DuPont, Robert L. “Seizing the Moment to Improve Addiction Treatment.” American Society of Addiction Medicine, 5 Aug. 2016, www.asam.org/quality-science/publications/magazine/read/article/2016/08/05/ 
seizing-the-moment-to-improve-addiction-treatment. 

The length of addiction treatment just isn’t long enough. The average residential stay is 30 days (about 4 and a half weeks), and what makes it harder on addicts is that there is this divide between medication assisted treatment and whether it is a desirable choice. There are people out there who do their best when they use medication assisted treatment, and it can truly save a person’s life. 

Hell, Morten Ellegaard, and Anette Søgaard Nielsen. “Does patient involvement in treatment planning improve  adherence, enrollment and other treatment outcome in alcohol addiction treatment? A systematic  review.” Addiction Research & Theory 28.6 (2020): 537-545. 

Right now, facilities use a standardized method of treatment that has been the same for well  over a decade. However, we now know that each person who experiences addiction is different and  might need different forms of treatment.  There are various levels of severity to this disease, and  patients should be allowed to have a say in what types of treatment they are getting. Each person is  going to interpret their addiction differently and have different underlying reasons for why they became  addicted in the first place. 

Hoffman, Kim A et al. “Improving quality of care in substance abuse treatment using five key process  improvement principles.” The journal of behavioral health services & research vol. 39,3 (2012): 234-44.  doi:10.1007/s11414-011-9270-y 

There needs to be a change in the way some of these facilities are run. Many addicts have  said that a lot of these facilities are like jail. There needs to be someone that overlooks the changes.  and guides these places into being more welcoming for addicts. The more uncomfortable one feels,  the less likely they are going to want to be there or ever go back. They also need more educated  people employed at these places. Most of the time the patients are left sitting around all day. Boredom  is one of the biggest enemies of an addict. 

Levitt, E. E., et al. “Optimizing screening for depression, anxiety disorders, and post-traumatic stress disorder in  inpatient addiction treatment: A preliminary investigation.” Addictive Behaviors 112 (2021): 106649. 

Many if not most addicts have other underlying mental health issues. These issues can be  one of the things to cause relapse after treatment. Treatment facilities should start accommodating for  that and help them seek treatment for these other problems that are being masked by addiction. 

McLellan, A. Thomas. “Have we evaluated addiction treatment correctly? Implications from a chronic care  perspective.” Addiction 97.3 (2002): 249-252. 

There is a fundamental problem with the structure and length of treatment. Addiction should  be treated just like any other chronic illness. The treatment would not end until it was back to a point of  normal functioning. There is a reason relapse is so extremely common in this disease, and it might be  the way we treat it. Therefore, the outdated curriculum does not seem to be highly effective. 

Smyth, Bobby P., et al. “Lapse and relapse following inpatient treatment of opiate dependence.” Ir Med J 103.6  (2010): 176-9. 

It goes to show how dangerous relapse can be, and how ineffective these short-term stays are for addicts. There have been multiple studies done but still, use the same methods from years ago. 

Stevens, Laura, et al. “Impulsivity as a vulnerability factor for poor addiction treatment outcomes: a review of  neurocognitive findings among individuals with substance use disorders.” Journal of substance abuse  treatment 47.1 (2014): 58-72. 

One important thing that is overlooked at these facilities is the neurocognitive aspects of the  disease. This can be things the brain controls such as impulsivity or the pleasure felt from instant  gratification. These places do not consider these things to be a crucial factor when these are some of  the massive things to bring an addict back into their old behaviors. 

Symonds, Lisa Jo. “Childhood trauma, addiction & a modernized approach to treatment.” Life Research 3.4  (2020): 176-182. 

95% of addicts report childhood trauma. This is surprising since they don’t offer trauma  counselors while in a residential facility. Not only does childhood trauma lead to addiction but it also  leads to other comorbid mental illnesses, 

White, William L., et al. “It’s time to stop kicking people out of addiction treatment.” Counselor (Deerfield Beach,  Fla.) 6.2 (2005): 12. 

Administrative discharge can seriously hurt an addict, more than it will ever help them.  Facilities should be equipped to handle any behavioral problems or normal addictive behavior. These people should not be let back out onto the streets in a vulnerable position like that. 

I tend to have trouble re-wording what I have read. If there are any spots I missed that are too close to one of my sources, PLEASE Let me know. This is one of my biggest issues when writing with sources.

Vaccines have remained a debate for many years now. Scientists have “proved” time and time again to dispute any conspiracies or arguments that have formulated. Vaccines have zero correlation with autism or any other problems people blame them for. However, given the intense history, who wouldn’t blame them.

We have come a long way since the first vaccines were discovered, but still, millions of people are fearful and wary.

In the article “Sentimental Medicine” the author Eula Biss, admits she was one of those people who was riddled with anxiety about vaccinating her first child. In fact, she skipped the first vaccine completely, for hepatitis B. She consulted a doctor first, before making that decision because she still wasn’t sure what she wanted or wanted to educate herself more. Even though through her education, she learned that doctors were not a “good source” to go to when questioning vaccines. “Some people would consider a medical professional a dubious source of intelligence on vaccination. The money pharmaceutical companies are pouring into research, they would say, has made information available to doctors dirty.

There are many reasons why people are fearful of vaccines. Biss spent many nights researching them when she was pregnant. “Vaccines contain preservatives, adjuvants, and residues from their manufacture. They were developed by aborted fetuses, were tested in Nazi concentration camps, and are not vegan.” But really, can a vaccine even be vegan?

If you look many years back at vaccines, there was always some controversy surrounding them. Way back, when the last epidemic of smallpox broke out, in the late 1800s, people believed that only the immigrants could catch and carry these diseases, and the whites were susceptible. Vaccines were enforced so strongly during this time, the people who refused them were forced. “And when smallpox  arrived in Middlesboro,  Kentucky, everyone in the black section of town who resisted immunization was vaccinated at gunpoint.”

The very first “vaccines” actually originated in old folk medicine. The milkmaids that would milk cows that had cowpox, seemed to never get infected with smallpox. The way vaccines were administered of course seemed awful and scary. And as the years went on and humans progressed, the easier it was to administer them, but it also meant more things being put into them. That’s what people begin to turn their nose up to. 

Personally, I never really actually thought about vaccinations in-depth, but I’ve always known about the issues that people have had with them. When first reading Biss’s article, my first question was, “why do people care so much if other people don’t want to vaccinate? If their family is vaccinated does it really matter?” And as i read on more I understood its importance. Certain vaccines can not be given to children under a certain age, therefor an unvaccinated child can easily spread a virus to the younger child. Just because a disease seems to be almost extinct, does not mean that it can and won’t return.

However, nowadays there are not very many people who don’t vaccinate their children. The numbers have continued to go down over the years and more and more people do vaccinate. In another article I read called “How to Build Trust in Vaccines” by Brendan Nyhan, he states “95 percent of children were vaccinated against measles, mumps, and rubella with the MMR vaccine in the 2018–19 school year. Pockets of hesitancy remain and improvement is needed on some vaccines, but we should not confuse the visibility of a small number of anti-vaccine activists with sentiment toward vaccines in the broader population.”

I agree with Biss, in that, maybe not every vaccine is necessary for every child, but some are and if more people were educated on this and more people were taught how important it is and how negatively it can affect people when even just one person decides to not vaccinate. There is always going to be conspiracies towards these kinds of things, and it is, for me, hard to believe that the things we are told are actually true. But if it does what they say and actually prevents these diseases, with a few exceptions, and there aren’t any proven serious negative effects

Works Cited

• Biss, Eula. “Sentimental Medicine.” Harpers Magazine, Jan. 2013, harpers.org/archive/2013/01/sentimental-medicine/.

• Nyhan, Brendan. “How to Build Trust in the Vaccines.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 12 Dec. 2020, www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/12/how-to-build-trust-vaccines/617367/.

Summary:

Vaccines have come a long way since people started figuring out the immunization process. In Eula Biss’s article “Sentimental Medicine”, she explains and teaches us the history of vaccines and why some people might worry about if they have certain risk factors.

Way back in the 1700’s, people started to piece together that the milkmaids who milked the cows infected with cowpox, developed blisters on their hands. Then they noticed that the women that were milking the cows, seemed to be immune to the smallpox virus and were safe around it. In fact, a father of two noticed that his wife and kids were starting to get sick from smallpox, and he decided to inject them with cowpox and make them immune. It worked. They were the first people to show immunity to the virus.

It wasnt until about 20 years later that a doctor decided to test this theory. It was then that the smallpox vaccine was invented, and they tried many different brutal and painful ways to get this stuff into the peoples systems. Some people that did’t want it, were forced too.

Vaccines have come a long way since those times. But still people are led by false beliefs and spread information that’s not always entirely true. The immense amount of research Biss put into this article is impressive. It shines a light on why we need to educate more people about these issues, and eliminate some of the fear.

More things I would like to know:

1. Why do people still get so upset at parents when they don’t vaccinate their children? If your child is vaccinated, is it really that much of a problem?
2. What are some more statistics? For example, how many mothers actually fully deny vaccines for their children? How many unvaccinated children actually contract those illnesses?
3. I want to know more about the research on what makes the vaccines different and more safe today compared too in the beginning? How much did they really change and/or fix?
4. Do people really care that much about something that has been around for decades and has been proven multiple times to do no harm to your children?
5. Why do/did people start thinking that vaccines can lead to autism and other disorders? Was it just because they needed something to blame other than themselves?

Stronger Than Yesterday

I have made a lot of stupid mistakes in my life, but I never thought I would be thankful for the mistake that I made. Especially one to this capacity. I can’t even say it was just one mistake either, because the red flags throughout were blatant and more noticeable than not.

Here’s the first place that I messed up, detox. I met my ex-fiancé in detox, and we left together, from detox. Everyone knows that that’s one of the biggest no-noes. It’s never good when you leave together, it’s never for good intentions, but for some reason I was convinced that this was different, and he was my soulmate. Saying that now makes me want to gag.

Don’t get me wrong, the beginning of our relationship was a beautiful thing. He was working extremely hard at his job, and I was taking care of finances. Within 3 months we had our own home. A whole entire house of our own, I have never had that. It was in a quiet neighborhood and we were getting a major deal because his boss owned it.

There was something about that house that was unsettling at times. We moved in and within a few months we started arguing. I was in a constant state of anxiety, unless I was somewhere else. He started to convince me that I needed help, and that I was a real mean person. On top of substance use disorder, I am also diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder which centers around severe abandonment issues, trouble with interpersonal relationships and I dissociate a lot which causes lapses in my memory.

He used it against me. He would say I said things and did things that I have no recollection of things that I would never picture myself doing. He would say “well you know you can’t remember shit.” I was convinced that I was the evil one. So much so that I admitted myself into a psychiatric hospital for an evaluation. But even the nurses there were asking me why I was even there, and that my mental state seemed perfectly fine. I spent 5 days there and he visited me every day. He was nice to me again, but for how long?

As soon as I got home it was constant button pushing. He would push until I exploded into a rage and then use it to convince me that I was still crazy, and that the hospital made me worse. I put myself through so much therapy to figure out why I was so bad and everyone, including professionals, told me that I wasn’t doing anything wrong. He was showing a lot of Narcissistic behaviors, and what he was doing to me was what they call “narcissistic abuse.” And here’s the next mistake, I got mad at them and didn’t listen. I kept trying.

I went through 2 psychiatric hospitalizations and 2 partial hospitalization programs, which are day programs you attend all week for 6 hours a day. And it wasn’t until I had 2 therapists and completed my last partial program that I started to wake up. He was a professional gas lighter, and I was his best client. He was mentally abusing me, and I needed to get out. But how?

Every time I tried to leave, he would fight me for the dog, sometimes leaving the house with him so that I wouldn’t leave. That was my problem, I couldn’t leave my little 13-pound puppy with such an angry abusive person. He would take his anger out on the dog when he was mad at me and I wasn’t going to put that poor animal through more than he was already going through. He knew that I wouldn’t leave without Teddy, so he used that against me too. His favorite thing to do was to exploit my mental illness and weaknesses.

I started to pick up more hours at work. I didn’t want to be in that house and I felt safe there. I enjoyed the people I was working with and they cared. They knew how awful he was because he had no problem fighting in front of anyone. My co-workers and managers did all that they could to help me leave but I

always had an excuse. I always listened to them and stored the advice they gave me for the future.

The day came where I had finally had enough. We were fighting all night and all morning, and we were both exhausted. He was leaving for a doctor’s appointment and I was getting ready to take my dog for a walk. I had no fight left in me so when he started yelling at me as I walked down the street, I just ignored him. That made him mad.

Scared that he would beat me home, I took the shortest route with my dog and ran home. He was still gone, thank god. I walked up to the front door and he locked it. I tried the back door, locked. Even the window that we used to drain the washing machine was sealed shut and locked. I couldn’t do it anymore and I felt the heat of my anger roll down my body.

I ran over to my car and my keys were gone. That was the final straw. I ran up to the front door and kicked it open. All the while, my dog is just staring at me. I shuffled through the house as fast as I could, and he took my spare keys too. And at that point, all I could do was scream. Scream and gather my medication and a few things for my dog and shoved everything into a tiny mini juicy couture backpack. I picked up my phone to call my aunt, gathered my things and my dog and started walking.

I walked to a part of the neighborhood where I knew he wouldn’t go near and waited. I waited in a small grassy patch on the side of the road for 2 hours until my aunt got there. Completely on edge, filled with fear he would drive around to look for me. He didn’t.

I didn’t know at the time, but that was the first day of the rest of my life. I finally made a decision for myself, to better myself, and I didn’t give in. I didn’t turn back.

My life is so different today. I have positive sober people in my life that show me every single day that they care about me. My job played a big role in getting out of there and to be honest, they didn’t really do anything but give me a safe space. My conscious doesn’t let me forget about the messages I got telling me how much I destroyed him and how he was going to die because he didn’t understand why I left.

Sometimes I feel like I need to say thank you to him, as crazy as that sounds. If it wasn’t for him to convince me that I was the bad one, I would have never found the therapy that I needed and I would have never gained some of the knowledge I have today. And I still feel bad about not giving him any closure, but does he really deserve it?

Article #1

The truth about online shopping by Our Changing Climate looks into the different way people shop and how it effects our earths climate. These shopping methods can actually have a powerful negative effect on the environment, but there is always a way to reduce your carbon footprint. According to Our Changing Climate, the traditional shopper and the impatient shopper have the most negative effect and the cybernaut has the least. What kind of shopper are you?

Article #2

Social and Emotional Benefits of Video Games: Metacognitive and Relationships by Jordan Shapiro gives us a look at the positive outcomes of video games. Many kids have displayed phenomenal metacognitive skills due to the quick thinking and problem solving skills needed in some of these games. Shapiro states that these kids also develop better relationship skills because “70 percent of gamers play with other people.” This means they learn to work with the other players in the game, which carries over into real life situations. There are some schools who have tried the game approach to learning, and they are finding that this is a very beneficial way that kids can learn, even in a classroom.

• What has been your past experience with peer review of your writing? If you have done it, comment on its value and challenges from both perspectives (writer and peer reviewer). If you wish, you may want to discuss other sorts of “review processes” you’ve participated in (in the locker room, the dining room, backstage after play rehearsal, etc.)

Back in high school and middle school, we did a lot of peer reviews. We were always taught how to mark up a paper for editing, whether it was capitalization errors or punctuation errors. We were never taught that it was just a review of their work and making suggestions on what to add or what information they didn’t need. Now that I know the actual process it’s a lot easier to navigate.

• Describe your experience doing this particular peer review. How did you approach it? What were its challenges, and how did you deal with them?

I wasn’t sure how to first approach this review process. I had never read anyone’s work and thought about the actual information in the reading needing additions or subtractions. I’m not a very good writer myself, so anyone writing seems great to be the first time around. I definitely had to step out of my comfort zone on this one.

• Comment on anything you learned from doing peer review of your partner’s essay that you plan to use in revision of your own work (if there was anything). This may be something your partner did well that you want to adapt in your own essay, or some area of improvement you noted in partner’s essay that you feel could be improved in your own, or any other thought you had about your own work as you were doing the peer review.

I definitely learned to pay a lot more attention to detail, but without adding too much and making it too wordy. I enjoyed my partners essay, and I enjoyed the unexpected twist with his grandmother. I think he did a really good job with that. I always end up writing too much and rambling for a while so reading a shorter piece definitely helped me out with ideas for shortening my own essay.

Roosvelt, I enjoyed reading your story. I am a very empathetic person, so i could definitely feel the aggravation you had for not being able to go outside. But maybe add some more detail of how you actually felt being stuck inside all the time,

“I was jealous, angry, and couldn’t understand why the kids of my neighborhood were alow to go outside and play.”

How did the jealousy feel? Was it a fit of burning jealousy? Cause when I get jealous I almost feel like I’m going to explode and I just want to scream at the people around me. I’m not a writer but I think little details like that can make a difference.
Also, maybe add more detail on where you went when you ran away.

It was hard for me to understand so I kept running away from home until my grandfather decided to construct a wall in the front yard heigh enough so I didn’t escape. I didn’t give up I kept searching for escape and find out that for me to be able to leave the house it had to be at night time through the forest.

Where were you trying to go? Did you have a destination or were you sort of just winging it? And when you go into the last time you tried to run off,

I try to escape throw the woods behind our home and my grandma sprinted after me. I couldn’t understand how she ran after me and caught me. She grabbed me by the hand and took me home and sat me down. After an hour I saw a bruise in her left hands I was confused why she had it. I started to wonder if a snake bit her in the woods. That day I felt guilty for my actions and didn’t know how to explain to my family that when she ran after me in the woods I saw a serpent and I was questioning myself maybe the serpent was venomous and might bit her.

what was going on leading up to the point of that? How did your grandma know you were leaving? When did you first notice the snake, was it when you were running into the woods? And then what happened after she brought you back to the house? Before you noticed the bite?
And lastly, when did you notice she started to feel sick? Was it right after you got home? Who did she tell when she started to feel ill? Also, a little more details about your relationship with your aunt after your grandmother passed might be a little bit helpful to the reader. And tell us more about the rat poison thing! What really happened?

Overall your story is so interesting. I definitely was not expecting the snake bite or anything. It was definitely a plot twist. But I enjoy stories like that, something you wouldn’t expect to happen, ends up making the story better. It sounds like you have been through a lot, and you have come out the other side stronger.
And to answer your question, yes, I would forgive her. Everyone has their own way of grieving and most people need to have something or someone else to blame for their tragedies, especially with the people they love. Your aunt lost a mother, and it was so wrong of her to do what she did to you. But you survived, and hopefully your thriving, she knows she was wrong for doing that to you and she has probably been “punished” for that by her own guilt. But it’s all about how you feel in the end.
I hope things have gotten better for you! You have a really good start here. I would just like to hear more details about this whole life-changing experience. I probably have no idea what I’m talking about because I don’t write much and when I do it’s way too much detail or not enough detail at all. But in my opinion, this is a great rough draft and has the potential to only get better!

Good luck! 🙂