Research Paper:
Opiates in American Society
Many people in modern society have experience with drugs either through doing them, or by association. Most drugs were originally used for medicinal reasons when they were first discovered and they became a huge part of our history and civilization. Drugs were often used by indigenous people of any land to give incentives to workers, by giving them energy and making them feel good. Indeed, drugs were a very practical incentive for many natives, unfortunately, because of their addictive nature, then and now drugs continue to be abused and can lead to dangerous repercussions. Opium, like many of the ancient drugs, has been used since prehistoric times to soothe, relax, calm, and create a euphoric feeling through either smoking or ingestion. Although opium is a risky and addictive drug when abused, when used in moderation, opium has helped with firming bowel movements, soothing coughs and cause an overall feeling of joy and drowsiness. Like any other substance, in excesses, opium can cause serious problems, but opiates are where the most trouble lies for society.
Opium comes from the poppy plant and had been used since prehistoric times for medicinal reasons. Through the 1800s opium was considered a key component for many medicines even in the western world. Opium/opiates were often used as pain killers and to help stop restlessness. When addictive traits were recognized in opium, heroin was derived in hope to eliminate addictive qualities. Unfortunately, heroin was later found to be even more addictive even though it had been used in a children’s cough medicine and more. All drugs or substances derived from opium are classified as opiates, opiates are by nature less crude and raw, nonetheless, they are far more addictive. Heroin is one of the most addictive drugs known, “according to statistics in 1999 heroin overdose has caused more deaths than traffic accidents” (Opium effects). Opium in general is very easy to become addicted to, and has awful withdrawal symptoms, including; “nausea, sweating, cramps, vomiting, diarrhea, loss of, appetite, muscle spasms, depression, anxiety, mood swings, and insomnia” (Addiction). Some of the effects of taking opium and other opiates include, “euphoria, sense of emotional detachment, absence of pain and stress, altered mood and mental processes, sleepiness, vomiting, loss of appetite, reduced sex drive, itchy skin, increased urination, sweating, inability to concentrate, impaired vision, and death” (Opium effects).
According to “A Brief History of Opium” timeline by Martin Booth, opium was originally used to induce a happy, euphoric feeling. As history progressed, opium trade routes developed and the drug began growing in popularity. However, during the 1300s and the Inquisition, opium practically disappears because of an association made with the devil. However, in the 1500s opium becomes popular again, leading to furthered recreational uses and continued medicinal uses as well. Opium trade in China grew from the 1700s until 1800s until it was banned by the emperor to discourage illegal smuggling of the highly addictive drug. Despite China’s attempts, opium continued to be traded within the country. Opium became popular in United States during the mid-1800s in opium dens, especially trendy in the San Francisco area (Booth).
Opium use has continued in the states illegally, not necessarily as a party drug because it is a depressant and causes sleepiness and a sense of relaxation and happiness. Opium usage is not accepted as a norm in our society, and has not been for over a century. Like other drugs, opium and opiates are used by individuals that feel as though they need to emotionally detach themselves from whatever situation. Drugs are usually not used with the intention to cause an addiction and throughout history many people were ill-informed about the long term side effects of drugs. To avoid downs and crashes people begin using a drug repeatedly which leads to addictions which are even more complicated to end. Because American society has developed in such a way where information is easily available to most Americans on the repercussions and consequences of drug use, the reason for addiction can no longer be blamed on ignorance. Despite the fact that ignorance is not the main cause of drug abuse, there are a myriad communities all across the nation that simply don’t have the resources, nor the structure to provide inhabitants the information they need to strongly encourage those individuals to not get involved in a very dangerous life. Though certain individuals are raised in lower socio-economic environments where they feel as though they need to be part of the drug community to fit in and be part of their community as a whole, not all drug abusers are raised with under those same circumstances.
It is fairly common to find drug addicts also from well educated homes and middle class families. While there are drug addicts because they are raised around that environment, there will also be drug addicts because of sexual appeal created by the media and to create a sense of belonging for teens in a world where they feel very insecure. Drugs are talked about and addressed so loosely by media and major figure heads of our society, like celebrities and through advertisements. Drugs have become a very cool, coming of age, milestone for many kids. In a family situation where teens are unable to confront or discuss the use of drugs in a practical and realistic way with their parents, they are left in the dark and often with very little parental insights that may have been just enough to discourage any use of drugs.
Although it would be nice to think that a good education and a healthy environment would resolve drug abuse in America, none of those things could sate the curiosity of teens that feel rebellious, want to be independent and simply may have no regard or respect for authority. There are certain drugs that could be easily argued to be legalized to help reduce abuse and addiction in society. It is easy to see that when something is not forbidden it has even less appeal, however some drugs should truly remain illegal because of how dangerous they can be. Opium and opiates should all remain illegal for those reasons.
The use of opium in our society is most likely as an escape because of it’s ability to calm down users as well as creating a feeling of euphoria and joy. This drug has harsh withdrawal repercussions that consist of mainly physically taxing problems. The short-term effects of opium hardly seem to make the withdrawal side-effects worth dealing with. Drugs can consume someone’s life, drain them financially and emotionally, and leave them with nothing left. The consequences of drugs far outweigh the benefits. Drugs are used as a crutch and the results of using are devastating for the addict, friends and family.
Work Cited Page:
Booth, Martin. "Opium Timeline." Opioids : past, present and future. 16 Mar. 2009
"Opium | Drug Addiction & Abuse | Facts & Information." Drug Treatment & Alcohol Rehab |
Narconon Drug Addiction Treatment. 16 Mar. 2009
"Opium - A popular drug." Medical Discoveries. 16 Mar. 2009
"Opium." Opioids : past, present and future. 16 Mar. 2009
"Opium effects by opium addiction.com." Opium addiction by opium addiction.com. 16 Mar.
2009
Interview Transcripts:
Serena
Did you notice any extreme difference between opium and opiate addicts versus other drugs?
I think the extreme difference is that it is very physically addicting. I think that’s why you hear about methadone clinics. When people try to get off of heroine, not really opium, it’s so physically addicting you have to medically de-tox. Anything else you can just kind of sleep it off, but heroine needs to be medically monitored, they can shake and it can be really dangerous. It’s also a drug that can kill you in twenty years, it eats out your insides, and it’s pretty harsh.
Do people who usually come in to your hospital, do they know about these side effects?
They do, but it is one of those things that you can use it a couple of times and you are pretty much physically addicted to use it. The people who have used heroine describe it as being so at ease, so relaxed, they don’t have to deal with life’s stresses, and they have this indescribable euphoria. So I know that there were a lot of heroin addicts in the 70’s and 80’s and made a comeback in the 2000’s. And a lot of people don’t realize that ecstasy can have a mixture of heroin and cocaine, which is why people start to feel like they are in love with the world, with everybody and everything.
How did many people become involved with drugs in general, not specific to heroine?
I think sometimes its casual use in high school, maybe in college. Some people are in that environment when they grow up and its easily accessible, maybe their parents are doing it. A lot of people I have talked to say that a lot of their family members did it and it was just all around them. Some people come across drugs later in life and do them just to feel socially accessible. Or people will use it to self medicate. If they were depressed they would use meth to bring them up or if they were feeling maniac they would use heroine or meth to bring them down.
How did most people end up at your hospital, did they check themselves in or did family members bring them in?
Mostly themselves, but sometimes a family member. It seems like families would check them in the first time but after that they would check themselves in, a lot of people would come back because they would keep relapsing. People would come back usually every time their insurance would let them. Sometimes if the police got them for some reason, they would ask to be brought back to our hospital.
Were there any other steps to your de-tox program at your hospital?
They were supposed to go to meetings, like NA, narcotics anonymous and talk about how they were feeling and how they were going to help themselves to get off of drugs. They are supposed to go to the groups to learn some coping skills outside of using drugs.
What was the attitude of some of the people there?
You had lots of types of people, some were so dysfunctional, and they would come in and brag about all the crap that they had done when they were using and all the people they hurt. You have some people, the typical house wife, who would stay home and be married to someone with a lot of money and become addicted to pain pills. They would have a sense of entitlement, like they were at a hotel. You had some young people that didn’t really have that much insight because they hadn’t reached rock bottom yet. Some people used just because they were trying to escape hallucination. Some people were there that had families and no one else was addicted in their family so they were trying to save their family and their job. But many of the people didn’t have anything to live for; they had never been in a functional relationship.
So would you say that most people were or weren’t motivated to participate and finish the program?
I would say about 2/3 of the people there weren’t motivated and many didn’t even finish because they had nothing to live for. We had a lot of people who would check out early, which was really sad because it’s like they lost that entire time of the 21 day program. If you do that you use up the 21 days and you have to wait another year. If they do want to come back they can do the 72 hour de-tox. We didn’t have a very good success rate with people on heroine.
Judie Lincer
How has living with a drug addict affected the way you acted growing up?
When I was younger, I didn’t realize my brother was a drug addict, I knew he had problems and it was very scary. It was scary because I was always worried about him
Would you say that the specific relationship you had with that friend/family member influenced how you tried to help or not help the individual?
I think because I had that first hand relationship is why I made that effort with my brother. I can’t say I ever made an attempt for anyone I haven’t had a close relationship with.
What was the most graphic trip or memory that you have of that person on drugs?
I think my only real memory I have is when my brother overdosed in front of my mother and I, and we needed to call an ambulance and having to rush him to the hospital and have his stomach pumped, but all I really witnessed was the passing out.
How would you say that influenced your view of drugs later in life?
It made me very cautious and helped me to choose not to get involved in drugs or anything excessive, including alcohol.
How did you handle the transition in your life and theirs from when they weren’t using drugs to using drugs?
In my case, I was too young to understand what was going on.
What was the most difficult thing to deal with during this time?
For me the most difficult part was trying to figure out how I could possibly help, and feeling pretty helpless and feeling like I could really help. So I guess the waiting and worrying and wondering if it would ever resolve itself.
Jeffery L. Lincer
How has living with a drug addict affected the way you acted growing up?
My uncle came to live with us, he was an alcoholic and there were a lot of limitations and challenges for what we as a family could do. And I wasn’t worried so much about him, because I was fairly young, as I was worried about my mom.
Would you say that the specific relationship you had with that friend/family member influenced how you tried to help or not help the individual?
When you have somebody living in your home you can’t escape the problem so you either have to ignore it or try to help.
What was the most graphic trip that was ever described to you?
My biggest memory was when I had to pull my uncle out of a fire that he had started in my bedroom when he had left a cigarette burning in my bed. I came home late at night, ran upstairs, pulled him over my shoulder and put him under a sprinkler on my lawn and then tried to put out the fire.
How did you handle the transition in your life and theirs?
I didn’t really see the transition, he came with the addiction.
What was the most difficult thing to deal with during this time?
I think the biggest challenge for me was how if effected my mother because she was a single mom and she didn’t need any extra stress in her life and I felt that it was terribly unfair.
Short Story:
Floor Boards
The street of old Victorian homes is charmingly lit by a few well placed old fashioned street lamps. An occasional car would hum by and leave the street quieter than it seemed the moment before. The steep incline of the street made the sidewalks disappear over the horizon. One home with an unkempt lawn and peeling navy blue trim stuck out from the rest complimenting the couple that resided there. The shadow of two dice hanging from the rearview mirror can be seen from the light on the front porch of the neighbor’s yard. The hardwood floors inside the poorly maintained home creaked in the night as though a ghost was tiptoeing across them. Up a narrow staircase and through the stark, white walls of the hallway, to the left there was the master suite. Once, this room must have been one of the most luxurious on the whole block. The room was spacious with large double-hung windows that looked over western San Francisco. A queen bed sat directly across the room from the windows, attached to the room was a full bath, vanity, and walk-in closet. The new residents left the floor littered with bills, drawings and paintings, miscellaneous and forgotten things.
Two bodies lay in the bed now, one lay perfectly still in a deep comfortable sleep, curled, facing outward and calm. The room was dark, but the moonlight showed the covers rustling on the bed, the other individual’s hands were grabbing at hair and his body was tossing and turning. Everything else seemed to be still in the world to most individuals. To the man in the bed the room spun in circles, there was a man standing over the bed with an object in his hand. One luminous neon eye glared down at the man in the bed.
“What is in your hand!” the man in the bed demands in a gravely whisper, he rubs his eyes and then builds up the courage to spring up in his bed. The man with the glowing eye stands there glaring back at him. The man in the bed rubs his eyes more violently and lets out an unintentional, pathetic whimper . When the monster by his bed makes no movements still, the man in the bed reaches for the light on the stand and with a tug the room lights up and the creature by the bed melts to a puddle on the floor.
“What the hell, Walter?” Mumbles the man’s frustrated wife, “this is the hundredth time you’ve woke me up in the middle of the night, you’re driving me crazy. What was it this time?”
Marissa turns under the covers so she can face Walter, but she squints uncomfortably when she has to stare into the light. Her eyes finally adjust to the light change right as Walter snaps the light off, making the room seem pitch black and he defensively responds, “I thought I forgot to lock the door.”
“Oh god!” Marissa says with obvious anger in her voice, “you know I lock the door every night. Now go to sleep, or at least let me.” She turns over and pulls the covers with her.
For a while Walter stays perfectly still and then he finally peers over his bed to the spot where the puddle had fallen. The puddle seemed to have disappeared, so Walter sunk back into the bed and shut his eyes so tight it gave him a thumping headache.
Eventually he was able fall asleep, but his dreams offered him no consolation. In his dreams he was running through crowds of people, morphing into random bugs and spiders. Objects were flying from the sky and the hues of his surroundings were changing from red-to yellow-to green-to blue-to red and so on. In his dream, Walter began running. The faster he ran the slower everything moved past him. He desperately tried to keep himself asleep because if he woke up again, he knew there could be something in his room waiting to torture him mentally and emotionally.
He just couldn’t escape it, he stopped wanting to deal with reality because at least in his dreams he felt as though he could stop and control the hallucinations. In his day to day life he was going crazy. Every sound made him jump, every fast movement gave him chills, he was maniac and he was hypersensitive. Nothing around him made sense. Does anyone else see these “things,” these “monsters?”
“How could this all be in my head?” Walter often contemplated. When he was in primary school his imagination was called creativity. He was “gifted” they called it, with his ability to so vividly describe surreal events, characters and places. Now, Walter only considers himself cursed.
How could anyone have told me that the ability to hear things that weren’t being said was exciting? How could anyone have told me that the ability to see images that weren’t there was interesting?
When Walter was younger, he could sketch the most detailed and abstract pieces of art than any other student in his grade and often his school. Teachers loved his out of the box thinking. It wasn’t until Walter’s mind started taking in the negative energy around him and in the world that his ability to interpret beauty in “out of the box” ways, manifested itself to become a ticking time bomb of horrible images and traumatizing footage that turned Walter’s right brain frantically against him. His logical mind would do everything to send him warnings when he started hunting with his friends. At first the warnings were, stop it Walter! Trust me, you don’t want to do this. No, no, no, no. Why are you doing this?
When Walter didn’t listen and he began watching dirty, violent and “socially inappropriate” films and events, his brain tried everything to make him stop. Twitches, itching, shaking, chills. It drove him crazy, yet he continued to participate.
Eventually his creative and imaginative mind took all of its memories and transformed them into horrible creatures and thoughts and no matter how hard Walter focused, he found himself chasing his tail and ending up with worse hallucinations than ever before. He changed his life philosophies to accommodate his increasingly miserable and confused mind. Nothing was able to rid him of his greatest fears and to save him from his own eyes.
All I want is to make this stop. How can I change this? Walter walks with his hands in his coat pockets, his head bowed and his feet shuffling along the sidewalk. A beautiful day for most, but no amount of birds singing, trees rustling, kids laughing or sun shining could turn Walter’s nightmare. Desperately searching for a way to ignore and to prevent more hallucinations, Walter sits quietly on a bench. This offers no solace for the disturbed man.
It wasn’t long until household sleeping medication couldn’t help him and he found himself researching any alternative he could think of. Walter moved through drugs like minutes to the hour. He experimented and his highs led him to worse lows. Walter drove himself crazy looking for a way to stop the monsters from destroying him. His mind spiraled in and out of hallucinations, eventually Walter hardly knew the difference between his twisted and obscure conjured up thoughts, and reality. He would spit and hiss, kick and punch, scream and yell. He terrified strangers, divorced Marrisa (who, according to Walter, seemed to have grown tentacles that twisted over him at night and crawled up and down his side in what he thought was an attempt to destroy him).
His paranoia eventually led Walter to the streets where he interacted with the other homeless people, throwing away whatever money he made on drugs and staple foods.
Walter, dressed head to toe in miscellaneous clothing articles that didn’t fit, or didn’t belong on certain body parts, stumbled down the side walk mumbling to himself and swatting the clear air around him. Other homeless men on the street thought Walter was hilarious and mocked him as he would stand shivering in front of them in the middle of the blistering heat.
“He’s gotta be the craziest of the crazies, man.” One of his friends often commented.
Walter loved the way he felt when he inhaled warm smoke, the only drug that could sooth him now was opium. It consumed him, relaxed him and pulled him out of his disastrous life. One by one creatures, taller than the largest skyscraper, uglier than the cloud of smog that consumed the city day in and day out, more terrifying than the thought of being trapped alive in a coffin full of snakes, spiders and bees, all the monsters that followed Walter around like a ball and chain, would disintegrate with each breath of this magically calming drug.
Walter found himself smiling like a fool on the steps of buildings, no longer afraid of the day light, he would lay out in the sun and not worry about closing his eyes and opening them again to a terrifying image. He refused to let himself waiver from his high. When he didn’t have access to the drug his body would convulse, he would scream in pain and he would vomit over and over eventually just throwing up his own stomach acids.
His teeth rotted out of his mouth, he became more and more miserable, but opium gave him a sense of euphoria. It spun his world around and even if he could just fall asleep for a few minutes without having to worry about his phantom enemies, it was worth using all the drugs he could access.
Walter’s continued and extensive use of opium eventually led him to horrible withdrawals when he no longer could purchase the drug. During his worst withdrawal yet, Walter died. His body couldn’t go through the shock of being without the substance. His death was as slow and painful as his life had been up to that moment. Alone on the street, the only creatures that recognized or noticed Walter’s absence where the monsters that had led him to his demise all his life. His story ended there, when he finally was able to rest his frantic mind and sleep, for once, peacefully.
