The Effects of Addiction

THE EFFECTS OF ADDICTION

The effects of addiction has taken control over many individuals all across the world, as well as taken many lives. Individuals rely on substance use for many different reasons. Substance abusers are not just hurting in selves, it involves their families, their friends, and anyone else that cares for them. This paper will look at Anthony, a 21yr old male who struggles with the addiction. At the age of 14, Anthony lost his sister to a heroin overdose, his parents got a divorce, and at that painful time he began to experiment with marijuana and other hard drugs. After his first attempt to get sober with methadone treatments, he tried cocaine and that became the love of his life.

Family Background

Born and raised on the Jersey Shore, Anthony lived with parents until they divorced after his sister’s death. The youngest of 10 children, Anthony was nurtured in a positive way and given the best opportunities. Anthony’s mother did her best to keep him focus while his dad was away struggling with his Gambling addiction and extramarital affairs. As a teenager Anthony started to feel abandoned by his father’s continued absence and his mother’s long term depression over their daughter’s death. According to the article “Addiction” by (Van Niekerk JP 2011) “Substance abuse can be classified in terms of its potential harms. Nutt and colleagues have ranked drugs on the basis of their potential for physical harm, dependence (addiction), and effects on families, communities and society, thereby offering a rational solution to a previously arbitrary classification”. Anthony absolutely fits their profile and his substance use has flourish because his family hands shelters him, caters to him, they give him chance after chance with employment, his dad serves as his accountant; they make life stable for him. The family enables him out of fear and until he experience the truth about addiction, he won’t ever desire to be sober. Anthony stated that he likes the attention he gets from his father now that he’s on drugs, since he wasn’t around much before he started using drugs. Anthony relying on drugs to gain the attention from his family is a dangerous situation and it has caused him to fall in love with Cocaine. Anthony’s father enables him by managing his money with the hopes of controlling the amount of drug use, Anthony’s mother and grandmother enables him by providing a stable home, as well as feeding and clothing him, and his brothers have time after time provided him with employment at their places of businesses; a way for him to afford drugs without stealing. Anthony is perfectly comfortably with doing drugs, but does fear death as it would kill his mother. “Katy Mennell describes the dramatic effects that addiction can have on families and ‘concerned others,' interspersed with personal tales of those who