Blog #4 - Brittney McLaughlin

While I hate to stick with the heroine bandwagon, this is a particularly interesting topic to me right now, and I just binge-watched season 5 of Shameless, where heroine and cocaine play a prominent role. The idea of media romanticizing drug use presented in Robin's original post really resonates with me at this time. While I've undoubtably questioned wether or not young, impressionable minds may be swayed toward the world of drugs after watching how freely it is used in Shameless, as well as other shows such as Breaking Bad, I feel that Shameless in particular is an interesting case as it also shows some of the consequences of drug use (spoiler - Fiona's boyfriend leaving cocaine on the table and her young brother ingesting it, landing Fiona in prison). But, why does this show and it's characters still glorify drug use when all parties are clearly aware of the side effects? Is this really true to life in low-class neighborhoods of America? It's difficult for me to understand, as I've never been exposed to any sort of heroine or cocaine use in my life; the people in the neighborhood I grew up with didn't suffer from drug addiction, to my knowledge. At that point, I'm left to wonder if neighborhoods are really so dependent and focused on drug use, or if these shows are just another Hollywood dramatization.

But then, my even bigger question is: how do people get addicted to drugs? Why do people start taking drugs? I know there are plenty of answers. Is it because it's considered "cool," as the conversation we had in class surrounding how tobacco usage used to be a social status symbol? Especially with so many TV shows and movies making it out to be this exciting thing? Are people just raised around it - with parents and neighbors and friends using drugs - so they just naturally feed into the addiction as well? Or is it a coping mechanism - do people use it as a way to numb pain or forget the past? Again, I know there are people who fall into each of these categories, but how do we begin to stop drug addiction, or even help addicts recover, when there are so many different reasons that the addiction begins to occur? Obviously, many methods have been successful up to this point, so perhaps it's silly that I'm questioning it. But there's a reason that addiction remains an issue and it goes beyond the mind and body, to me. You have to stop it at the source, but how do we do that?

And how do you tell the woman dying of cancer, in excruciating pain every day, that she can't shoot up to relieve the pain and feel euphoria for a while? This leads me back to previous conversations in the last unit - just how many rights does a person have to their own body & health? But then again, I suppose that allowing this woman to use heroine means that there still has to be a supplier, and now I've come full circle and still find my questions remaining just as unanswered as they were before. Ultimately, I do believe that media has influenced many people to use drugs, leading to their addiction. In the end, though, there are several reasons that people use drugs, and it's hard for me to imagine a way to convince a person sick with a different disease that heroine is bad for them when they no longer fear for their health.