Day after day we read in the newspapers and about the political turmoil and the candidates and email and the struggle of American politics. I strive to read more than just those articles, since I want to learn about the real struggles of the American people. I want to learn about the bigger problems behind the scenes in the US and what can be done to help. This was the reasoning for the choice of my article for this week’s critique on addiction and the story of Amanda with a heat wrenching addition to Heroin and her journey through it all. In 2016 Americans are turning to heroin to deal with their despair, pain and turmoil in their lives, subsequently causing an opiate epidemic. This point is further evidenced by the following statement …show more content…
A powerful statement within the article reflects this in a way few people understand. Libby the mother of Amanda says is always expecting “her daughter to die, sacrificing her sanity to save her, and doing most of it alone. She rarely talked to her ex-husband about Amanda’s addiction; her current husband was patient and supportive, but sometimes, as Amanda’s mother, Libby felt that the responsibility was mostly hers.” (Saslow, 2016). Some many American families suffer through loved one’s addiction. Addiction is not easy to cope with when you are the parent, spouse, sibling or a friend of the addicted person. Year after year one watches as the tragic story of addiction unfolds unleashing it wrath on the entire family even though only one person is the …show more content…
I never real understood what that meant, since my mother was loving, kind and treated my sister and I with the utmost respect. She doted on us a little too much at times, but she also made us believe in ourselves, thus transforming us into mature young adult women who pursue our dreams to their fullest. However, my mother would have walked through fire to help us out with any situation that may arise. Yet when I looked around at some of the old high school students I went to school with I cannot say the same for them and their parents. I had a friend in high school who was on the swim team with me and she unfortunately ended up dating the wrong man and became addicted to black tar heroin. I watched as her parents struggled with keeping her sober and then eventually her parent took custody of her two children, because two others had been born addicted and died at an early age. She had been a beautiful young woman, successful in swimming and academics, subsequently had lost everything from one weak moment. I visit her parents periodically and they would ask me why did this happen? I have no answers for them, since they were excellent parents, at least from my view. Addiction is not something that you catch, addiction is a disease or the mind and the body, which some people never recover. Luckily my friend is currently in recovery for the last year. This is blessing of profound measure that only
On the typical day, over 90 people will die at the hand of opioid abuse in America alone (National). In fact, as of 2014, nearly 2 million Americans were dependent and abusing opioids. The Opioid Crisis has affected America and its citizens in various ways, including health policy, health care, and the life in populous areas. Due to the mass dependence and mortality, the crisis has become an issue that must be resolved in all aspects.
The documentary Heroin Cape Cod, USA focused on the widespread abuse of pain medication such as Vicodin, Percocet, and Oxycodone that has led the U.S. into the rise of an opiate addiction. Many of the users within the video explained that it doesn’t matter where you go, there is no stopping, and you can’t just get high once. Instead, those who do it want that high forever. I think that this is a very important concept that those who aren’t addicted to drugs need to understand, no matter how hard it is to. The documentary featured many addicts including Marissa who first popped pills when she was 14 years old, Daniel who stated he started by snorting pixie sticks, and Arianna who started smoking weed and drinking before age 12. Additionally, the documentary interviewed Ryan and Cassie. These addicts explained that in Cape Cod you either work and you’re normal, or you do drugs.
From interviewing celebrities such as actress Kristen Johnston and politician Bill White, the film identified substance abuse can happen to anyone. I found more sympathy to those once I learned the facts, not opinions, of substance abuse users. It was interesting to find how the physiology of ones’ brain may change over time, thus proving it is not always a person’s free will of choice to use. People of addiction are like anyone else who may have fallen down the wrong path. Some who have found substance abuse for coping, did not realize they were becoming addicts. Others have found the media and advertisement placing pressure on them because it looks entertaining and fun. With limited outreach programs, it is crucial to increase the awareness among young groups for prevention. With fear of being judged, the stigma and health disparities of addiction cause many to not seek help. Equal opportunity should be available to everyone. As a future nurse, I find an important role for me is to lead in educating and being opened minded to the struggles of each one of my patients. My job is to refrain from stereotyping and being an advocate. As healthcare is always evolving to provide the most adequate care, I look forward towards the future as more people are educating and trying to eliminate those struggling through addiction
Gabor Mate 's essay “Embraced by the Needle” addresses important issues on the negative effects that childhood experiences have on the development of addictions, and the long term effects that drugs play throughout an addict 's life. The author states that addictions originate from unhappiness and pain that is often inflicted upon addicts at early age such as infancy. In Mate essay, he uses many patients past childhood experiences to help create a picture of the trauma that an addict faced as child and the link it plays with who they are today. Mate builds an impressive argument based on the way he organizes his ideas on what addiction is, and how it corresponds to a person 's childhood experience. The author does this effectively
The documentary states that over 27,000 deaths a year are due to overdose from heroin and other opioids. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in 2015 prescription pain relievers account for 20,101 overdose deaths, and 12,990 overdose deaths are related to heroin (Rudd et al., 2010-2015). The documentary’s investigation gives the history of how the heroin epidemic started, with a great focus on the hospice movement. We are presented with the idea that once someone is addicted to painkillers, the difficulty in obtaining the drug over a long period of time becomes too expensive and too difficult. This often leads people to use heroin. This idea is true as a 2014 survey found that 94% of respondents who were being treated for opioid addiction said they chose to use heroin because prescription opioids were “more expensive and harder to obtain (Cicero et al., 2014).” Four in five heroin users actually started out using prescription painkillers (Johns, 2013). This correlation between heroin and prescription painkiller use supports the idea presented in the documentary that “prescription opiates are heroin prep school.”
Almost one hundred years ago, prescription drugs like morphine were available at almost any general store. Women carried bottles of very addictive potent opiate based pain killers in their purse. Many individuals like Edgar Allen Poe died from such addictions. Since that time through various federal, state and local laws, drugs like morphine are now prescription drugs; however, this has not stopped the addiction to opiate based pain killers. Today’s society combats an ever increasing number of very deadly addictive drugs from designer drugs to narcotics to the less potent but equally destructive alcohol and marijuana. With all of these new and old drugs going in and out of vogue with addicts, it appears that the increase of misuse and abuse is founded greater in the prescription opiate based painkillers.
“While we all did some things that were in poor taste, not all of us resorted to such desperate measures. Sure, some did, but not all of us. This has made society view drug addicts virtually as lesser beings. The effect it has had in my life is a loss of trust by others who are aware of my past addiction issues” (treatment4addiction.com) Many people see drug addicts as lowlifes who need to stop doing drugs and believe that it is easy to do so. They believe that all drug addicts are scum, that they are not people like everybody else. They do not see it as a disease and because of this they tend to completely shut out the family member or friend suffering from this. In an interview with PocosPeroLocos.FM Williams
In class on Friday we watched an episode of Intervention that showed a lady named Tamela, who was addicted to self-harm. During this episode we saw how this addiction was not only physically and emotionally draining Tamela, but how her addiction was hurting her family. Tamela seemed to naturally be a wild spirited person, being extremely outgoing, wearing her hair in strange ways and wearing clothes that brought attention to her. In one clip of the episode they showed her out with a friend and she was very high energy and always laughing.
Every year, 2.6 million people in the United States suffer from opioid abuse and of that 2.6 million, 276,000 are adolescents, and this problem is only escalating. An individual’s physical and emotional health suffers as well as their personal lives as they lose employment, friends, family, and hope. Opioid addiction begins with the addictive aspects of the drug. People easily become hooked on the relieving effects of the opioids and suffer withdrawal symptoms if they stop using the drug completely because their nerve cells become accustomed to the drug and have difficulty functioning without it; yet the addiction to the drug is only one aspect of the complex problem. The stigma about opioid addiction has wide-reaching negative effects as it discourages people with opioid abuse problems from reaching out.
Two years ago, in the United States, over 42,000 people died from an overdose from opioid medications alone and a little under half of those deaths were due to heroin. Year after year, it grows and grows, becoming a major problem in our communities. Even in our own state in the same year, over 4,000 people died and just last year over 5,000 died from heroin and opioids overdoses. Opioid overdoses are claiming ordinary people in 24 different Cambria County communities as well. That’s scary to know that the opioid crisis is right in our own backyard.
The rate of death due to prescription drug abuse in the U.S. has escalated 313 percent over the past decade. According to the Congressional Quarterly Transcription’s article "Rep. Joe Pitt Holds a Hearing on Prescription Drug Abuse," opioid prescription drugs were involved in 16,650 overdose-caused deaths in 2010, accounting for more deaths than from overdoses of heroin and cocaine. Prescribed drugs or painkillers sometimes "condemn a patient to lifelong addiction," according to Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This problem not only affects the lives of those who overdose but it affects the communities as well due to the convenience of being able to find these items in drug stores and such. Not to mention the fact that the doctors who prescribe these opioids often tend to misuse them as well. Abusing these prescribed drugs can “destroy dreams and abort great destinies," and end the possibility of the abuser to have a positive impact in the community.
Every single person in an addict’s immediate family is affected in some way by the individual’s substance abuse. In recent years, our society has moved further away from the traditional nuclear family. There are single-parent homes and blended family homes. Each of these family structures and more will affect the addict’s overall impact on the family. If young children are a part of the family, their
David Sheff’s memoir, Beautiful Boy, revolves around addiction, the people affected by addiction, and the results of addiction. When we think of the word addiction, we usually associate it with drugs or alcohol. By definition, addiction is an unusually great interest in something or a need to do or have something (“Addiction”). All throughout the memoir, we are forced to decide if David Sheff is a worried father who is fearful that his son, Nic Sheff’s, addiction will kill him or if he is addicted to his son’s addiction. Although many parents would be worried that their son is an addict, David Sheff goes above and beyond to become involved in his son’s life and relationship with methamphetamine, making him an addict to his son’s addiction.
In this regard family members often feel overwhelming fatigue and a lack of strength to accomplish what they hope to do. They are tired, feeling overwhelmed, and are losing hope not only about doing what they can for the addict/alcoholic but about barely surviving on their own. Family members need to ask themselves whether addiction is such a monstrous and powerful evil that anyone who is connected with it will face inevitable defeat, or is it that the family members are losing strength because they have become inadvertently involved in a co-dependent relationship with their addict/alcoholic and are living out the natural negative consequences of being
My first memories of my father were what I now know as active addiction, I would watch the chaos in my house, the abuse, both mental and physical and at the time I didn’t understand but as time went on it was apparent, at the age of 11, my father hung himself, although he did not die he cut off oxygen to his brain long enough to render him blind and incompetent to care for himself and he was place in a nursing home where he would reside for the next 25 years of my life. I swore I would never do drugs because I saw firsthand the destruction, but my family addiction did not stop there. My aunt was a daily drinker, my uncle was addicted to heroin, another aunt addicted to crack