For my project, I chose to write about the opioid epidemic that America is currently facing. I structured my paper to be somewhat of a research paper, however, in order to make it a more personal essay, I weaved in some personal stories pertaining to heroin throughout the paper. I thought that doing so was important because it made my essay more personable and easier for my audience to read. My essay reflects what I learned in this class because the biggest thing that I pulled from the semester is that an essay can be, and in most cases should be, personal. This contradicts what I was taught all throughout high school, so this is my first real attempt at applying the personal aspect to my essay. One author that I looked to for guidance in writing my essay is John D’Agata, who co wrote the book, The Lifespan of a Fact. In his belief, the most important part of writing is making it more a story, that way it is easier to connect with readers, and makes it more of a literary experience for the readers. I took what he said in interviews and applied it by including my personal stories in my essay. By doing this, this makes my essay somewhat of a story so that it appeals to more readers, and is not just a straight research paper. Another author that I turned to for guidance would have to Susanna Kaysen, who wrote the novel, Girl, Interrupted. Her novel was a collection of short stories, that did not necessarily have any relationship to each other, which is what I was trying to go for when writing my personal stories into my research paper. In my essay, I used the documentary aspect of my essay, by presenting information in a factual manner, with the intent of educating my readers. I also used nonlinearity in my short stories, by not putting my stories in any particular order, and having them broken up by my research paragraphs. A place where I think my article would be best published would be in some form of health journal, because it pertains to a health problem, addiction. I think if they were to revise one thing about my essay, they would want to add a little more information, and take out a little of the personal aspects of my essay.
A Comment on the Opioid Crisis
Drug use and drug addiction has been a problem in America for as long as we can remember. Drugs claim the lives of users every day, and over the years, there has been a significant increase in drug use and the number of people dying as a result of drug use. One drug class that is to blame for the increase in drug overdoses is the opioid drug class. Opioids are a highly addictive class of drugs, and they can be found in forms of legal and illegal drugs. Unfortunately, opioids are not an unfamiliar drug to me. I have never personally used illegal opioids, however, I come from a place where illegal opioids are everywhere, and I have indulged in legal opioids, obtained by a prescription from a doctor. Just because types of opioids can be obtained legally does not make them any less dangerous. Opioid drug use has been a problem in America for a very long time, and is currently on the rise, claiming more and more lives every year.
It is important to understand what exactly opioids are before preaching about not using the drug. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, opioids are defined as being a class of drugs made up by, illegal opioids, synthetic opioids, and prescription pain relievers. Drugs that are a part of the opioid drug class include heroin, fentanyl, oxycodone, morphine, and the list goes on. Opioids come from opium, which is found in poppy flower plants. The opioid that everyone always hears about is heroin, because it is illegal, extremely addictive, and unfortunately, it is widely used across America.
Living in New Jersey, heroin is something that is familiar to everyone, even if you have never actually used the drug. Governor Chris Christie is open about his view on the opioid epidemic in New Jersey, speaking out in interviews, as well as doing commercials speaking about it. The town that I live in is a small town with three traffic lights and was named in the top five safest towns in the country (100 Safest Cities in America). Despite living in a small, safe town, there is still a prominent existence and use of heroin, as well as prescription drug abuse. I started getting the lectures from my parents, specifically my dad, when I entered high school. He would urge me to never go near heroin, telling me about how it destroys your life; he would tell me that if he ever found out I was using it, he would kick me out out of the house. The consistent lectures from my dad made me fear the drug. He would tell me of all the negative things that heroin did to your body. He would tell me how you would get extremely sick and throw up after using heroin for the first time, and how some people would even “shit themselves” after using for the first time. This was enough to keep my dad from ever using the drug in his fifty years of life, and it was definitely enough to keep me from ever using heroin.
Before heroin was created, opium was a popular drug to use. Opium started to make an appearance in America in the 1800’s after Chinese immigrants came to America to work on the railroads. As opium was making its presence known in America, alcohol was also becoming more popular, leading to an increase in alcoholism and alcohol dependency. According to an article on the history of heroin, “Alcoholism was one of the major sources of violence and death during this period. Eventually, however, opium was promoted as a cure for alcoholism by the late 1800’s” (History of Heroin). From opium, morphine was created to be used as a strong painkiller, used in medical settings to treat severe pain stemming from medical procedures and traumatic injuries. Morphine was used during the Civil War to treat injured soldiers, making it more commonly used in America. Post-war, medical professionals began to realize how addictive morphine was, and that America was facing a morphine epidemic. In order to replace the addictive drug, heroin was created and promoted as a non-addictive substitute for morphine. Today, we know that heroin is highly addictive and serves no medical purpose.
The first time that I ever really learned about what heroin is was in middle school health class, eighth grade, with Mrs. McElwaine. My middle school had two health teachers, and it was mandatory to take health courses with them each year. One teacher focused more on health in relation to learning about illness and how your body works, while the other teacher focused more on alcohol, sex, and drugs; this was Mrs. McElwaine. She had worked at the middle school for years as a health teacher, and was known as being a hard ass during the drug unit. She would shove it down our throats that we should never use heroin. She would scare us into it by telling us that when we got to high school, people around us were going to be using heroin and trying to get us to use it too. She would also tell us about how the closest teenage rehabilitation center had a huge waiting list because so many young people are using heroin in this area. She would tell us the waiting list was two years, but I did not really believe that. To me, it seemed impossible that so many people living around me would think to use a drug that was that dangerous and taboo to use. Knowing what I know now about the area that I reside in, it makes much more sense to me and seems much more plausible, which is a scary thing to realize.
Heroin was created with the intention to be a non-addictive painkiller, meaning that it has a somewhat “positive” effect on the human body. In our brains, we have endorphins, which help in sending signals through the nervous system and act as a natural pain reliever. Opioids imitate the endorphins in our body, which helps to relieve pain and give a sense of euphoria and pleasure. Despite these seemingly positive reactions, heroin is dangerous to the human body, having short-term as well as long-term effects. After using heroin, the user will begin to relaxed, with sudden switches between feeling fatigue and feeling alert and energetic. The user’s muscles will begin to weaken and their breathing will slow down. When the high starts to go away, the user may feel depressed or irritable. The only way that the user can get rid of these negative feelings is to continue to use heroin, leading to addiction. Not using can lead to withdrawal symptoms.
The list is not short for the long-term effects of heroin. The most obvious long-term effect of heroin is addiction, which can lead to a negative lifestyle, poverty, ruined relationships, and in the worst case scenario, death. Heroin also destroys the human brain, making it hard to comprehend new information and concentrate on tasks that were once simple. Physically, heroin can cause users to gain weight and suffer from heart, blood, and liver problems. For users that choose to inject heroin, they can suffer from collapsed veins, and are prone to contracting diseases such as HIV or AIDS or Hepatitis C. Heroin takes a nasty toll on the human body.
The first time that I ever saw a bag of heroin was during the first semester of my junior year of high school. The summer before school, my dad got a new job working as an auto mechanic, after quitting his job working as a professor at a local school, Centenary College, now known as Centenary University. At the shop he worked at, there were three other men, his boss, another mechanic, and the manager. For months, my dad and his boss suspected that one of the other men was using drugs, as he would show up to work strung out and his quality of work was dramatically decreasing. He would show up to work late, he would mess up simple jobs, leaving my dad to clean up his mess. For months, my dad would come home from work furious. My dad and I have always shared the view that drug addiction is a disease, and it is hard to get a grasp on and fix. However, my dad does not do well with people that let their addiction affect others the way that this coworker had let it, and my dad was fed up. After months of suspicion, my dad got to work early one morning to get a big job done. He went to the bathroom, where he found small bags of heroin laying all over the floor of the bathroom. The idea of heroin is an idea that enrages my dad because he is so disapproving of the use, and my family, of course, heard all about it that night at dinner. Later that night, my dad picked me up from my music lesson, but made a stop at his shop before going home. I thought maybe he had forgotten something inside, but I soon realized that was not the case. He brought me into the shop, into the office, and pulled out a Ziploc bag containing all of the tiny, labeled bags of heroin. He lectured me for twenty minutes, borderline yelling at me, telling me to “never touch this shit” and reiterating how it ruins lives and kills people. I remember the label clearly, “Mega Million.” This had been reported in the local news multiple times as a stamp of heroin that was killing people throughout the state. It was weird to have all of these bags being held right before my eyes, knowing that these small little bags were responsible for taking the lives of so many people. I never expected to see what heroin looked like, and definitely never expected that my dad would have been the one to show me.
I never thought that I would see heroin myself, let alone that people that I am close too would see it as well. I met my best friend, Skinner, in middle school and we have been practically inseparable ever since. We do everything together, we even go as far as to wash each other’s hair. Like many high schoolers, we both experimented with marijuana and alcohol, occasionally using on the weekends. We do everything together, and sticking our toes into the world of drugs was one of those things we did together. In high school, Skinner was friends with a guy named Jules. He was older than both of us, and it was widely speculated by people that knew Jules that he was using heroin. One day, I was hanging out with Skinner, and she tells me that her and Jules had hung out the day prior, and proceeded to tell me about their day. It seemed like a normal day, until she got to the part where he needed to get high, meaning he needed to shoot up heroin. Skinner watched him throughout the whole process, watching him prepare the heroin, wrap the band around his arm, and watching him stick a needle filled with heroin into his bloodstream. She described it as being an awkward and scary experience, since she had never seen heroin, let alone see someone actually use heroin. After hearing this story, I realized how real heroin use was. I had met Jules multiple times, and to know that someone I know was using such a horrible drug was just, well, weird and confusing. After that day, Skinner never hung out with him again, and we vowed to each other we would never go as far as to use a drug like heroin.
As stated previously, heroin is a highly addictive drug which is what makes it so dangerous. In my opinion, with the increasing number of people addicted to heroin in America, it is important to recognize the symptoms of heroin addiction, and know how to help someone who is suffering from addiction. When someone is addicted to heroin, the only thing that becomes important to them is heroin. While it is tragic to see someone’s life shift from one way to being all about heroin, this makes it easier for outsiders to recognize that there is a problem. Some of the biggest indicators of heroin use are finding paraphernalia in the suspected user’s belongings and finding track marks, which are marks indicating where a needle has been inserted into the body, however, it is not always that easy to find out if someone is using heroin. Someone who is using will have behavioral changes, where they become aggressive or depressed. They will begin to separate themselves from people they once associated with, usually switching to hanging out with people that they can use heroin with. Users will also begin to steal from the people around them in order to fund their addiction, and they will begin to sell their own valuables to make money to purchase drugs. It is important that after discovering that someone is using heroin, help is immediately found, that way their addiction can be treated. Rehabilitation is the most effective way to get someone suffering from heroin addiction help for their disease. It can be hard to get someone using heroin to admit that they have a problem and need help, and sometimes it takes getting into legal trouble or being faced with death before they realize they need to overcome their addiction. Unfortunately, heroin addiction is an addiction that can be hard to beat, and sobriety can be hard to stick with. According to a study conducted by the National Institute on Drug Abuse on heroin relapse rates, 91% of people who went through treatment for addiction were using heroin within one week of being released from rehab.
During my dad’s time working with his heroin-addicted coworker, lots of dealers and friends who also used heroin would come through the shop to visit his coworker, as well as sell him heroin on the job. One friend that frequented the shop was a man named Jeff. Jeff was in his twenties and had had many run ins with the local police pertaining to his drug use. My dad learned from his coworker that eventually Jeff had been arrested and put in jail after getting caught with heroin and heroin needles during a motor vehicle stop. Jeff disappeared from my dad’s life after that, supposedly because he was thrown in jail. This had little effect on me personally, being that I did not know Jeff; he was a complete stranger to me. One day, my dad’s coworker opened up to my dad about his addiction, and Jeff was brought up in conversation. Turns out that Jeff had been released from jail, however, he did not last long on the outside.
Jeff died within a few days of being released from jail. He immediately went back to using heroin and died from a drug overdose. My dad told my family this at the dinner table one night, and once again it didn’t phase me, as I had no idea who Jeff was. It was not until my dad pulled up his obituary that I realized this somehow had an effect on me. Jeff was the older brother of one of the students at my high school. I had talked to his little brother multiple times, and had established a friendly relationship with him. It was not until that moment that I realized heroin addiction can affect anyone, not just the people who use heroin. This moment shaped my views on what heroin is and how I feel about heroin.
I feel that heroin is a very dangerous drug and it should not be used by anyone, not even once. It is highly addictive and it can easily ruin lives of not just the people who use heroin, but all the people that are involved in the user’s life. No one deserves to be affected by heroin addiction.
Opioid addiction is a huge problem in America that claims the lives of Americans throughout the country every single day. This problem cannot be resolved until more people become educated about what heroin is and what it can do to a person. I think that learning about this problem will help people, especially young people, to form their own opinions on the drug, and help the people around them understand as well.
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