Reflection on Teds Talk on Drug Addiction

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Reflection on Teds Talk on Drug Addiction
By (Name)
Course
Instructure
Institution
City and State
Date

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Introduction
Everything We Think We Know About Addiction Is Wrong
Following the module 3. A. assignment, our tutor gave us a variety of videos from TED’s talk to
reflect on. From the many choices, I selected a video entitled Everything We Think We Know
About Addiction Is Wrong which had more than five million viewers, but I did not literary chose
the video because of the many views, but because I thought this could change my perspective on
how I view drug addiction and mental illness. John Hari is a Journalist by profession and the
author of the book Chasing the Scream. His book discusses more on the prohibition on the war of
drugs which is a kind of reflection of his talk. Through this reflection, I will discuss my feelings
toward the video, what I have learned, and how I can use the knowledge learned from the video
in my future career.
Why Reflect.
Reflection is the process of self-examination and exploring one’s perspectives, experiences, and
interactions that help to create awareness and putting the best foot forward. It creates an
understanding of what learned and defines long-term goals. From one’s experience, one can
think critically about the problems encountered during the experience and come out with
strategies to avoid the same problems in the future (McAllister, 2013, p7). Most importantly
when nurses reflect on their experiences, they have a better understanding of their actions, which
they use in the development of professional skills. Using the reflective questions of what, where
and who, nurses can give a detailed sequence of their experience and learn from it (Koshy, 2017
p.20). Gibs model is one of the reflecting frameworks that is used in clinical reflection that uses
the six stages of the reflection cycle. The model is very effective in clinical reflection as it
enables one to describe one's experience, the feelings and thoughts, evaluate the experience,
analyze the situation and conclude on the lessons learned by stating what could be done to what

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went wrong (Emery, et.al 2017). Therefore, this article uses the Gibbs reflective model on
reflection.
Description
Hari introduced the talk by narrating his childhood experience. Through his memories he
wondered why he was able to wake up but his relative was not able, but as he grew older, he
realized that his family had a drug addiction, including cocaine addiction. It is more than a
hundred years now since drugs were burned down in the USA and Britain and taking the addicts
and punish them as well make them suffer since it was a way of incentive to stop addiction.
Through his fascinating narrative, Hari explains how the war on drugs and mistreating of drug
addicts might be harmful than drug addiction, He explains the need of moving away from
punishing people struggling with addiction and focus on compassion and creating a human
connection. He argues that the environment and poor human connections are the major reasons
for human addiction. He goes on to explain the writing of Bruce Alexander, who is a
psychologist and Emeritus Professor at Fraser University whose works were on the theories
related to chemical addictions. According to Hari, Bruce Alexander set a Rat Park experiment
which demonstrated that by any case morphine-addicted rats were provided with the fortified
environment, they would not take water with the morphine drug. Alternatively, they would take
water free from morphine as they are at a free environment where they can interact with their
partners and This was to confirm what he demonstrated on providing a conducive environment to
the addicts. He further explains the work of Dr. Gabor Mate, who is a physician in Vancouver
who spent more than ten years in treating individuals with drug addiction.in Downtown Eastside.
Hari mentions Vietnam veterans who ceased from using heroin although they had been long
using the drug. This was surprising given that long term use of heroin could lead to mental

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illness. The most amazing part was when Hari was compromised the biology part of addiction by
reasoning if addiction had a connection with biology, then patients administered with painkillers
after surgery or even after any injury, they would become addicted to heroin since they are
administered with diamorphine which has a high content of heroin. He gave an experimental
example by how grandmother with hip replacement does become a drug addict as a result of
using diamorphine for her treatment.
Hari ends the talk by requesting people to rethink the strategies on how to help people struggling
with drug addiction. He argues, punishing the addicts or making them suffer due to their
addiction may not an effective way of solving drug addiction, but people should strive to make
sure they strengthen the relationships of drug addicts rather than avoiding them.
Feelings
Hari gives his short life story on how he tried to wake up one of his relatives but could not be
able to though he could not know why it was so remorseful to learn that it was due to drug
addiction the relative died. As Hari continued narrating on drug addiction, I was very
sympathetic to drug addicts who were taken punished and made to suffer in the belief that
making the suffer would deter them and it would give them an incentive to stop which not collect
(Pence 2020 p.1). Making them suffer was just adding an insult to an injury there was no
solution to their problems. It so devastating to see that heroin addiction started a long time ago
and its addiction were controlled in a bad way this is shown on how Vietnam soldiers abused
heroin at risk for mental disorders. However, I felt amazed at how Hari made his research for the
talk. He had done various research on drug addiction including practical evidence of a rat cage
with pure water and heroin water to compare on social life and addiction. On the same Hari give
a hopeful description of how Portuguese were able to control addiction by supplying social