Sci 163 - Basketball Diaries

Basketball Diaries

Elaina Bailey

SCI/163

03/12/2018

Lakeasha Thrasher

Basketball Diaries

I have chosen the movie Basketball Diaries which is about a young group of boys living in the slums of Manhattan, New York, with the focus on Jim Carrol a poet/musician.  He grew up with a single mom not male role model other than his best friend who had recently died of leukemia.  Jim went to an all-boys catholic school with a good basketball team.  Jim was really messed up about losing his best friend so he started experimenting with drugs self- medicating.  He was ok until he discovered heroin.  When this happened, he went on a downward spiral and taking down whoever and whatever was in his path.  He quit going to school, he lost the respect of his mother and community, sold his body to pay for his habit, would steal from everyone and anyone to feed his habit, and eventually ended up in jail.  In jail is where he wrote this book about himself.  He never expected for it to be as popular as it is.  Because of jail he was able to turn his life around for a period of time but struggled with addiction the rest of his life.

Addiction is the fact or condition of being addicted to a particular substance, thing, or activity.  It is probably one of the most difficult diseases to deal with.  Once you have become an addict you will struggle with it for the rest of your life.  You will have a sponsor, you will go to meetings where you can talk with fellow addicts about your everyday struggle with addiction.  It is never easy when dealing with addicts.  They lie, cheat, steal, and can even turn to violence and crime to feed there habit.  When they become sober if they ever do become sober it is so difficult to trust them.  Everyone questions your every move.  Never believing that you are sober, and it becomes very difficult to keep relationships due to lack of trust.  

Heroin is the major drug addiction in this movie.  Heroin is an opiate drug, which means it is derived from the opium poppy, a flower found in many places in the world.  Heroin was first made in 1874 by processing morphine a compound extracted from the poppy sap.  At first heroin was thought to be less addictive then morphine but soon was discovered it was just as addictive and was jade illegal in the United States.  

Heroin is sometimes considered to be a drug limited to the lower levels of society and to certain demographic.  The National Survey on Drug use and Health indicates that nearly 5.1 million people used heroin in 2015 (Facts on Heroin, 2018).  Heroin abuse is reaching epidemic proportions per the National Institute on Drug abuse deaths due to heroin overdose increased more than six -fold between 2002 and 2015 (Facts on Heroin, 2018).