A Community Of Addicted Bodies Summary

Members of the ‘Edgewater Homeless’ community, participated in the study and shared their experience in Chapter 3, “A Community of Addicted Bodies,” which explains some of the most vivid descriptions of what individual’s may experience, also known as ‘dopesickness.’ One member named Felix, explains his challenge with ‘dopesickness’ when waking at 1:00 A.M., in the morning. His sickness begins to take over his mind and body. Physically, Felix was not able to complete normal functions such as standing, staying still, lying down, or have coordinated bodily movements, because his body shook uncontrollably. When Bourgeois and Schoenberg found Felix the next morning, he explained to him the symptoms he experienced. Felix attempted to escape the winter night accompanied by rain in a nearby bus shelter. He mentions that he could not get comfortable due to the dopesickness; going from being cold to experiencing hot flashes, spitting out phlegm or a green substance, and not being able to control his bowel. He reported that during his sickness, he could not breathe or think and also that he could feel every nerve in all of his fingers. The most strangest way in

Experiencing childhood trauma may not explain why an individual uses a certain substance, but there could be other reasons. Other reasons that Bourgeois and Schoenberg state throughout their narrative, in speicific, an individual could have been effected by thoughts and ideas of persons within the United States who see the use of substances as taboo and divide themselves from the reality of communities such as Edgewater. Another supposition that Bourgeois and Schoenberg describes is the result of globalization and its effect on San Francisco, during the years of 1962 and 1998. The economy had a major shift which greatly impacted the Edgewater community during that