Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
History and epidemiology of heroin
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: History and epidemiology of heroin
Title: Current Event Analysis # 7
William Wilson IV-2nd Block-12/27/2015
Vietnam, heroin and the lesson of disrupting any addiction
Author: Dr. Sanjay Gupta
News Source: CNN (http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/21/health/vietnam-heroin-disrupting-addiction/index.html)
Date of News Story Publication: Wednesday, December 22, 2015
1. American soldiers that is addicted to heroin
2. American soldier’s addiction to heroin
3. Vietnam
4. December 22, 2015
5. This story is important because it exposes how heroin has become an epidemic in America.
6. The impact is very extreme because there are people who are not aware of the drugs in communities and how it has an effect on families.
7. Text to World Connection: The war contributed to veteran soldiers and drugs. Once they return home they have to readapt to another life that they are not used too. Research tested American soldiers in Vietnam for heroin addiction, the results revealed that 40 percent of servicemen had tried heroin and nearly 20 percent were addicted.
…show more content…
8.
Vietnam heroin and the lesson. 1971, 15% of the Americans soldiers in Vietnam were heroin addict. Operation Golden Flow kept them in Vietnam until they have been detoxed. The numbers of relapses among those soldiers was much lower than the average population.
9. Fact: American soldiers in Vietnam would not be permitted to board a plane home until they passed a urine drug test. Fact: Operation Golden Flow was born to help with the addiction of heroin. Opinion: President Nixon promised to end the war and solve domestic crime rates. Opinion: The dopamine surge is more rapid and longer
lasting. 10. I think that they need to stop sending Americans and band it in Vietnam. 11. My conclusion is that they will figure out how to stop being addicted. 12. I realize that drug addiction is seriously an issue that a lot of people deal with. I think that when a person goes in the army they may choose to use drugs because of the things they have done or saw fellow soldiers do. I was surprised to learn the actual effects of heroin on the brain. I am not sure how I would feel if a family member was on heroin or how to react. 13. My question is did keeping the Americans in Vietnam really detox them? 14. I like that they gave me information on how addictive heroin is. I didn’t like that they didn’t provide soldier’s with other methods of trying to get off of heroin.
This suffering wasn't recognised at first so many veterans might have turned to alcohol and tobacco as coping mechanisms
An estimation of about 2.6 million men served in the Vietnam war, but only a several hundred thousand of them came home. While some soldiers who returned were successful with the transition of returning back to the civilian life, many others did not. In John Prine’s anti war song, “Sam Stone”, he sings about the life of a man who goes home to his family and gets addicted to drugs.
This made it easy for the government to ignore the growing cases of PTSD among Vietnam veterans. It would have benefited veterans to have a support group of other Vietnam Veterans where they could talk to others about their experiences in an understanding environment. The lack of understanding from society leads to veterans not talking about their experiences and keeping their troubles to themselves. The way soldiers return home is another factor in the high cases of PTSD.
Chasing Heroin is a two-hour documentary that investigates America’s heroin crisis. The documentary details the opioid epidemic and how police offers, social workers, and public defenders are working to save the lives of addicts. The documentary explores the origins and continuing causes behind the heroin epidemic such as; massive increases in opioid painkillers starting at the turn of the century, Mexican drug cartels who are now rooted in upper-middle-class neighborhoods, and the cheap price of heroin when compared to prescription pain killers. A program in Seattle called LEAD is explored. This program channels addicts into a system that points them toward help (rehab, temporary housing, counseling, methadone treatment) instead of prison
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
From the early 1950’s to early 1970’s during U.S. military involvement in Laos, Indochina, opium and heroin were flown by “Air America” into many countries, including Vietnam. As a result of CIA’s drug smuggling, Southeast Asia became the source of 70% of the world’s opium and heroin. South Vietnam was completely corrupted by a heroin trade that came from Laos, thanks to the CIA. The Hmong culture in Laos provided 30,000 men for the CIA's secret Laotian army. But in the process, opium production took over Hmong culture. To support the Hmong economy, the CIA's “Air America” transported raw opium out of the Laotian hills to the labs. By mid-1971, Army medical officers estimated that fifteen percent of American GIs were addicted (Stich 142).
The impact of the Vietnam War upon the soldiers who fought there was huge. The experience forever changed how they would think and act for the rest of their lives. One of the main reasons for this was there was little to no understanding by the soldiers as to why they were fighting this war. They felt they were killing innocent people, farmers, poor hard working people, women, and children were among their victims. Many of the returning soldiers could not fall back in to their old life styles. First they felt guilt for surviving many of their brothers in arms. Second they were haunted by the atrocities of war. Some soldiers could not go back to the mental state of peacetime. Then there were soldiers Tim O’Brien meant while in the war that he wrote the book “The Things They Carried,” that showed how important the role of story telling was to soldiers. The role of stories was important because it gave them an outlet and that outlet was needed both inside and outside the war in order to keep their metal state in check.
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.
Imagine living in despair after coming back home, dismayed from a war that got no appreciation. Robert Kroger once said in his quote, “The brave men and women, who serve their country and as a result, live constantly with the war inside them, exist in a world of chaos. But the turmoil they experience isn’t who they are, the PTSD invades their minds and bodies.” Eleven percent of Vietnam Veterans still suffer with symptoms of the terrifying disorder of PTSD (Handwerk). Vietnam Veterans struggle with the physiological effects of PTSD after war, which leads to despair and many deaths.
The war on drugs in our culture is a continuous action that is swiftly lessening our society. This has been going on for roughly 10-15 years and has yet to slow down in any way. Drugs continue to be a problem for the obvious reason that certain people abuse them in a way that can lead to ultimate harm on such a person. These drugs do not just consist of street drugs (marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy), but prescription medications as well. Although there are some instances where drugs are being used by subjects excessively, there has been medical research to prove that some of these drugs have made a successful impact on certain disorders and diseases.
This temperance movement culminated in the prohibition of alcohol from 1920 to 1933. Recreational drug use, particularly heroin, became more prevalent among the urban poor during the early?60s. Because of the high cost of heroin and its uncertain purity, its use was associated with crime and frequent overdoses. A drug subculture involving the use of marijuana and other hallucinogenic drugs began to emerge in mainstream American society in the late?60s and was loosely associated with an overall atmosphere of political protest concerning the Vietnam War and civil rights. Drug use, including heroin use, was prevalent among soldiers during the Vietnam War and many of them returned addicted.
As described in novel The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference the course of any trend, movement, social behavior, and even the spread of a virus has a general trend line that in essence resemble a parabola with 3 main critical points. Any trend line first starts from zero, grows until it crosses the first tipping point, and then spreads like wildfire. Afterwards, the trend skyrockets to its carrying capacity (Galdwell, 2000). Then the trend gradually declines before it reaches the next tipping and suddenly falls out of favor and out of memory. Gladwell defines tipping points as the “magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire” (Gladwell, 2000).
Drug abuse has changed over the years due to the trends that Americans face from the encouragement of different cultures. The abuse of substances creates many health problems. The following will discuss the past and current trends of drug use and the effects these drugs have on the health of the individuals who abuse the drugs.
Our soldiers not only risked life and limb for our country while serving in the Vietnam War, but they continue to suffer immensely. Americans as well as Vietnamese troops and civilians suffered great losses when it comes to casualties. Witnessing first-hand the pain and death of strangers and allies, isn’t something one is likely to forget. Post-Traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been one of the many repercussions of witnessing these gruesome events (Mental Health America). Veterans, their families, and the government have come together in combat in attempts to address the detrimental effects of PTSD.
Contradictory to popular belief, teens are not of the majority of drug related deaths. Teenagers made up just two percent of drug related deaths in a 1994 survey of coroners. Many of these numbers are down dramatically from the 1970s, when illegal drugs were more available throughout the United States. Half of drug overdoses and suicides nationwide are men age thirty-five to fifty-four. Possible reasons for the dramatic difference between teenage drug deaths and middle-aged drug deaths are mid-life depression prior to drug use, more time to build as worsening habit, and the fact that most young people are primarily experimenting with drugs and not using them on a full time basis. Interestingly enough, Vietnam veterans had a higher level of drug-abuse fatalities than the rest of the population, probably due to their exposure to drugs derived from opium and the use of drugs to avoid flashbacks. Suicide rates among female drug users are higher t...