Individual Work on Opiate Addiction

Question 2: What were the ways the people in the film got hooked on opiates?

"Chasing the Dragon: The Life of an Opiate Addict" is a documentary filmed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) its goal is to show the effects that opiate addiction has not only on the addicts but also their families. The documentary shows the different reasons why people fell into drug abuse, for example, some people started abusing medically prescribed drugs, and some started with softer drugs until they eventually moved into harder drugs. In the FBI documentary, Melissa says:

I was 22 years old, and that’s where everything started. I got pregnant with my youngest daughter. Once I had her they gave me OxyContins. That was the pain medicine. And from then on, that's where my addiction started. (FBI 4:40).

Later in the documentary, Matt mentions how he was talked into doing drugs by his friends. He mentioned how his friends wanted to get high one night so they did (FBI 8:57).

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Question 5: What did you learn about how fast someone can become addicted?

From this documentary, I learned that anyone at any point in life can become addicted it just takes one experience with drugs for someone to get someone addicted. In the documentary, Dr. Deeni Bassam says “The first time someone uses an opiate drug, the euphoria that they get is something that they continue to search for and seek for ” (FBI 10:43). This describes why it only takes a person one time doing drugs for them to become addicted, they are constantly longing for that euphoria. Moreover, in the documentary, Deborah Taylor says “The minute that chemical hits your bloodstream, you lose control of what it does in your body. You can’t control it” (FBI 13:48). This is saying that once the drugs are in your body everything else that happens after that is out of your control, in other words, you’re hooked on this drug the moment you first use it and that's how fast it takes for one person to become addicted.