Flood: The Overdose Epidemic in Canada? “Flood: The Overdose Epidemic in Canada” is a well designed documentary that sheds light on the brutal impact of drug abuse and the now overdose epidemic taking over Canada. The overall impact addiction can have on one's life is scary and real. What is more scary is the access and areas allowing the epidemic to continue. Sadly, this one documentary addressing the overdose epidemic in Canada is just one part of the world struggling with this incident. The documentary starts with a brief overview of the living conditions most addicts and struggling people live in Sudbury, Canada. With the chaos of the world, many women & men struggling find peace in shelters that provide care for the homeless. According …show more content…
Throughout this documentary, individuals with their own addictions and struggles explain what it is that as people, we can do to help. The real issue lies not only within actual addiction, but the fatal deaths that surround “safe” drugs. Many aspects of Psychology can be seen throughout this documentary, but some specific examples include the Attachment Theory and Erikson's Psychosocial Stages. According to John Bowlby's attachment theory, early interpersonal ties with caregivers shape social and emotional performance in later life. The documentary explores early traumas like neglect, abuse, and inconsistent caregiving, as well as how insecure attachment styles can develop as a risk factor for substance abuse when people try to deal with emotional distress. According to Erik Erikson's psychosocial theory, humans progress through many periods of their lives, each defined by an individual psychosocial crisis. The documentary allows viewers to see how people with various stages of development (adolescents, students) handle crises of identity and role uncertainty, or intimacy and isolation, in the context of substance misuse. Within the documentary, it can be a subjective but important point that certain demographic groups can be impacted
The book I chose to read for this assignment is called “Stay Close: A Mother’s Story of Her Son’s Addiction”. The target audience can be parents, adolescents, recovering addicts, college students and mental health professionals.
Seeing drug addicts and homeless people is not something new for me. I know that the homeless and the drug user have a story and a reason for why they are living the life that they do. I am aware of withdrawal and I am aware of the urgency of addiction. Nonetheless, this ethnography showed me that sometimes it’s not addiction because they love it but because they physically cannot stop. This also showed me that these people are not docile; they can function and know how to get what they need to survive. However, I do wonder if their want for normalcy ever outweighs their need for drugs.
Dr. Hart argues that social support systems shape how a person deals with their addiction. He brings in the story
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.”
Even though they may want to other factors are usually at play. It takes a team in this instant to work through and accomplish the goal of sobriety. This novel has aided me in understanding the world of an addict better. It gave the insight that only a person in the addiction can give you. It helped me to see that whatever the driving force is in an addict, it can sometimes consume you. Some people can fight the urge to use, while others give in to the temptation. The most important task in addiction is to surround yourself with positive people and positive activity. Correspondingly, loss or drastic change should always be handled with caution. The divorce of his parents and going between his dad and mom’s house was upsetting. Nic not feeling like a part of his dad’s new family was depressing
From interviewing celebrities such as actress Kristen Johnston and politician Bill White, the film identified substance abuse can happen to anyone. I found more sympathy to those once I learned the facts, not opinions, of substance abuse users. It was interesting to find how the physiology of ones’ brain may change over time, thus proving it is not always a person’s free will of choice to use. People of addiction are like anyone else who may have fallen down the wrong path. Some who have found substance abuse for coping, did not realize they were becoming addicts. Others have found the media and advertisement placing pressure on them because it looks entertaining and fun. With limited outreach programs, it is crucial to increase the awareness among young groups for prevention. With fear of being judged, the stigma and health disparities of addiction cause many to not seek help. Equal opportunity should be available to everyone. As a future nurse, I find an important role for me is to lead in educating and being opened minded to the struggles of each one of my patients. My job is to refrain from stereotyping and being an advocate. As healthcare is always evolving to provide the most adequate care, I look forward towards the future as more people are educating and trying to eliminate those struggling through addiction
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...
David Sheff’s memoir, Beautiful Boy, revolves around addiction, the people affected by addiction, and the results of addiction. When we think of the word addiction, we usually associate it with drugs or alcohol. By definition, addiction is an unusually great interest in something or a need to do or have something (“Addiction”). All throughout the memoir, we are forced to decide if David Sheff is a worried father who is fearful that his son, Nic Sheff’s, addiction will kill him or if he is addicted to his son’s addiction. Although many parents would be worried that their son is an addict, David Sheff goes above and beyond to become involved in his son’s life and relationship with methamphetamine, making him an addict to his son’s addiction.
Opioid overdose is currently the most common cause of accidental death in Canada and the U.S. The opioid crisis is having a devastating effect on communities across Canada, taking its toll on opioid users as well as their friends and families.
possible but will not go too far out of his way to do so. For example,
The author uses his knowledge of the human brain to emphasize the importance of “Endorphins” when growing up and how the lack of the chemicals “in infancy and early childhood,[creates a greater need] for external sources” (289) such as drugs. Along with his scientific evidence, Mate also uses many of his patients traumatic childhood experiences such as having “dishwashing liquid poured down his throat . . . and was tied to a chair in a dark room to control to his hyperactivity” (289). These patients help create an image for the readers to be able to understand the feelings and the pain addict 's often face in their childhood, that leaves them feeling abandoned and neglected from the rest of the world. Mate even analysis the fact that addict 's can come from home where there is no abuse and the parents try their best to provide a loving and nurturing home. The problem in families like this is often a parent is the one who faced traumatic experience as a child and are not able to transmit the proper love to their child, because they lack the feeling themselves. The author uses the strategy of looking at both the child and the parent experiences to show that the root problem originates from the same outcome, wanting to feel “unconditionally [loved and be] fully accepted even when most ornery”
Bruce K. Alexander’s essay “reframing Canada’s drug problem is about how the focus needs to be shifting from intervention to prevention
Some people argue that the drug users aren’t the heroin victims. One writer notes, 'The parents of the user who steals from them, abuses them, physically, emotionally and mentally, the siblings who suffer the loss of care and love but who also get abused and used by the user, the kids of the user who learn that the parent's desire for smack is greater than the desire to be a parent,' are the real heroin victims (Fitzgerald, 2000). This problem therefore effects not only the user but the society living around them as well.
Substance disorders affects all social, educational, cultural, and age groups. Substance abuse research often focusses on the abuser and the family as a whole but not how it affects their spouse. United States misuse is linked to approximately 590,000 deaths and is responsible for injury or illness to almost 40 million individuals every year. (Cox, R., Ketner, J. & Blow, A. 2013). The consequences resulted from this disorder, are not only related to the substance abusers, but also have a great influence on their behavior and other layers of their life, especially their wives (Salehyan, Bigdeli, & Hashemian 2011). When the husband or boyfriend has an addiction the wife takes on responsibilities of her spouse which causes an increase in stress. Marriage is generally described as a protective factor against substance use. The concept of codependency was developed to explain what happens to the spouse of a substance abuser.
The rate of death due to prescription drug abuse in the U.S. has escalated 313 percent over the past decade. According to the Congressional Quarterly Transcription’s article "Rep. Joe Pitt Holds a Hearing on Prescription Drug Abuse," opioid prescription drugs were involved in 16,650 overdose-caused deaths in 2010, accounting for more deaths than from overdoses of heroin and cocaine. Prescribed drugs or painkillers sometimes "condemn a patient to lifelong addiction," according to Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This problem not only affects the lives of those who overdose but it affects the communities as well due to the convenience of being able to find these items in drug stores and such. Not to mention the fact that the doctors who prescribe these opioids often tend to misuse them as well. Abusing these prescribed drugs can “destroy dreams and abort great destinies," and end the possibility of the abuser to have a positive impact in the community.