Radouane 1

Houda Raouane

Debora Strehle

ENG 1201

20 June 2019

Addiction

Addiction is a word that I didn't understand until I was affected by it. When my younger

brother was 17 year old, he was clueless about cigarettes and drugs. Until one day, a girl that he

had liked at the time gave him a cigarette. He wanted to impress her, so he gave in and smoked a

cigarette. From then on, he started doing other kinds of drugs, such as marijuana. So that one

mistake of trying one cigarette spindles into many other terrible things.

My brother’s addiction affects my entire family, especially my parents, they’re the ones

that suffered back and still suffer to this day. My parents didn’t pay much attention to him at the

beginning. But when he started coming home late and sometimes not coming home at all without

their permission, my parents started to get concerned. My mother would always yell at my father

to go look for him. My father, however never did. He was naive and thought that he was with a

nice friend. My family and I thought he was going to stop after a while, but he never did.

Therefore, I chose addiction as my topic so that I can try to understand what is going through his

head.

My motivation for choosing this topic is to try to understand why my brother does this to

himself and to maybe find a solution. My brother’s addiction to drugs has really impacted me in

many ways. I will never look at addiction the same. It seems much more vicious to me, because

it happened to my brother. My brother has gone to a doctor, who gave him medications to help

his with his problem. However, the medications only made it worse. He would take more than
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necessary. When I was looking at my options of topics, I debated in my mind whether I should

choose such a personal topic. Nevertheless, I saw this as an opportunity to get closure.

I feel very emotional when I go into this topic, because it has been a big obstacle in my

life. I almost feel hesitant to speak about it. What I think about this topic is that people don’t talk

enough about this, especially in my country (Morocco). All people do to “try to fix this” is put

out a couple commercials and posters at schools. People should actually try to do something

about laws of drugs and alcohol. People aren’t taking this as seriously as they should. I believe

that people don’t take addiction seriously enough. Not everyone that has an addiction is able to

admit themselves into a hospital or rehab for free, when they should. Addiction should be

considered an illness, because it can just as dangerous as cancer. I know the consequences of

addiction and the psychological and physical effects of addictions. However, I don’t know

everything about addiction.

What I would like to know about this topic is why it is hard to convince the person that is

addicted that they have an issue and need to get hospitalized. I would also like to know how

addiction can be fixed. I think if I do enough research, I could possibly find the answers to these

questions.