Angela Garcia’s The Pastoral Clinic is a riveting collection of illness narratives depicting the lives of heroin addicts, specifically in the underserved area of Espanola Valley, New Mexico. She genuinely provides her audience the reality behind a marginalized population that suffers from an addiction crisis as well as the presence of institutional structures that criminalize addicts for their illness. This paper will focus on care and chronicity as two central ideas of Garcia’s work from two lenses of understanding. The first lens is the Foucauldian approach to bio-power and bio-bureaucracies, a mode of analysis that the author utilizes quite sufficiently to support her argument of “restoring the embodied, economic and moral dynamics of addiction” (Garcia 2010, 10 ). This approach illustrates care as a product of chronicity and vice versa. The second lens is Gramsci’s theory of hegemony and resistance, a mode of analysis …show more content…
This medicalized interpretation of heroin addiction heavily emphasizes a constant state of suffering for those who are affected (Garcia 2010, 18). Furthermore, Nuevo Dia employees take this framework into account when contributing their efforts to treat addicts, on the premise that relapse will soon follow recovery (Garcia 2010, 13). When detox assistants assure themselves that their patients will return to the clinic, as if they never went through a period of treatment, one can expect that the quality of such to be drastically low. The cyclical pattern of inadequate therapies, temporary improvements in health and detrimental presuppositions all widen the health inequality gap in New Mexico. Garcia shares that the “interplay of biomedical and local discourses of chronicity compel dynamics of the Hispano heroin phenomenon,” which is evident in how the judicial system handles the social issue of addiction (2010,
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.
In Righteous Dopefiend, Bourgois and Schonberg delve into the lives of homeless drug addicts on Edgewater Boulevard in San Francisco. They highlight the moral ambiguity of the gray zone in which these individuals exist and the institutional forces that create and perpetuate their condition. The authors liken the experience of the daily lives of the Edgewater homeless to living in an everyday “state of emergency” (2009:21). Throughout the course of their work, they expose the conditions of extreme poverty that the homeless experience, the institutional indifference towards their suffering and the consequences of their crippling addictions. Bourgois and Schonberg describe the Edgewater homeless as a ‘community of addicted bodies’ driven by a communal need to avoid the agony of heroin withdrawal symptoms and held together through a “moral economy of sharing”. (2009: 6) The “webs of mutual obligation” that form as a result of their participation in this system are key to the survival of the Edgewater homeless as they attempt to live under conditions of desperate poverty and police repression.
It is not their drug- problem that causes the dislocation, but the dislocation that causes the drug problem. He uses the term dislocation to describe the lack of integration with “family, community, society and spiritual values” (226). Alexander goes on to explain that history proves that inability to achieve healthy opportunities can take on the form of violence and damaging drug use. The problem is more the “pattern of response to prolonged dislocation” (226). Therefore, the “drug problem” (226) is not the problem. Alexander supports this by explaining that the reason for the dislocation is driven by globalize society, which can only be established by the displacement of tradition, economy, and relationships. This has been seen in historically in England during the 19TH century, when “a brutal, export-oriented manufacturing system” was accompanied by workhouses and shanty
In their ethnography Bourgois and Schonberg are studying the culture of a community of heroin injectors from San Francisco, to which they are referred to as the Edgewater Homeless. They follow them in their everyday lives, recording burglaries, panhandling, love affairs, conflicts, alliances, hierarchies and deaths as well as trips to jail, hospitals, and treatment centers. They delve back into the lives of the Edgewater Homeless to analyze what factors lead them to heroin addiction. In class, it was said that cultures are system and the world is a product of culture exposure. However, this is a culture that has been unknowingly produced by the higher power forces of our nation and is constantly looked down on.
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
Addiction is one of the hardest problems to overcome, yet people often find some reward in abusing drugs. We all ask the question to what makes a person an addict, or why is it so hard for drug addicts to kick a drug problem. However, can we say that getting a hold of drugs is much easier in today’s society, or is it made available to easy. In this day and age, heroine seems to be a major epidemic; furthermore, opiates have been around for centuries. Therefore, people have been battling addiction for as long as opiates have been around. In Drugstore Cowboy, the film takes a look in to the life of four people who rob drugstores in order to support their habit; however, this lifestyle
Why I Left the Church” by Richard Garcia is a poem that explores the ongoing and conflicting relationship between a child’s fantasy and the Church. Although the majority of the text is told in present tense, readers are put through the lenses of a young boy who contemplates the legitimacy of the restricting and constricting nature of worship. It is a narrative that mixes a realist approach of storytelling with a fantasy twist that goes from literal metaphors to figurative metaphors in the description of why the narrator left the church. The poet presents the issue of childhood innocence and preset mindsets created by the Church using strong metaphors and imagery that appeal to all the senses.
In Righteous Dopefiend, Philippe Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg provide a powerful and poignant account of the culture and challenges faced by homeless heroin addicts in San Francisco. Numerous factors, including structural violence, affect the health and quality of life held by the addicts creating a unique set of challenges for health care providers and law enforcement agencies. The problem of heroin addiction is not one-dimensional and many issues go into creating a “syndemic” (Sobo 193). Heroin addiction deserves to be looked at from many angles so that effective solutions can be introduced to help those affected, including the unique community of the Edgewater homeless.
Throughout “Chasing the Scream” many intriguing stories are told from individuals involved in the drug war, those on the outside of the drug war, and stories about those who got abused by the drug war. Addiction has many social causes that address drug use and the different effects that it has on different people. In our previous history we would see a tremendous amount of individuals able to work and live satisfying lives after consuming a drug. After the Harrison Act, drugs were abolished all at once, but it lead to human desperation so instead of improving our society, we are often the reason to the problem. We constantly look at addicts as the bad guys when other individuals are often the reasons and influences to someone’s decision in
In the reality of the postmodern world, where nature is gone and has been replaced by technology, where the world and humankind have become fused with the machine, and the existence of morality and reality are uncertain, it is difficult to find hope for a better existence or motivation to attempt to change one's existence. Addiction then becomes a logical avenue of escape from these bleak circumstances--not affecting reality, but transforming it into something bearable. The addictions that Case turns to allow him to escape from the hard reality of his life th...
Drugs is one of the themes in this story that shows the impact of both the user and their loved ones. There is no doubt that heroin destroys lives and families, but it offers a momentary escape from the characters ' oppressive environment and serves as a coping mechanism to help deal with the human suffering that is all around him. Suffering is seen as a contributing factor of his drug addiction and the suffering is linked to the narrator’s daughter loss of Grace. The story opens with the narrator feeling ice in his veins when he read about Sonny’s arrest for possession of heroin. The two brothers are able to patch things up and knowing that his younger brother has an addiction.
The victims of the crack crisis of 30 years ago were mostly people of color and the victims of the opioid crisis today are mostly Caucasian (Keller). While the approach to the crack cocaine crisis of 30 years ago was to criminalize and jail the people suffering from an addiction through the mandatory minimums, the approach towards the opioid crisis is to take a public health response. There is a clear racial bias that is being shown as stated by the article: “For the first time the, the rate of opioid related over dose deaths among non-Hispanic white Americans is comparable to the rate of cocaine-related overdose deaths among African Americans” (Keller). This racial inequality in regard to the way we approach people with a drug addiction seems like it will continue to be a problem considering that our current attorney general wants to continue to rage war on street drugs like cocaine and marijuana while the president declares the opioid crisis to be “a national emergency”
The reason with the old ways do not work, Alexander say, is because “self-destructive drug users are responding in a tragic, but understandable way” (226). It is not their drug- problem that caused the dislocation, but the dislocation that cause the drug problem. He uses the term dislocation to describe the lack of integration with “family, community, society and spiritual values” (226). Alexander goes on to explain that history proves that inability to achieve health opportunities can take on the form of violence, and damaging drug use. Therefore, the “drug problem” (226) is not the problem. The problem is more the “pattern of response to prolong dislocation” (226). Alexander supports this by explaining the reason for the dislocation as being globalized by a society that is market driven which can only be established by the displacement of tradition, economy, and relationships. This has been seen in history before in England during the 19TH century, when “a brutal, export-oriented manufacturing system” was accompanied by work...
Dr. Carl Hart had a very rocky childhood and through his own determination to not repeat the past has gotten to where he is now in life. He comes from a broken family plagued by domestic violence, divorce, and a lack of support while he was growing up. Dr. Hart’s views on; social support, addiction and the physiological effects on the brain, factors to take into account when assessing drug abusers, drug policies influencing discrimination, and decriminalizing drug use are well articulated through his book High Life; in which enabled the audience to have raw reactions to his personal views.
In 1971 on June 17, President Richard Nixon delivered a special message to the Congress on drug abuse prevention and control. During the presentation, Nixon made it clear that the United States was at war with this idea of drug abuse. What baffled Americans then, and still baffles Americans today, is that we are at war with our own nation with drugs; it is not some foreign affair like the media tends to focus on with Mexico. Nixon stated that at the time of his speech, what was implemented to control drug abuse was not working…“The problem has assumed the dimensions of a national emergency. I intend to take every step necessary to deal with this emergency, including asking the Congress for an amendment to my 1972 budget to provide an additional $155 million to carry out these steps. This will provide a total of $371 million for programs to control drug abuse in America.”(Wolleey and Peters) Since the publicizing of the term “War on Drugs” in 1971, it has been used by many political candidates in elections over the years. In the movie, it was stated, “ every war begins with propaganda …[and] the war on drugs has never been actually on drugs… [Additionally] drug laws are shaped less by scientific facts, but more by political [reasoning].” (Jarecki) The movie, The House I Live In, directly relates to certain themes and terminology that were discussed in Martin and Nakayama’s Intercultural Communication in Contexts book, that have been used in class. Through the analyzing and comparing of The House I Live In and Intercultural Communication in Contexts an individual can begin to localize the ideals behind this everlasting war on drugs; some ideals focus on terms from the text like ethnocentrism, diversity training, and culture while ...