...2011 The loss of my mother was devastating and tragic. In 1998, my mother suffered from a brain aneurism that burst. I was 17 yrs old, and lost my best friend. Mom was strong willed and humorous. She finished college on the deans list, and raised four children by her self. She was the matriarch of my family, She was a great woman who cared for humanity. Sadly she also suffered the disease of addiction. Unfortunately that series of events left my poor mother in a nursing home not able to care for her self. Physically she is here, mentally she is not. The loss of my mom brought broken hearts, lost souls and God willing the dawn of a new day. My experience with addiction is that is can be life threatening. In my family alone, I have lost two aunt’s and a mother due to addiction. Before it took their lives, it changed their whole perspective on life. For example, my mother was always loving and compassionate. As an addict she was mean and hateful. The disease of addiction can and will take everything from you and your family. I lost the person who taught me how to be strong and proud no matter what the situation. My mother was an honorable woman and I suffered a dear loss. Addiction is fatal. There are many effects to the person who is an addict. Relationships with family and friends will be damaged. Families become disappointed and distressed due to a family member who is an addict. From my experience, it is very stressful to worry all the time if my loved one is alright...
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...How a Drug Addict Changed My Life How a Drug Addict Changed My Life Elizabeth Miller ENC 1101-1002 Professor Bahle November 10, 2012 How a Drug Addict Changed My Life Growing up, we always had people living with us that were in different stages of recovery. Some were drug users, some were drinkers and some were both. My step-dad had about 6 years of sobriety under his belt when the first person stayed with us. His name was Jerome, and he had stumbled into the street in down town Seattle and had been hit by a metro bus years before. He had problems from that and also epilepsy. He was with us until he could get into a full time care center. We moved shortly after that, into a home that had 2 spare bedrooms. We would have people stay with us for a few days off and on, until Greg and Stephanie showed up. They were the first two in the new house to move in. Stephanie was almost killed in a car accident she got into driving drunk, so she was recovering from that and drying out from alcohol. Greg was a different than anyone else I had ever met and I’d like to share his story. This is how he changed my life. Driving down our street, I noticed extra cars parked around our house. This wasn’t unusual; my parents hosted a recovering addict’s Bible study at our home every Thursday night. The members of our group became family, and we almost always had someone over for dinner. This Friday evening seemed to be no exception. I parked and gathered my things...
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...Title (Video Documentation):NONE but my Reflection will be about Drug abuse that was Prevelant in the country | REED 144 / INDIVIDUAL THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION Steps 1 & 2: Main Insights/Learnings | Significant Social Teachings of the Church | Reflections | * [What 3 main insights or realizations you had from your prelim project? Or, what 3 relevant learnings you gained? * One statement (or sentence) for each insight] | * [Based from your insights or learnings, look for related statements from any of the social teachings of the Church to base or anchor your reflections. * One (or two) social teaching for each insight * Use the internet for this [just type the keyword you are researching, plus, social teachings of the Church]] | * [This is the body of your theological reflection. This is where you consolidate your insight (column 1) and its corresponding social teaching of the Church (column 2) as support idea. * Be free to express your thoughts here. * You write at least 5 sentences (or more) for each insight. * Remember: COPYING and PASTING reflections from the internet is PLAGIARISM!] | Example. “Whoever you are in the society; rich or poor, leader or subordinate; in the eyes of God you are important.” | Example. “Human persons are willed by God; they are imprinted with God's image. Their dignity does not come from the work they do, but from the persons they are.” Centesimus Annus, #11 | | Insight #1. Drug addicts are people that need the help of their...
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...Anonymous This paper is written as a personal experience. Someone very close to me was a drug addict. No matter how I begged, pleaded, or threatened, drugs remained the primary driving force in this person life. I was on an emotional rollercoaster and I desperately wanted off. I had come to realize that until that person wanted help nothing could be done. I finally got the strength to leave. I felt guilty because I left without telling the person I was gone. Everyone worries about the addict, but what about the other people involved in the addict’s life. After agonizing for several months, I finally asked for help. I found and joined the local Nar-anon group and it changed my life. Many people are familiar with Al-Anon, but few people even know or have heard about Nar-Anon. According to Nar- Anon, “the program is designed for those who know or have known a feeling of desperation due to the addiction problem of someone close to them” (2011). I become interested in the meeting and decided to attend. It was very hard at first to find out any information about the group, since I came from a small town. I found churches and different organizations that offered AA, NA, and Al-Anon meetings. I finally contacted the local newspaper and they pointed me in the right direction. I was surprised that finding the group would be so difficult, because there were many known drug addicts in my area. I had to travel across town to attend a meeting. I was nervous when I attended the...
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...Problem Solving: Drug Addiction Virginia Stelwagen PHL/458 June 25, 2012 Trisha McAloon Creative Process The following stages of the creative process have been defined by Ruggiero (2009) as follows: The first stage of the creative process represents the habit of searching for challenges, not at one specific time, but constantly. Its importance is reflected in the fact that can be creative only in response to challenges that you perceive. The second stage: expressing the problem or issue, the objective in this stage is to find the best expression of the problem or issue, the one that will yield the most helpful ideas. The third stage: investigating the problem or issue, the objective of this stage is to obtain the information necessary to deal effectively with the problem or issue. In some cases, this will mean merely searching your past experience and observation for appropriate material and bringing it to bear on the current problem. In others, it will mean obtaining new information through fresh experience and observation, interviews with knowledgeable people, or your own research. The fourth stage: producing ideas, the objective in this stage is to generate enough ideas to decide what action to take or what belief to embrace. Two obstacles are common in this stage. The first is the often unconscious tendency to limit your ideas to common, familiar,...
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...My life without drugs We all know the temptation of eating the last bit of ice cream left in the bin because it would be a waste to throw it out now, staying up just one more hour to watch our favorite show because how much does an hour sleep matter? Then the temptation of taking the last two shots for the night because you just hope you will not feel that bad the next day. Or how about the desperate temptation of injecting heroin to ease the feeling of utter sadness? In the commentary, My life without drugs, by Russell Brand, we hear about the everyday struggles of being a former addict, and how the treatment of addicts should be changed. Even though Brand has not been taking drugs for 10 years, he still suffers from the effect of being a former addict, which is why he wants to do more about helping other addicts and ease the troubles of resisting the temptation. This first of involves people who have had their own experiences with drugs helping others dealing with drugs. This is why Brand starts off by introducing the reader to an event where he recalls a moment where he nearly took heroin, which gives an insight to the life of a former addict. The language used in the beginning of the text is written in a somewhat complicated aspect with a focus on formal wordings: “... as an external conduit for the surging melancholy, and as I wound my way through the neurotic Hollywood hills, the narrow lanes and tight bends were a material echo of the synaptic tangle…” This...
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...pain in the lives of the addict. Addiction is defined as the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma. My question is what happens to the family when addiction becomes a part of it? The problem with addiction is that it is a family disease it does not just affect the addict but also the loved ones around them, whether it is family or friends. Families, when addiction is present are often painful to live in, which is why those who live among addicts may become traumatized to varies degrees by their experience. emotional, psychological and behavioral patterns are all too often characterize by the addicted family system. Living with addiction will put family members under unusual stress. Normal routines are continually being broken by unexpected or even frightening kinds of experiences that are part of living with drug use. What the addict says often won’t match up with what family members feel or see right in front of them. The drug user as well as family members usually bend, manipulate or deny reality in their attempt to maintain a family order that they want to believe is really there. The entire family dynamic becomes engulfed by a problem that spinning out of control. Little things that bother someone will become big, and the bigger problems are often swept under the rug. When alcohol and drugs are brought into a family...
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...smokable form of cocaine, called crack, had been introduced to the United States just about everyone was doing it. Some did it when they were pregnant, which had effects on the child and their learning abilities. The effect on the crack epidemic in the 80s helped the youth of today, to make better choices in life concerning this addictive drug. Crack, was highly-addictive and swept through plenty areas of cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Oakland, and Miami. In the end it caused devastating effects for black and Latino Americans. As crack cocaine was becoming popular and rising epidemic, hip hop was evolving alongside it. It was in the 1980s that crack cocaine and hip hop became the two leading fundamentals of urban street culture. It is not suggested that hip hop caused the crack epidemic, or vice versa. But, it can be argued that both fed off each other, particularly hip hop off the crack culture itself. Crack cocaine quickly gained popularity among users in the 1980s due to its cheap cost, and the quick, intense high it left. Compared to freebase cocaine, which involved a complicated ritual involving Ether, crack cocaine had become simplistic and easier to manage. The drug was “made from powder cocaine, it was safer to make than freebase cocaine”. As crack and dope became parts of our neighborhoods, they started to have an impression on our culture through music and television. Epidemics are always a great time to remind America that racism still exists. For example, epidemics...
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...Four Discussion Questions Week 1 DQ 1 How does drug abuse affect the work place? Substance abuse affects the workplace in a variety of ways. Whether it be illegal narcotics, prescription drugs, or alcohol the affects are all similar. These types of substances can impair an individual’s judgment and can cause serious safety issues among other things. These are some of the problems inherent from substance abuse in the workplace: 1. More absenteeism and tardiness can be expected along with job-related accidents. 2. Businesses lose money each year because of substance abuse. 3. Employees who use drugs in the workplace are less productive than non-users. 4. Thefts rise along with damaged equipment and other unnecessary costs. 5. Non-users may have to work harder to make up for the problem employees (Dfaf, 2008). Larger corporations have a better handle on drug issues as they have established drug policies in effect and many of these corporations implement random drug tests. Smaller businesses are affected the most as they do not have established drug policies, usually do not require drug testing, and do not have the financial reserves to cover company related accidents. I have personally seen a few individuals lose their jobs because of drug abuse. One recently was an employee in his mid 20’s. Someone called and said his truck was driving erratically on the road. To make a long story short he failed the drug test. Substance abuse in the workplace...
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...about a certain topic is a personal experience and my motivation came when one of my best friends passed away from a heroin overdose. Almost exactly a year ago, this friend of mine passed away from a heroin overdose and none of his close friends or family even knew the problem had escalated so greatly. It had all started with a pill addiction to xanax that slowly grew more severe but with a few interventions and a couple of trips to rehab, most of us thought that he was doing well and had kicked the habit. Little did we know that he had kicked the xanax habit only to graduate to something as intense as heroin. The frightening thing about this drug is that my friend was a small, upper class, Jewish boy from the suburbs of St. Louis and would not typically be the image you think of when a person might think of a heroin addict. He was the furthest thing from an underprivileged, poor, inner city adult. But addict hew was, and it is still somewhat of a mystery to those who were closest to him as to how he was able to access his drugs. For every person that believes they know the true meaning of the word “addiction,” there is another person right beside them to argue a different point of view. In this day and age, one would think that doctors or scientists or psychologists would have narrowed it down to a universal description but this is not the case. There are many different aspects to understanding what makes an addict who they are, and why they do the things that they...
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...capacity of the mind. It changes the individual's life in three viewpoints which are physiological,sociological and social.Drugs could harm the cerebrum , cardiovascular system,respiratory framework and skeletal muscles. (Drug abuse,2016).Drug abuse is the compulsive use of drugs, to where the user has no effective choice but to continue. A drug addict is mistakenly being looked at as a criminal or a person lacking morals. Many people don't understand why or how other people become addicted to drugs. In fact, drug addiction is a complicated disease, and quitting usually takes more than strong will. Even if addicts want to stop taking drugs, usually their...
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...friend, relative or just another human being who is suffering, rather than just to talk about the issues. Innocent children should not be victims of child abuse. ? ______________________________________________________________________ Express Your Individuality We are all so different and unique it is a miracle we all get along as we do. May not be the best at times but hey, we are human right. Our individuality is what makes us so diverse. I give props to the people who step outside of that “norm” of following what others want you to do. So you wear clothes you shouldn’t or dress how others view as inappropriate, and the point is? The fact of the matter is it is your body; you are the ones wearing the clothes, so what if people don’t accept that, it is not the end of the world. Those who have a problem with how you look or dress probably do or did the same thing at a time in their life. We spend too much time looking at others when we should really be...
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...Love Sobriety After about forty years of beating myself up, had lost my job,marriage and my dignity. With all the drugs and drinking, finally was in my full blown addiction. Hitting my rock bottom,and was in the Internal Brotherhood Home for six months of rehab. In the Internal Brotherhood Home is where my foundation for alcoholics anonymous program started. Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience,strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others recover from alcoholism.The only requirement for the program is the desire to stop drinking, to aquire a foundation for sobriety, and to providing service for the still sick and suffering alcoholic. There is a formal part of our Alcoholics Anonymous philosophy of life is four absolutes,the twelve steps,and the twelve traditions. Our sobriety had to become number one to gain a spirituality,mental,also physical well being while working the program. Because the Absolutes are not specifically repeated in our Steps or Traditions, some of us are inclined to forget them. Yet in many old time groups where the solid spirit of our fellowship is so strongly exemplified, the Absolutes receive frequent mention. A twelve-step program is a set of guiding principles outlining a course of action for recovery from addiction, compulsion, or other behavioral problems. The Twelve Traditions of twelve-step programs provide guidelines...
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...Sarah Alba Drug and alcohol addiction is a huge problem in my family. I do not want my children to become addicts. There are ways to break the cycle. I have researched and found different ideas and better ways to help my children and to stop the cycle. When I was growing up drinking and partying was the way the adults around me lived. I thought it was normal for people to drink every day, or at least every weekend. It wasn't until I was a teenager that I noticed the way my parents lived was not the way the rest of the world lived. By then it was too late for me. At age 12 I tried marijiuana and alcohol for the first time. At age 14 I started drinking every weekend. Before I turned twenty one I was an alcoholic. When I was 19 I was drinking every day. Until I went to jail. I spent six months in bucks county correctional facility. While I was in jail I found Jesus. I got saved and really changed my way of thinking. It wasnt long until I started drinking again. I was still in denial about my drinking habit. I figured everybody drank so if I was an alcoholic than everybody was. I didn’t drink like I did when I was 19 so I thought I could control it. Later on in life I had two babies and being a mother isn’t easy. I got into some more trouble with the law. Now I am back in counseling for my drinking. I almost lost babies. In IOP (intestive out-patient) I have learned a lot about addiction and finally admit I have a problem. Now that I know about addiction...
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...There are either "support groups" like the cancer support group or individuals with social anxiety could come together in group, talk about their experiences and they will only identify themselves as a support group. The alternative to that is a therapy group led by a therapist. But, AA and NA, which seem like a valuable support group, identify themselves as a "treatment program" and a highly effective one at that. I was also wondering about the mechanism which causes the recovery or sobriety? Is it the feeling of affiliation, spiritual awakening or opening up to a group that is truly non-judgmental? In my opinion, it must be some factor related to the social support and the relationships. I came across a review article that combined the results from 24 articles which used qualitative and quantitative methods to study the factors related to effectiveness of AA. The article clearly mentioned that social support variables were the mediating factors in the AA's impact on abstinence (Groh, 2008). Other factors mentioned in the research are group dynamics, instillation of hope, vicarious learning, modeling and altruism (Yalom,...
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