Days of Wine and Roses-Alcohol Addiction
“Days of Wine and Roses” is a 1962 film that was directed by Blake Edwards. The film took place in the United States and was later released as a DVD by Warner Home Video. The movie depicts two Americans that are living their average life until their lives take a downward spiral as they yield to alcohol and struggle to break through. The movie portrays a man, Joe Clay, working in public relations and Kirsten Arnesen, who works as a secretary. Joe and Kristen meet at a social party for Public Relations where Joe introduces her to “social drinking”. She declines his offer at first and states she does not drink, however she is addicted to chocolate. In addition, she says she does not see the point of drinking.
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Being hesitant, she tries her first drink due to Joe and admits it made her feel good. As the plot continues, Joe and Kristen get married and have a daughter named Debbie. As days go by, Joe’s social drinking slowly becomes a problem.
He starts to depend on alcohol to deal with the stress he gets from work which eventually affects his ability to work and as well as his family. As Joe comes home every day stressed due to work, he often gets in a fight with his wife and ends up yelling at his daughter. Therefore, he asks his wife to “support him” by drinking along. Eventually Kristen becomes addicted to alcohol along with Joe. They both are seen struggling trying to deal with their problems, however they don’t realize that alcohol is the main problem. Later in the movie, we find out that Joe gets fired from 5 places within 4 years due to alcoholism and he realizes they both are just “a couple of bums” who are dependent on alcohol. Thus they move to live in with Kristen’s father who helps them stay clean. They both manage to stay sober for a while until they have “just one drink” for fun. Hungerford, who was working with Joe to treat him for his addiction states that he must stay sober even if it meant staying away from his …show more content…
wife. Eventually Joe becomes sober for a year with a steady job and becomes a responsible father to Debbie, whereas Kristen becomes more addictive due to her addictive personality which was hinted through her love for chocolate. Joe is seen to be in a troublesome situation between trying to be responsible father to her daughter with a steady job and helping his wife who walks away at the end of the movie. Alcohol was first developed in the 18th century by an Arab chemist, Jabir Hayyan (Herie & Skinner, 2010).
As Herie and Skinner state “Beverage Alcohol can be described as a depressant drug which diminishes the activity in parts of the brain and spinal cord in accordance with the amount of alcohol in a person’s bloodstream” (Herie & Skinner, pg. 42). With its long history and unique properties such as the cure of all diseases “prolongs life, clears away ill humours, revives the heart and maintains youth”, alcohol is often related to tradition and expressions; many of these traditions are adaptation from earlier times where it was believed alcohol reflected water of life (Herie & Skinner, 2010). This is quite evident in Days of Wine and Roses where Joe is first seen drinking because “it was part of his job” and because “he had to because of everyone
else”. Alcohol consumption is woven into the social, cultural, and economic fabric in a society (Herie & Skinner, 2010). As seen in the movie, alcohol is used as a substance that provides relaxing effects and is offered at celebrations or informal gatherings. This is quite evident in Days of Wine and Roses where Joe is first seen drinking because “it was part of his job” and because “he had to because of everyone else”. As Herie, and Skinner mention in the chapter, alcohol contains an active ingredient, ethyl alcohol, which acts as a central nervous system depressant. This can be seen in the movie, where Joe and Kristen yield to alcohol trying to deal with problems at work. Some of the main themes which are seen in the movie are how one becomes a drinker, how a drinker influences the sober people around him, being dependent on alcohol and finally trying to make change. One of the first and also the main themes in the movie was how an individual becomes a drinker. As the viewers could see, Joe starts off as a social drinker and eventually becomes a regular drinker due to a lot of stress at work and social drinking. Kristen who was a non-drinker easily becomes an alcoholic due to staying in the company of Joe. This is one of the screening problems of alcohol which Herie and skinner mention in the textbook that “33% of people who are non-drinkers report harm due to someone else’s drinking (pg. 55). This is fairly obvious in the movie, where Joe has a great influence on Kristen. Joe is often seen coming home drunk and abusing his wife and daughter. Later, he asks Kristen to support him in his troublesome times by drinking along with him and hence she gets addicted to alcohol. The bio-psycho-social approach that is mentioned by Herie and Skinner is noticeable in the movie as well. Joe is first influenced to drink because social drinking was common at his work place. Later he starts to depend on alcohol, which starts to control his actions, mind and behaviour as Herie and skinner mention as well. Due to alcohol, people tend to act and respond based on emotions rather than judgment (Herie and Skinner, 2010). Both Joe and Kristen start to depend on alcohol thinking it will provide them with solutions to their problems permanently not knowing that this is due to the psycho effect alcohol depressant has on their brains and body. The more alcohol they consume, the more resistant they become to it which can kill many brain cells or even induce coma (Herie and Skinner, 2010). Another main theme that is present in the movie is how Joe and Kristen become dependent on alcohol. They both are seen struggling with their lives and trying to provide their daughter with a decent life. Joe is shown to be drinking all the time; he drinks at work because he feels that he needs to and ends up drinking a lot more when he gets home to relieve the stress. Joe admits to become a “bum” and also an alcoholic when he sees his reflection in a window one day. He cries about being fired from 4 jobs in 5 years and tells Kristen it is due to alcohol. On the other hand, Kristen, who was a non-drinker becomes so dependent on alcohol that she ends up prioritizing drinking before her daughter and husband. While being drunk one day, she lights up her apartment on fire and they end up losing everything. In addition, we see towards the end of the movie, Kristen comes home to reconcile things with her family however states “it’s very hard for me to look at anything while I am sober, everything looks ugly”. She states that she cannot even imagine her life without drinking and ends up leaving her family. Moreover, when they both first try to stay sober, they are seen struggling especially Joe, who breaks into a store in the middle of the night because he is desperate for another bottle. One can see how alcohol has a huge impact on both of them and their lives, especially the physical effects. As Herie and skinner mention, the more and the faster alcohol is consumed, the more alcohol is left circulating in the system (pg. 43). Joe and Kristen are often seen drinking out of the bottle in the movie and end up finishing it very fast. This also does not comply with Herie and Skinner’s Low-Risk Drinking Guidelines. The guidelines state that an individual should not have more than 2 drinks a day and no more than 9 standards drink in a week for women and 14 standard drinks for men (pg. 57). Joe and Kristen had passed these limits by a lot and thus one could say that they were addicted to alcohol. Another way viewers could find out whether Joe and Kristen were dependent on alcohol is by a popular screening of CAGE questionnaire. The CAGE questionnaire presented by Herie and Skinner (pg. 56) asks the following four questions: C Have you ever felt the need to Cut down on your drinking? A Have you ever felt Annoyed by someone criticizing your drinking? G Have you ever felt bad or Guilty about your drinking? E Have you ever had a drink first thing in the morning to steady nerves and get rid of hangover (Eye Opener)? If Joe and Kristen were to take this questionnaire, all the answers would be “Yes”. Hence the questionnaire would suggest that that both Joe and Kirstein have a life-time drinking and would show that they are dependent on alcohol. Along with this, individuals can also get formal help for dependence on alcohol by getting treatments, or by first helping themselves, as seen in the movie. Lastly, the final theme that is present in the movie was making change and trying to say sober. Viewers could see that Joe and Kristen had a hard time staying sober during their dependence on alcohol. One could see Joe struggling to find a steady job and Kirstein struggling to be a good wife and a mother. In my opinion I think making change was a lot harder for Kristen than Joe. Joe had managed to stay sober for a year towards the end of the movie whereas Kristen was still dependent on alcohol. She had left home several times and was away from her family. As the counsel says in the movie that drinkers hate to drink alone in the company of sober people, which is why Joe and Kristen were apart towards the end of the movie. One can say that Kristen had a harder time trying to quit because “females tend to get drunk faster than male drinkers, they also experience negative health consequences sooner (Herie and Skinner, 2010). Consequently, one can see that drinking is not only a problem for just the individual, but also for the people around them. Another thing to be noted is that someone else, rather than an individual making a choice to drink, which also happens in some cases, almost always influences drinking down. Watching the movie and reading Substance Abuse in Canada makes us realize that alcohol can be consumed in a right way to minimize risk. However, many individuals are not aware of these guidelines and tend to drink a lot at once, resulting in severe consequences. Having easy access to alcohol in north America can be a leading problem and could increase the amount of people that depend on alcohol, which can affect many other people as well in their everyday lives. Perhaps, the government should make it hard to access alcohol and also consider increasing the legal age of drinking.
Additionally, although proclaiming his love for her, Lester becomes a negative influence on Kathy. Under the false sense of security he provides, Kathy, a recovering alcoholic, allows herself to start drinking again after an abstinence of three ye...
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Alcoholism. A disease that not only affects one person, but others around them. Alcoholism is defined as a chronic disorder characterized on the dependence of alcohol all the time. In The Glass Castle, alcoholism affects many characters, but the one it truly affects is Rex Walls.
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Jody was born biologically with male genitals and he was brought up as a boy. Unlike his more gender-typical older brother, Jody’s childhood behavior was considered “sissy”. Jody genetically preferred the company of girls compared to boys during childhood. Jody considered herself a bisexual male until the age of 19. At 19 years of age, she became involved with a man, and her identity would be transgender, meaning that Jody was unhappy with her gender of birth and seeks a change from male to female. It would seem that there was some late-onset dissatisfaction, and late-onset is linked to attraction to women; in comparison to early childhood-onset, which are attracted to men. Jody identified herself as bisexual. The relationship with the man ended; nevertheless, Jody’s desire to become a woman consumed her, and Jody feels that’s he was born in the
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Imagine, a little boy sitting at home alone, hungry and scared because he doesn’t know where his parents are. Millions of children live this scenario every day because they have parents who abuse alcohol. Alcohol abuse is an addiction that affects everyone in the drinker’s life. Many examples of this are shown in The Glass Castle, Jeanette Walls and her siblings are heavily impacted by their father’s drinking habit and are constantly forced to take care of themselves. Having a parent with a harmful history of alcohol abuse increases the risk of child maltreatment greatly, alcohol use disorder creates many problems especially when children are involved so government should step in and remove children from that environment.
In The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls, Rex Walls is highly dependent on alcohol, which significantly hurts Jeanette and her siblings and drives the family apart. The Walls children and countless others like them across the United States have become victims of alcoholism, which is a factor that they cannot control, but debilitates them socially, physically, financially, and emotionally. Rex Wall’s alcoholism causes him to frequently neglect his children and ignore their needs, which often endangers them. Furthermore, Rex’s alcohol addiction affects his behavior causing him to use profanity and act in an angry and even violent manner, negatively impacting the family as a whole. Many readers of
Drinking: A Love Story (1996) is a memoir by Caroline Knapp where she shares her experience of gradually becoming an alcoholic. She found drinking to be the most important relationship in her life; she loved how it made her feel, how it coped with her fears and worries. She chronicles some of the effort and self-realization required for recovery from this addiction, but her primary focus is on the charm, seductiveness, and destructiveness that she was able to find in two decades as an alcoholic, hopelessly in love with liquor. Her relationship with alcohol started in early teenage years and progressed through young adulthood, until she finally checked herself into a rehabilitation center at the age of thirty-four.
The human condition which is spoken about in Alcoholics Anonymous is the dichotomy of the life of the alcoholic. These alcoholics are not easy to categorize; they are not always a Dr Jekyll by day and Mr Hyde by night. Bill, who explains his life story in the first chapter, explains how he studied economics, business and law to join speculators on Wall Street. Up until this point, drinking had interfered in his life, but was not a continuous plague. Yet, over the course of time he becomes an alcoholic for a variety of reasons, like many individuals described throughout the book. The alcoholics described are not portrayed as unintelligent, unsuccessful or insignificant. They are men who have high positions, who are by turns "brilliant, fast-thinking, imaginative and likeable" (139). The conclusion of a prima facie inspection of these individuals would not include over indulgence of alcohol. But under the alcoholic influence these attributes worthy of note slowly atrophy and...
Frey and Schonbeck explain that it is estimated that over 76 million people worldwide are affected by alcohol abuse or dependence. The chance of having an alcoholic in one’s life is very high. Children that grow up in an environment with an alcoholic may increase that child’s chance of becoming an alcoholic themselves. In the United States, the most commonly abused drug among youth is alcohol. Even though the legal drinking age is 21, nearly 20% of all alcohol consumed in the United States is by people under the legal age (83). In fact, when youth start drinking at social events in their teenage years, they are greatly increasing their risk of developing alcohol problems (85). Alcoholism can affect people of all ages. Furthermore, some experts try to differentiate between alcoholics and social drinkers. Typically, they base this off of five categories. Social drinkers do not drink alone. They consume minimal amounts of alcohol during social functions. Situational drinkers may not ever drink unless they are stressed out. These drinkers are more likely to drink by themselves. Problem drinkers can be described as a drinker that alcohol has caused problems in their life. However, they usually respond to advice given by others. Binge drinkers are out of control in their alcohol consumption. They may drink until they pass out or worse. Alcoholic drinkers have found that their lives have become unmanageable and that they are completely powerless over alcohol (84). Alcoholics should be cautious of their surroundings to prevent
Sometimes, an alcoholic can be abusive. In Arnold Josephs case, it is nonetheless. When Arnold realizes that he accidentally starts a fire that kills Thomas’s parents, alcoholism seems as the only thing in which he can turn to and try to resolve his problems. After a few years, Arnold’s alcoholism takes a toll on the household. Victor’s attitude toward alcohol is greatly affected as he sees what it did to his father. Arnold eventually left the reservation due to him not being able to manage his emotions. Even though it may seem that Arnold was being selfish, in reality, it was quite the opposite. Arnold saves the two by not submitting them to a life of fear by leaving town. In the end, alcohol rescues Victor from living in fear.
To understand alcoholism, it must first be understood what this affliction is dependent on. Alcohol is a substance that is made by the fermentation of fruits, grains, or miscellaneous other organic materials. The chemical, alcohol, is a depressant and acts on every cell in the human body. Due to this, the central nervous system, along with the pleasure centers of the brain, are affected resulting in a feeling of euphoria and a sense of well being. After repeated exposure, the brain becomes dependent on this drug to unburden itself whenever it feels the compulsion. Several factors that contribute to alcoholism are the individual’s psychology, genetics, culture, and the individual’s response to physical pain.
The problem of alcohol use is very relevant nowadays. Today alcohol consumption characterized by vast numbers in the world. All of society is suffering from this, but primarily jeopardized the younger generation: children, teenagers, young people, and the health of future mothers. Because alcohol is particularly active effect on the body that are not formed, gradually destroying it. The harm of alcohol abuse is evident. It is proved that when alcohol is ingested inside the body, it is carried by blood to all organs and has harmful effect on them until destruction. Systematic use of alcohol develops a dangerous disease such as alcoholism. Alcoholism is dangerous to human health, but it is curable as other diseases. The big problem is that most of the alcohol products which are made in private places contain many toxic substances, defective products often leads to poisoning and even death. All this has negative impact on society and its cultural values.