Heroin was originally synthesized in 1874 by a man named C.R Alder Wright. Created as a solution to opium, a drug that had plagued many American households. It was originally produced for medical purposes evidently becoming highly addictive. Heroin “... was originally marketed as a non-addictive substance” (“History of Addiction”) which inevitably increased its popularity. It became especially popular in places of poverty. Heroin became a solution to struggle. So common it was almost as if heroin was a prescribed medicine for hardship. Known as “[a] treatment of many illnesses and pain” (“A brief history of addiction”) but later revealed that it caused more harm than good. Being so easily accessible it became immensely common among musicians. …show more content…
Drug abuse is one of the singular commonalities between the majority of jazz musicians. Those who did not participate or who overcame their addiction were honored throughout the jazz community. It was too easy to become entrapped in the temptation of escape that heroin offered. Ignoring the consequences of such a drug, ignoring the toll it took on their lives. Although many jazz musicians still struggled with obtaining fame and fortune and simply surviving in the times they lived in heroin was able to provide a temporary but fulfilling escape. Being highly addictive many lost their lives to heroin abuse or HIV/AIDS because of sharing hypodermic needles. “Many talented jazz musicians either had their careers sidetracked or prematurely ended due to their addiction ...” yet the use of narcotic did not dissipate. Death being one of the side effects of heroin provoked the question of why anyone would take it. Not being able to understand sacrificing their body to “free” their souls. Not all addicts were suicidal but their addictions caused the misconception that they were. Throughout the majority of the story, Sonny’s unnamed brother attempts to comprehend why anyone, especially his brother, would partake in drug abuse if they did not have a death wish, “... why does he want to die? He must want to die, he’s killing himself, why does he want to die?”. A friend …show more content…
Many of the greats had been drawn into addiction. Developing a relationship with the drug. It became an involvement with their lives, almost as much as music was. Neglecting what the drug did to their brain and body, “The effects on the body from continued use of this drug are very destructive.” Growing weaker and weaker their addictions hindered their musical performances, “Frequent injections can cause collapsed veins and can lead to infections of the blood vessels and heart valves.” Despite what the drug did directly to their bodies, a lack of education was also a factor in their demise, “... heroin users often share their needles [which] leads to AIDS and other contagious infections” unknowingly contributing to the death of so many others as well. The growing heroin epidemic was mainly influenced by heroins short-term effects, “abusers typically report feeling a surge of pleasurable sensation—a rush.” drowning out the long term effects until the were inescapable. To most the high is worth it. That feeling cannot be found anywhere else and once you experience it all you want to do is continue. No matter how pleasurable the consequences of heroin are severe. Heroin slowly causes the body to deteriorate into nothingness. A habitual abuser will be submerged in needle scars. It eventually changes a person 's appearance so drastically it looks as though their body is rotting. Still despite being aware of
He wants to project himself as a jazz musician but society considers him as a poor drug addict who lives in Harlem. Sonny fails resolving his problem and gets imprisoned because of heroin addict. Music is the only way he can escape from Harlem, where always frustrates Sonny and brings Sonny down. Music makes him alleviated from his hopelessness and self-consciousness after he released from prison. However, he becomes the one who fights against the problem surrounding him. “I think people ought to do what they want to do, what else are they alive for?” literally shows his perception towards to
James Baldwin 's’ story “Sonny’s Blues” is about a young black musician named Sonny from Harlem, New York, who becomes addicted to heroin and is arrested for the use and distribution of the narcotic. After being released from prison, Sonny returns to his old neighborhood where he grew up, and moves in with his older brother (our narrator) and his family. After he settles in the siblings begin to talk about their angry feeling towards each other. They discuss
“Sonny’s Blues” is a short story in which the author presents a view on the realities of suffering in Harlem, New York in the 1950’s and how the presence of drugs can greatly impact not only the users, but the ones who care about the users as well. This can be shown through the literary use of setting, character, and theme. Throughout the story, the narrator struggles with trying to reason with the life his brother has chosen and the choices he has made. Sonny struggles to find an identity for himself having to live under the shadow of his brother his entire life. Sonny however finds solace in music which seems to become an escape for him and help him find meaning within himself. The narrator realizes at the end of the story why Sonny had chosen this life for himself.
In conclusion, lack of communication affected Sonny's life. When he wanted to be heard and understood, his brother ignored him. To get away, Sonny turned to drugs and found himself locked up in prison. The pain and suffering still lingered within him. Though he was not able to speak to others or were people willing to listen to him, Sonny found his outlet through playing jazz. Sonny's outcome could have been different if he was able to communicate with his brother and was given positive advice rather than being talked out of doing what he pleased. Regardless, by the end of the story, Sonny was content with life. Music was his passion. Music helps him heal.
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.”
Sonny looks for salvation from a variety of things in multitude of different places. Harlem is where Sonny started looking for salvation from, and he found it in doing Heroin and playing the blues. Sonny left Harlem before he even graduated high school, but he never truly left Harlem. Harlem latched on to Sonny in the form of a Heroin addiction. The narrator often blamed Sonny’s musical friends or his career choice as the reason for Sonny’s drug problem. In truth though it was a way for Sonny to deal with the suffering he saw in the world and he felt himself. Sonny felt good when he was playing music or shooting up so he thought those were salvation. When Sonny played his blues it gave him an outlet for the sadness that his soul held, and when he did heroin he was able to forget about it. For Sonny the two had very little to do with each other that can be seen in the scene when the brothers talk about his addiction and his career path, Sonny says, “ ‘It’s not so much to play. It’s to stand it, to be able to make it at all. On any level.’ He frowned and smiled: ‘In order to keep from shaking to pieces.” Sonny latter goes on to talk about how he felt the need to hide from the suffering people must go through because its just not right that people should suffer so much. To Sonny music and heroin were two different escapes but to the narrator they were one in the same,
In 1906, the Pure Food and Drug Act, that was years in the making was finally passed under President Roosevelt. This law reflected a sea change in medicine-- an unprecedented wave of regulations. No longer could drug companies have a secret formula and hide potentially toxic substances such as heroin under their patent. The law required drug companies to specify the ingredients of medications on the label. It also regulated the purity and dosage of substances. Not by mere coincidence was the law passed only about five years after Bayer, a German based drug company began selling the morphine derivative, heroin. Thought to be a safe, non-habit forming alternative to morphine, heroin quickly became the “cure-all drug” that was used to treat anything from coughs to restlessness. Yet, just as quickly as it became a household staple, many began to question the innocence of the substance. While the 1906 law had inherent weaknesses, it signaled the beginning of the end for “cure-all” drugs, such as opiate-filled “soothing syrups” that were used for infants. By tracing and evaluating various reports by doctors and investigative journalists on the medical use of heroin, it is clear that the desire for this legislative measure developed from an offshoot in the medical community-- a transformation that took doctors out from behind the curtain, and brought the public into a new era of awareness.
Harlem is the setting of this story and has been a center for drugs and alcohol abuse. The initial event in this story shows that Sonny is still caught in this world. Sonny says that he is only selling drugs to make money and claims that he is no longer using. In the story the brother begins to see that Sonny has his own problems, but tries to help the people around him by using music to comfort
Where did this drug come from and what makes it different from any other drug that is on the market? Heroin's origins go back long before Christ was a bleep on the radar. It goes back to 1200 B.C. Or the Bronze Age. At that time how ever heroin would be known as its chemically altered state of the poppy seeds. Even at that time however the ancient peoples of that time knew that if the poppy seeds juice were collected and dried. the extract that was left behind could make a effective painkiller. This would later be named opium. There were small incidents of it appearing in Europe, for instance it was used by the gladiators in the Roman Colosseum. But as a whole it would take more then a millennium for opium to travel from the Middle East to the Europe. This only occurred do to crusades. In just a few hundred after that is went from a rarely used painkiller to a liquid that was said to cure all aliments and would even lead to the most humiliating defeat China Empire. In the 1803 opium became dwarfed by its new brother morphine which is named in honor of the Greek god Morpheus who is the god of dreams. Morphine is an extract of opium and is ruffly 10 times the strength of its counter part. After Morphine creation it was put to used almost at once to assist battle field victims. This was a mistake however, because this refined does of opium is also 10 times more addicting then it was in its original form. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers would retur...
The struggles that Sonny has to deal with are internal as well. He is trying to figure out how to get back to the person he was before the drugs crept into his system and left him feeling on a high. For Sonny, he channels his struggles — dealing with heroin — into the Blues. With music, he cannot mask how he feels, like drugs can do for him. Music speaks to anyone willing to listen. To Sonny, music is not just a beat and drums; it is his life and what he wants to do. Baldwin expresses through Sonny the similarities between music and heroin. An unlikely comparison, he says, “heroin [once in your veins] makes you feel soft and warm at the same time” (1744). For Sonny, music helps him feel like a person instead of an outsider. The struggles of his life seem to come full circle once the music crawls through his veins instead of the
Sonny tries to escape racism with his music, but his brother feels he needs a better means in providing for himself (99).He tries to get his point across to James ‘he replies that there’s no way not to suffer isn’t better than just to take it. (105) Sonny searches to find ways versus using drugs; he even goes into the service. He struggles with his suffering difficulties, and tries to escape from the ghetto, but drugs seem to be how he fits in his troubled society, so he becomes one of the society. His realistic method to his pain and suffering is dealing and using heroin; therefore, he ends up in jail. During his incarceration he begins working on his music, so when he gets out he has a career. During the time in prison, blues seems to be the music he can relate to, and it helps with his pain and suffering. Sonny realizes that music has a much better impact of his life versus his heroin addiction.Music has alwa...
the nation at the time, not just with musicians, the latter half of the 20th century has suffered several musical casualties to the drug. As the great players, such as Charlie Parker, began using, the up and coming
Heroin was synthesized from morphine in 1874 by an English chemist, but was not made commercially until 1898 by the Bayer Pharmaceutical Company. Attempts were proposed to use heroin in place of morphine due to problems of morphine abuse. However, it turned out that heroin was also highly addictive, and was eventually classified as an illegal drug in the United States. Today, heroin in the United States comes mostly from Southeast Asia, Southwest Asia, Latin America, Mexico, and the Middle East. It is generally sold in a white or brownish powder form or as a black sticky substance known as “black tar” heroin. Heroin found on the streets is usually mixed with other drugs or substances such as sugar, starch, powdered milk, talc, baking...
When first reading “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin, it may initially seem that the relationship between musicians and drugs is synonymous. Public opinion suggests that musicians and drugs go hand and hand. The possibility lies that Sonny’s passion for jazz music is the underlying reason for his drug use, or even the world of jazz music itself brought drugs into Sonny’s life. The last statement is what the narrator believes to be true. However, by delving deeper and examining the theme of music in the story, it is nothing but beneficial for Sonny and the other figures involved. Sonny’s drug use and his music are completely free of one another. Sonny views his jazz playing as a ray of light to lead him away from the dim and dismal future that Harlem has to offer.
At first glance, "Sonny's Blues" seems ambiguous about the relationship between music and drugs. After all, the worlds of jazz and drug addiction are historically intertwined; it could be possible that Sonny's passion for jazz is merely an excuse for his lifestyle and addiction, as the narrator believes for a time. Or perhaps the world that Sonny has entered by becoming involved in jazz is the danger- if he had not encountered jazz he wouldn't have encountered drugs either. But the clues given by the portrayals of music and what it does for other figures in the story demonstrate music's beneficial nature; music and drugs are not interdependent for Sonny. By studying the moments of music interwoven throughout the story, it can be determined that the author portrays music as a good thing, the preserver and sustainer of hope and life, and Sonny's only way out of the "deep and funky hole" of his life in Harlem, with its attendant peril of drugs (414).