sociology podcast

Drug addiction and its impact on family dynamics is the focus of Cecily's project. She believes that drug addiction is not just a micro-level issue, but also a macro-level problem in society. She highlights the need for society to address addiction by providing support and understanding. Cecily emphasizes the long-term effects of drug addiction on the healthcare, education, and criminal systems. She also discusses the negative effects of addiction on families, including anxiety, depression, and strained relationships. Cecily suggests that addiction should be brought to light in order to address its effects on families and society. She concludes by discussing how families can influence recovery and create a healthy home environment through open communication and seeking resources. Cecily encourages society to support and uplift one another in order to combat the hold that addiction has on our communities. Hello, everyone. My name is Cecily, and I'm in Mr. Danza's Sociology course. Today, I'll be focusing my project on drug addiction and family dynamics. This is a solo monologue scripted podcast that I'll be using to share my resources and my own sociological view on this specific matter. With all my research, I hope I can help shed light on this topic and allow you to visualize views from a sociological perspective. Drug addiction is usually viewed as a micro-level issue in our society. Instead of looking at why the person is suffering from the addiction, as a sociologist, you must review the issue. Why is drug addiction such a massive issue within our society? Not only is this far from a micro-level issue, but addiction is most definitely a macro-level issue. In the podcast, Social Psychology with sociologist Leighton Woodhouse, Woodhouse expresses how our society views the drug addict as they have a right to live how they choose, and this allows our society to not do anything about this issue. If our society does not come together to stop this overall issue of drug addiction, then we are basically setting up the stations where active drug using is allowed and supplying them with the supplies to use the drug. Capitalism causes human wreckage by focusing on profit and competition, which is what leads to issues such as inequalities causing human suffering. Woodhouse believes drug addiction needs to be addressed by contributing to the addiction and understanding the importance of providing support in those who are affected by the addiction, including the families. Not only do we need to make a change within society, but also gain a sense of compassion and provide support rather than just looking at the addiction and ignoring it. The lack of resources, trauma, and social inequalities all play huge roles in the ideology of why drug addiction is a macro-matter. We have been doing things in a way where no one acknowledges the problem and they also ignore it. Continuing, I reviewed the book of Sociology on Chapter 7.3, which reviews victimless crimes as well as policing and race. I was able to identify a few key points that stood out to me the most. If you go to a low-income neighborhood, for example, like Desert Hot Springs, you are going to find access to drugs far easier than going to a well-kept community. In this specific chapter, it states, and I quote, in the 1980s, crack cocaine was a minority-inhabited neighborhood. Doing drugs is looked at as a victimless crime because a perpetrator is not physically harming anyone but only causing injury to oneself. However, I believe this still causes harm within our society. This becomes a society issue by causing violence, strain on healthcare, and being harmful to the society. Families are faced with many challenges, which is why reading the sociology book on challenges families face was something I needed to add to this viewpoint. Not everyone will understand how these addictions cause horrible effects on our lives and within the society. The long-term effects of drug addiction can cause consequences to the healthcare system, the education, and even criminal systems. The problem resulting from child abuse and family but to society. Drug abuse can start as early as childhood. The reason childhood is affected by the long-term effects of mental and physical and emotional well-being. Because children experience a form of trauma, they search for this comfort and eventually find it in drugs. Moving away from why drug addiction can be caused, it's also important as a sociologist to understand the effects that this may have on the family dynamic. I recently watched a TED Talk by Sam Fowler called Exposing Family Effects of Addiction. She expresses how addiction isn't just addiction, but it's also a disease. She ensures that she expresses addiction as a disease rather than it being anything else. Addiction can be far more dangerous for the families of the addict. The reason is because the families living in constant fear of anxiety, chronic pain, chronic depression, even leading to attempted suicide and self-harm. For Sam, this was her own personal experience when it comes to her brother's addiction. Many times addiction is hidden by the family because they are wanting to protect the addict. However, doing this causes strain on the family dynamic. The family begins to feel as a burden to the addict. People who see an addict in the family tend to believe the family is a bad family or a family of addicts, which isn't always the case. This is part of our society with how addiction is kept in the dark. The only way to overcome is by giving addiction a face. When addiction is kept in the darkness, it begins to thrive and become more powerful. Feeding off the dark, addiction must be brought to light to acknowledge the effect that it is causing on families and how, as a society, we should care more because it starts to affect us by more suicide rates, health care being neglected, resources not being available. Finally, I'd like to review my last resource. It's from a study from a Grand Canyon University by Molly Howard. She expresses how families can impact recovery in both negative and positive ways. Addiction is affecting families. Substance abuse radiates outwards. Addiction cannot only jeopardize relationships but cause emotional distress and cause issues within financial. Relationship troubles occur when the addict is causing trust issues, expressing guilt, shame, and causing a lack of communication. Financial problems occur when the person loses a job, hasn't paid bills and expresses, and the other family members begin to take up the expenses and extra jobs to cover the addict's addiction. There's emotional trauma that's added because the addict is now causing health issues for themselves but also for the family as well. The overload progression of addiction can lead to family becoming overwhelmed and that's when the health issues spike. Even with all these issues caused by the addiction, families still tend to continue to enable the addiction by providing the financial assistance, by placing blame on others rather than the addict, by lying or hiding the evidence and protecting the addict from consequences of their own actions. Families can influence recovery by creating a healthy home environment and a safe space open to healthy communication within the household rather than keeping it in the dark because they're ashamed. Learning addiction recovery by figuring out how they can help in search for resources that are online or in person such as NARANON meetings or Al-Anon meetings which are meetings that are meant for families so that way they can help understand what the addict is actively going through but also to help them understand what they're going through as well because dealing with someone who is an addict or being around a group of addicts, you just never know how they're going to react. I think it's very important as a society to kind of understand each other and understand that we are all humans and we have a job to do and that's to take care of each other and take care of our communities and help bring each other up rather than continuing to allow others to fail. That's what's causing such a hold and tear inside of our society and us not being able to view each other as equals. Families can even attend groups of addicts to help them understand what they're going through and how they're going to deal with their problems and how they're going to deal with their problems and how they're going to deal with their problems and how they're going to deal with their problems and how they're going to deal with their problems and how they're going to deal with their problems and how they're going to deal with their problems and how they're going to deal with their problems and what the addict is going through. We all have our own stuff, but as a society, knowing that one of us is failing and falling down, it's our job to make sure that we are able to bring them back up. That way we can continue to function and grow instead of just staying stagnant or failing. Overall, these resources help identify what drug addiction does to our society. When the addict affects the family dynamic, it becomes a certain spiral of society that issues leading into the healthcare system the unsafe environment for people, hazardous living situations, overpopulated homeless rising due to addiction, even our education system being compromised because of the uprising in addiction, and so much more. From a sociological perspective, drug addiction is shaped from so many avenues. The constant lockup of support system is leading to the uprise in our society. Some ways we are able to make a change within is by coming together with our healthcare system, maybe even finding resources, gathering our communities and becoming more of a supportive environment for these addicts. I hope that you enjoyed my research on drug addiction and family dynamic. This is something that I felt very close to home with. If you have any questions, please give me a ring and I will be happy to answer them from my point of view in the eyes of a sociologist. Thank you.