Substance abuse is a common phenomenon in my
extended family and among some of my friends. It always starts out with
recreational use that leads to more frequent use and eventually addiction. It
alters and takes control of the person it addicts, causing them to behave
differently. They have relationships with people who they otherwise would not
and make an array of other unwise decisions. Drug addiction has the power to
ruin a life, and frequently it does.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Mental Disorders defines a person suffering from substance abuse as having one
or more of the following symptoms in a 12-month period: recurrent use resulting
in failure to fulfill major obligations, recurrent use in physically hazardous
situations, recurrent substance related legal problems, continued use despite
interpersonal problems caused or exacerbated by substance (DSM-IV). I
know people residing in many different places with different backgrounds who
have experimented with drug use. Through my observations I have determined that
social class, social support, race, gender, and location play a significant
role in is what types of drugs a person decides to experiment with, weather or
not they become addicted, and how their addiction plays out.
The majority of the people I know who have
suffered from substance abuse problems are my family members who reside in Los
Angeles, California. They are a tight-knit part of my family who make a point
to spend time together and be supportive of one another. Social support is understood
to help prevent mental illness (Turner, 2010), but in their case it
has not. Three out of the seven adults have been through drug addiction and one
of the others has fetal alcohol syndrome. Substance abuse has immensely
impacted all of their lives.
My cousin Samantha was smart, fun, and full
of potential in her younger years. When she was in high school her parents went
through some turbulence in their relationship. Her father worked long hours and
her mother decided to go back to school, so Samantha’s older sister Katherine
was delegated much of the task of raising her. The family was financially
stable but not emotionally stable. Samantha began using drugs in her late teens
and over time began using stronger drugs more and more frequently. She started
dating Alan when she was 27, and within about a year of meeting they decided to
get married despite the family’s negative feelings towards their relationship.
Soon after having a child Samantha went off the deep end with her drug use and
behavior. She was dealing crystal methamphetamine, crack cocaine, and may have
been selling herself into prostitution. Her family was constantly worrying
about her, but there was little they could do. Everything they tried ended up
in failure because she was not receptive to their help. Sometimes Samantha
would disappear for weeks and even months at a time, which left the family worried
about her well being and at times even worried that she could be dead. The
family sent her to rehabilitation twice, but she took the “Amy Winehouse
approach” to the rehab. She was eventually caught for selling drugs and
sentenced to two years in prison, after which she was mandated to go to a
state-run rehabilitation facility. In the meantime Katherine took care of her
child, as Alan was not fit to be a single parent. Samantha finally got clean
because of the jail and mandatory rehabilitation sentence and her family’s
unconditional support. While mandatory rehabilitation is not right for
everyone, it did work for Samantha. She has managed to remain clean since then,
which is wonderful. Unfortunately the consequences of her drug use put an
immense strain on the family and will follow her for the rest of her life.
Since Samantha got out of jail she had to
deal with the struggles of integrating into her new life. Her family welcomed
her back with open arms, but did not give her complete trust for a long time.
With all the destructive choices she made throughout the years, she had to
prove to them that she really changed and that she would not make decisions
that would hurt them. Samantha loves her daughter and wants to be her true
mother, but remains too irresponsible to raise her by herself. She is there for
her daughter, but more as a friend than a parent. Katherine is still the one
that makes her complete her responsibilities and makes sure her needs are met.
Samantha’s daughter, along with many others who have witnessed consequences of
Samantha's drug abuse, has used her as an example of what not to do in her
life. She is a bright girl that I think will excel throughout her life, despite
the difficulties that she faced in her youth. Samantha has not been able to
find a good job because of having a felony on her record, but has persevered
with a handful of unfulfilling jobs. On the plus side, she found new things to
fill her emotional void that for so long she had used drugs to fill. Integrating
into a drug-free life full of social responsibility was not easy for Samantha
and she still has much that she can improve on, but it is admirable that she
has come as far as she has.
Katherine's daughter Ashley went through
addictions to crystal meth and crack as well. It is likely that this was
partially caused by Samantha’s addiction. Samantha’s addiction partially
eliminated the family’s taboo of drugs. Also, as an older female in the family,
she was a sort of mentor figure to Ashley. Samantha had influence over Ashley,
whether she intended to or not. Because Samantha’s situation normalized drug
use in the family, Ashley thought that it would be acceptable to experiment
with the drugs. When Katherine found out about Ashley’s addiction, she did everything
she could to stop her from doing drugs and eventually was successful.
Samantha’s experience is a good example of
the typical path of substance abuse. She first started using drugs to deal with
emotional struggles, finding that the drug’s negative effects were more
tolerable than the emotions that she was hiding from. She drifted away from her
family who did not approve of drug use and into a community in which it was
normalized. Because the community she was engaged in held no stigma against
drugs or the other self-destructive activities that she became involved in, she
got wrapped into a downward spiral. Her mental illness of addiction became so
strong that it took precedent over everything else in her life, causing her to
lose everything she had, time and time again. When her family put her into
rehabilitation she didn’t complete it because of the power the drugs had on her
and the fear that she could not defeat the drugs or live without them. Preventing
relapse is perhaps the most difficult part of addiction, as Mark Twin eloquently explained
in 1876 “To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did. I ought to
know because I’ve done it a thousand times” (Owen). It literally took the
governments force along with unconditional support from her family for her to
get clean, which was a tortuously difficult transition. Numerous people follow
a similar path of addiction whether it is with drugs, alcohol, spending money,
sex, gambling or something else.
Because breaking addiction can be such a
difficult process, many people give in to smaller addictions to help them cope
with the transition. When a person quits an addiction they may continue to get
cravings after they quit or feel like they have a void to fill, and replace
their previous addiction with a new one. In general, addictive personalities
find it difficult to steer clear of addiction, but justify that it’s okay if
they believe that it is a milder or more socially acceptable addiction than
their previous one. In Samantha’s case, she replaced drug use with several
boyfriends. Some people find that obsessive exercise is helpful in steering
clear of their larger addiction (Reynolds,
2012). Such coping mechanisms are commonly used. Almost every addiction
is at least slightly self-destructive and should be steered clear of if
possible.
How a person defines the severity of an
addiction is socially defined and varies across cultures. It is a combination
of how debilitating the addiction is, its social acceptance, the person's
experience with the addiction, and personal beliefs. Someone may believe that a
sex addiction is worse than a drug addiction because of their religious
beliefs, even if the drug addiction is more debilitating to their daily life.
How people and cultures view certain addictions differently affects their
chance of becoming addicts.
Certain people are biologically predisposed
to addiction all across the world, but addiction rates vary through regions
because of cultural norms, stigmas, and acceptances. Addiction can have an
immense impact on an individual and their communities, such as Samantha and her
family. Substance addiction is a tragic mental illness that should be taken
very seriously. If we were to change our cultural norms about drug use, maybe
it would not be so prevalent in our society.
Bibliography
DSM-IV. Retrieved November 9th, 2012 from
www.csam-asam.org/pdf/misc/dsm_criteria_for_diagnosis.doc
Turner, J. R.,
Brown, R. L. (2010). “Social Support and Mental Health” Pp. 200-212 of Scheid,
T. L., & Brown, T. N. A handbook for the study of mental health: Social
contexts, theories, and systems. (2 ed.). New York, NY: Cambridge
University Press.
Reynolds, G. How Exercise Can
Prime the Brain for Addiction. April 11, 2012. Retrieved on November 27th
at http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/11/how-exercise-can-prime-the-brain-for-addiction/?smid=pl-share
Owen, W. E. Comparing and Contrasting Marlatt’s (1985)
Model of Relapse Prevention with Gorski’s Early Warning Signs Approach and
Reviewing the Evidence for their Effectiveness.
Replogle, E. The Sociological Importance of Stressors.
2012. Lecture.
Goffman, E. Stigma.
1987.
