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.
I found Cassie’s story very interesting. She got prescribed Vicodin after a soccer injury and she explained that it helped block the physical and emotional pain. It really stood out to me that 80% of heroin user’s start with prescription pills. These pills include Vicodin, Oxycodone, OxyContin,
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and Morphine. It just so happens that these are all being prescribed in large doses following an injury or surgery. I know after I got my wisdom teeth out the dentist prescribed me with some type of painkiller, however, my mom wouldn’t fill the prescription. Thinking about it now I can definitely understand why she didn’t, seeing as 80% of opiate addictions begin with painkiller addiction. I found it really interesting when Cassie explained that she’d do anything to get money and drugs including sleeping with people and letting others watch. A young man named Benjamin was also featured in the documentary. He explained that he wore a long sleeve shirt in the middle of summer and when his brother asked him to take it off, he didn’t know how to respond. When he was forced to take his shirt off, his brother saw his track marks all over his arms. I think it’s crazy that heroin users have to worry about people seeing track marks on their arms. To me, I never even thought about that. Ben explains that heroin and getting high is all that he thinks about. Ben thinks about it all the time and even has dreams about it. Even though he goes to detox, Ben keeps relapsing, just like all the other people featured. It makes me wonder why so many people are relapsing and why no one can stay clean. I wonder if moving out of Cape Cod would help make a difference. I thought that Ariana was going to be the one person featured in the documentary who would stay sober.
Ariana is 23 years old and talks about how she has been clean from heroin for 3 years. She began drug counseling when she was 16 years old. She would always get high after detox, but stopped using when she found out she was pregnant. I think this is great because most people don’t and continue throughout their pregnancy, which harms the baby. A month after the interview, Ariana relapsed and lost her children. She then died from an overdose. I was actually shocked when I heard the news because she seemed motivated by her children to stay sober and was confident without drugs. It’s surprising that after being clean for 3 years without urges to use heroin, she could just start and overdose once
again. Heroin USA, Cape Cod had first responders explain what heroin does to the body during an overdose. Within 30 seconds you will stop breathing and there is a very short window where you can be resuscitated. Narcan can reverse the overdose if given in time, but sometimes it’s too late. It seemed as if the people featured in the documentary kept overdosing. It’s hard to understand because I’m not an addict, but I feel that overdosing would be very scary and give me insight on why it is so important to stop. Daniel explained that he does drugs because they were fun. Additionally, he discussed his life. He said it’s the same repetitive bullshit every day, you wake up and go do drugs. Heroin is the most accessible and the most common drug in Cape Cod. Ryan explains that anyone could be a dealer. It could be your neighbor, or even a 60 year old woman. As a matter of fact, Daniel is Collie’s dealer, who was also featured in the film. Daniel drives 150 miles per night to Boston in order to meet up with his suppliers. That is just as far as it is for me to go back to my hometown and there is no way that I would drive that every day, but as it was stated, they will do anything for drugs. I think that it’s good that there is a support group for parents in Cape Cod. The parents explained that they were judgmental and believed that drug dealing/usage only happened to “bad” kids. This is a common belief that many people have today. After watching the documentary it made it clear to me that you can’t always see heroin abuse coming. Most people don’t successfully get clean because they end up dying. I was sad that Marissa, who talked throughout the film ended up dying of an overdose. She made it clear that she was ashamed of her actions and that it was time to change. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to overcome her addiction.
About 435,000 Americans regularly use heroin, a large increase in the last decade. 28,000 deaths a year are attributed to opiate overdoses, 2,590 of which occur in Ohio. This causes an increase of children in government custody, law enforcement officers carrying naloxone, and overflow in treatment centers. Drug traffickers choose Ohio to avoid violence involved with drug trade in large cities. Clinics over-prescribed very addictive painkillers, but once law enforcement cracked down they became very expensive, giving the cheap drug heroin an advantage. Adam Conkey was prescribed with pain pills twenty years ago, which started him on the road to heroin. Conkey and his girlfriend, Natasha
She explained how she relapsed after being 3 months clean. Since the relapse in 2015 to 2016 she became clean again in August of 2016 with the help of her fiancé and her family. Since she took responsibility for her actions and explained that she does have a problem. I believe that is the first step to recovery. She was very adamant about how she does do wrong and then she had a plan to do what was right in her life for herself and not for anyone else. It may seem selfish, but that is the only way to control an addiction within one’s self, in my opinion. Accepting what is wrong and willing to deal with it is a start and having a great support system will help tremendously. The State Board of Nursing should allow her a second chance to prove that she can overcome and control her addiction while preforming the career she worked hard to achieve. The board should place a strict probation, and tasks that she can perform should be evaluated periodically. In the Nurse Practice Act it states, “Use or unlawful possession of any controlled substance, as defined in chapter 195, or alcoholic beverage to an extent that such use impairs a person 's ability to perform the work of any profession licensed or regulated by sections 335.011 to 335.096 (pg.
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,
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
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.”
Almost one hundred years ago, prescription drugs like morphine were available at almost any general store. Women carried bottles of very addictive potent opiate based pain killers in their purse. Many individuals like Edgar Allen Poe died from such addictions. Since that time through various federal, state and local laws, drugs like morphine are now prescription drugs; however, this has not stopped the addiction to opiate based pain killers. Today’s society combats an ever increasing number of very deadly addictive drugs from designer drugs to narcotics to the less potent but equally destructive alcohol and marijuana. With all of these new and old drugs going in and out of vogue with addicts, it appears that the increase of misuse and abuse is founded greater in the prescription opiate based painkillers.
Addiction is one of the hardest difficulties to overcome, yet people often find themselves caught in the world wind of addiction. We all ask the question to what makes a person an addict, or why is it so hard for drug addicts to overcome this problem. However, can we say that getting a hold of drugs is much easier in today’s society, or is it made available to easily. 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 into the life of four people who rob drugstores in order to support
Every year, 2.6 million people in the United States suffer from opioid abuse and of that 2.6 million, 276,000 are adolescents, and this problem is only escalating. An individual’s physical and emotional health suffers as well as their personal lives as they lose employment, friends, family, and hope. Opioid addiction begins with the addictive aspects of the drug. People easily become hooked on the relieving effects of the opioids and suffer withdrawal symptoms if they stop using the drug completely because their nerve cells become accustomed to the drug and have difficulty functioning without it; yet the addiction to the drug is only one aspect of the complex problem. The stigma about opioid addiction has wide-reaching negative effects as it discourages people with opioid abuse problems from reaching out.
Karissa works for her drugs, however she has been always supported indirectly or directly by her family. For instance, the mother gives her monety every week in advance, the aunt usually is taking care of her addiction to tobacco. The father and stepfather gives Karissa money for anything that she may need. This issue create a new dilemma about Karissa been a functional addict. In other words the family is helping her to support her addiction. At this point, Karissa was addicted to heroin. At the same time, Karissa was buying benzodiazepines and she mixed them with heroin to reach a bigger and longer high. As per the National Institute of health “Mixing Benzodiazepines with heroin can cause respiratory failure”. Further, Karissa uses Suboxone which is an opioid medication used to treat narcotic addiction. Heroin is an expensive addiction or at least the the type of heroin that Karissa was using is expensive. Karissa was spending close to $1400 a week in heroin. It was not clear how she exactly got the money to satisfy her addiction, but she was able to handle it. For instance, Karissa got her prescription from her Doctor for Suboxone. However, Karissa almost immediately sells the Suboxone for $480 which is good for 10 bags of heroin. During the interview, Karissa stated that she needs a least 30 to 32 bags of heroin and at least 20 mg of benzodiazepines to get the ultimate high. After Karissa shoots all those bags she can barely walk or breath. She can barely verbalize what she is speaking. As mention before Karissa lives with her brother and he is the only one who is able to help her if she overdose to the point that the brother has a Narcan kit pack which is a medication used to reverse the effect of opioids during an overdose episode. At the time that Karissa has to get to work she needs to shoot 10 bags to function normally. There was any history of drug or alcohol abuse in the family. There was any psychiatric,
Almost everybody on Long Island, and probably all around the world, has been prescribed a drug by a doctor before— whether it was to knock out a nasty virus, or relieve pain post injury or surgery. However, what many people don’t realize is that these drugs can have highly addictive qualities, and more and more people are becoming hooked, specifically teenagers. But when does harmlessly taking a prescription drug to alleviate pain take the turn into the downward spiral of abuse? The answer to that question would be when the user begins taking the drug for the “high” or good feelings brought along with it—certainly not what it was prescribed for (1). The amount of teens that abuse prescription medications has been rapidly increasing in recent
Heroin was originally synthesized in 1874 by a man named C.R Alder Wright. Created as a solution to opium, a drug that had plagued many American households. It was originally produced for medical purposes evidently becoming highly addictive. Heroin “... was originally marketed as a non-addictive substance” (“History of Addiction”) which inevitably increased its popularity. It became especially popular in places of poverty. Heroin became a solution to struggle. So common it was almost as if heroin was a prescribed medicine for hardship. Known as “[a] treatment of many illnesses and pain” (“A brief history of addiction”) but later revealed that it caused more harm than good. Being so easily accessible it became immensely common among musicians.
The addiction cycle can be scary to witness, but people that have addiction problems should always know that someone is there to help, whether it is friends, parents, or even random strangers we are all here to support those in need. Most importantly, if we encounter someone with a serious addiction, it is highly recommended that people try to find professionals who can take care of the situation. As for Angie Bachmann, she had a gambling problem that she never took care of which resulted into losing most of her assets and the trust of her nearest and dearests.
Addiction to drugs is very common in most music artist today. Society stresses the need for better music to vibe to, so music artists turn to an easier way to deal with it. It has damaged many music artists over the years and hasn’t gotten any better today. Most artists are faced with developing a bad addiction problem. Those who admit they have an addiction problem, seeks help and continues the rest of their musical career. As for the artists who do not choose the rehab rout, is faced with ruining their entire career and possibly their life.
Later on in her career, in 2007 she received two DUI’s, one ending in an accident. She has had been admitted to rehab on three separate occasions. The first time she was admitted to Promises in Malibu for addiction to alcohol and multiple illicit drugs including, OxyContin, a very potent painkiller, and cocaine. She stayed there for 45 days after completing her program. According to Meaghan Murphy (2007) article on FoxNews.com, after her first time in rehab, it was promising that she would no longer abuse and use narcotics, she had no intentions of using drugs, but the people she was around were using them. One of her friends stated that Lindsay “Does drugs because she is bored.” She often has depressing thoughts because of her lose of multiple friends to drug overdose.
It has been discovered that most people who struggle with drug addiction began experimenting with drugs in their teens. Teenage drug abuse is one of the largest problems in society today and the problem grows and larger every year. Drugs are a pervasive force in our culture today. To expect kids not to be influenced by the culture of their time is as unrealistic as believing in the tooth fairy (Bauman 140). Teens may feel pressured by their friends to try drugs, they may have easy access to drugs, they may use drugs to rebel against their family or society, or they may take an illegal drug because they are curious about it or the pleasure that it gives them.