college student environment. Customs handed down through generations of college drinkers reinforce students' expectation that alcohol is a necessary ingredient for social success. These perceptions of drinking are the going to ruin the lives of the students because it will lead to the development alcoholism. College students who drink a lot, while in a college environment, will damage themselves mentally, physically, and socially later in life, because alcohol adversely affects the brain, the liver, and the drinkers behavior.
The Absolute True Diary of a Part Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie, is about a high schooler trying to get away from his futureless culture. Although the book was an easy, amusing read, filled with pictures, and funny captions. Portraying the hopelessness of the Native American people, his culture, in his eyes. By analysing the text you dig past this comedic writing to see the true struggles of a kid our own age. “You’ve been fighting since you
Alexie, Sherman. The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. New York: Hachette Book Group, 2007. Print.
Alcoholism has been a fixture in our society since the first introduction of alcohol. Despite it being an equal opportunity disease, a large majority of not only the treatment, but also the research, has been about men. This lack of consideration of the different needs for men and women has led to many women going through recovery systems that do not address their experiences, and therefore do not allow them to take full advantage of that recovery system. This paper will attempt to look at the different experiences that men and women have in their journey through a substance addiction (particularly alcohol), from addiction through recovery. The main recovery method that will be discussed here is Alcoholics Anonymous. As an observation addition to this assignment, I sat in on an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in Kerrville, TX. The meeting was on Thanksgiving Day at noon. I took detailed notes of the meeting, while keeping a watchful eye for any gendered interactions during the flow of the meeting.
In his fictional book Reservation Blues, Sherman Alexie, a Native American himself, describes the lives of Native Americans on a Spokane reservation in Washington State. In the book, alcoholism on this reservation is discussed in meticulous detail. For example, Alexie indicates that one of the reasons for such a high rate of alcohol abuse among the Spokane tribe members is the socioeconomics of the reservation. Poverty, unemployment, and low schooling levels often encourage alcohol consumption. For example, Simon, one of the characters in Alexie’s story, cannot afford to repair his truck, so he drives his pickup truck backward, put...
When society thinks about people drinking alcohol, the first assumption is that there is a drinking disorder occurring. There are thousands of ways to get help and for one to learn the correct way to drink alcohol. Society, however, doesn’t realize that there are steps and reasons alcoholism occurs within society.
“When I was 13, my dad started drinking more and more. Every day he would come home from work and have beer, lots of it. I didn’t think much of it at first, but then he started getting more angry and violent. He would shout at my mom and me. It was like my father had gone and been replaced with another guy” says an anonymous kid who lives with an alcoholic parent in “How my dad’s drinking problem almost destroyed my family”. The kid depicts that he is so confused, angry and upset especially when his father got fired for going to work drunk. This is one of many children’s voices who suffers having an alcoholic in their family. Most of them are depressed because alcohol has destroyed their family. This is an addiction that does
Although alcoholism is not necessarily constrained to one demographic, the prevalence of alcoholism, especially in underage drinkers, seems to be of growing concern. In the last five years alone, underage age drinking has seen a startling and rather significant increase. For example, in 2009, about 59.3% of high school seniors had consumed alcohol. The same poll, taken in 2014, showed that 65.7% had now participated in the consumption of alcohol, despite being underage (Whillenburg 3).
Alcoholism is a mental illness that is very destructive not only to an individual that has it, but also to the people that surround him or her and the community. It is a “chronic disease, progressive, and often fatal”, according to James D. Torr, author of the book called Alcoholism (19). Alcohol, when consumed, causes the person to feel pleasure and other desired effects, because of the chemicals it contains. The continuation of consuming alcohol causes the brain and the body to develop tolerance or addiction which leads to alcohol dependence or alcoholism.