PB1a

Amanda Amico
English 101- 108
 October 13, 2016
 Pb1A
                                                  "Drug Addiction and Genres"
    I picked Drug Addiction for my topic. You can learn about drug addiction in several different places from the subway to the CNN News. There are many written things you can find on drug addiction. These are all genres on this topic. Drug Addiction is a chronic, often relapsing brain disease that causes compulsive drug seeking and use despite harmful consequences to the addict and those around them. Drug Addiction is a brain disease because the abuse of drugs leads to changes in the structure of the brain. Kerry Dirk introduced us to something called genres and explained how important it is to be able to identify them and understand how they function (Navigating Genre, Dirk).
   So let’s take a look at some on this topic of drug addiction. There are articles published in newspapers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Daily News frequently, talking about drug addiction – especially opiates – on the rise at an alarming rate across the United States. You also see advertisements on the subway and buses seeking drug addicted individuals to do addiction studies for statistical, medical, and scientific research studies. There are even adds for rehabs, welcoming addicts to come get clean. In the field of drug addiction, you have doctors, counselors, psychiatrists, psychologists, rehab and clinical technicians, etc., who all have to write notes on the patients they treat called progress notes. These notes are used to document the client’s progression/ regression while in treatment. It is also known protocol for them to conduct what’s called a biopsychosocial, which documents the client’s addiction history. They then put this information together to form what’s called a patient’s chart, which is used to identify the patient and to give other doctors/clinicians/addiction specialist knowledge of the client. There are several papers published in scientific and medical journals on drug addiction.
   You can also see it written about in articles of magazines such as People, Harvard, and Time Magazine just to name a few. Tabloids are even known to write about celebrity drug addictions. Robert Downey Jr., Lindsay Lohan, and Brittany Spears have all struggled with drug addiction and been the target of media articles talking about it. There are warnings posted on over the counter medication labels warning of addiction risks as well as information packets given out with prescription about medications informing patients of dependency risks that come with certain meds.
    As many of you know when there is something like addiction, there must be something in place that helps teach how to battle this “disease”. In this case there are the N.A Basic Text and the A.A Big Book that help teach addicts about the 12 steps of recovery and a new way of life. They also hand out pamphlets with all types of information of locations holding meetings and recovery information such as “Just for Today” handouts. These are placed all over the city, so they are easily accessible. You can even find drug addiction being written about in poems or the lyrics of a song. Drug Addiction is something that people tend to write FB posts and blog about on social media, it’s actually a very controversial topic.
 Although, in the United States it’s becoming a more and more accepted topic of conversation. President Obama gave a speech in which he read off a tele-prompter addressing the rise in drug addiction rise and staggering overdose toll in our nation, and how he had a plan to combat it and try to get all suffering addicts help. Websites like WebMD have even been made to educate and speak on drug addiction.
     Surprised? I bet you are, because I know I am. I never realized how many places I could find written text having to do with drug addiction. The even more mind blowing thing is every individual thing I just named that were written texts on the topic are all individual genres. Genres are everywhere. We can find them in any written thing, because every text written is a form of genre on a certain topic. When I started this class I thought genre meant types of music. I never understood genres were way more that until I was given this assignment, so I guess now you can call me enlightened!

 WORK CITED:
 1. www.m.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/drug-abuse-addiction
 2. www.drugabuse.gov>publications
 3.www.cnn.com/2016/05/12/health/opiod-addiction-history/
 4. www.facebook.com/pages/drugaddiction/111701262179435