A Million Little Pieces Theme Essay

     John Hughes’ 1985 film, The Breakfast Club, gives countless examples of the principles of interpersonal communication. Five high school students: Allison, a weirdo, Brian, a nerd, John, a criminal, Claire, a prom queen, and Andrew, a jock, are forced to spend the day in Saturday detention. By the end of the day, they find that they have more in common than they ever realized.

At the beginning of my training, I was hesitant to work with people struggling with addiction. However, at this point, I am excited to begin working with this population. The raw honesty presented in the group setting along with the anger at the possibility of losing a safe place created a dynamic I wanted to further explore. Research supports that individuals attending group therapy in a 12 step program format succeed if they have the proper support and motivation (Cite). The group dynamic demonstrated that recovery takes time and self-discovery, similar to other situations dealt with in therapy. Subsequently, by using my sense of self and humor with clients struggling with addiction, I can help them in their journey. Furthermore, the client needs to identify accountability at their own pace in the process and not when others dictate. This knowledge and the personalization of addiction will aid me in the future support of my

Although Of Mice and Men definitely teaches young students about how the setting was set up back then, the themes of abuse and death included could be found highly inappropriate or offensive to young students today. These themes arise from the multiple abusive and gory deaths of characters throughout the novel. For example, the novel included a reoccurring scene of murder of innocent animals by Lennie including mice and puppies. Some readers are not able to handle such grimness, therefore finding it repugnant or simply unacceptable. Readers with their own pets may also feel a terrible sense of guilt and repulsiveness by simply reading the novel. Another example is portrayed when Lennie violently kills Curley’s wife by shaking her to death.

Jim, a high school all-star basketball player becomes addicted to heroin. He tries to hide his addiction, but it becomes quite prevalent when it begins to overtake his life entirely. To begin with, Jim reflects on his first experiences with heroin and refers to it as a “chippy” habit. He isn’t aware of the addictiveness of this potent drug, which shortly becomes habitual. His addiction leads to him being kicked off the basketball team, out of his own house, and then desperate on the streets of New York City alongside of his friends. This substantially progresses his addiction, resulting in him passing out in the snow one night. Thanks to Jim’s former basketball friend, Jim is forced to withstand from heroin. Jim become extremely agitated from withdrawal and escapes to look for some more. Jim later finds himself in a six-month rehab, which he notes “the

Individually, we create a metaphorical puzzle as we reflect on our life. These puzzle pieces represent all of the small-scale decisions we’ve made. Inside of those decisions, also consists of other people and how they influenced our upbringings. When this puzzle is put together, all of these decisions create one large picture. Specifically, Wes Moore’s “puzzle” obtains unfinished than other people, these pieces may not fit particularly well with other pieces, and they may never will. The reader may never perceive why Wes made any of the poor decisions he has made in his lifetime, nevertheless, there’s one large section of the puzzle that holds together–this would be Wes Moore’s influence from drug abuse. The idea of drug abuse continues to be frowned upon by other people. However, what most people may not understand is that there’s an addiction that comes with it, not an addiction to the drugs specifically, though an addiction to the lifestyle that came with it.

Alcoholics Anonymous can help individuals struggling with substance abuse. Low self-esteem in a person has been implicated in the development of alcohol use disorder, and relapse (Donovan, Ingalsbe, Benbow, & Daley, 2013). In this report, I will discuss her experience of visiting an Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting at Buckeye Easy Does It (BEDI). I will also present the topic of the meeting, her reaction to the topic, how 12-step can help. The barriers one might experience at the meeting, psychological and emotional impact, and how low self-esteem can affect an individual attending their first AA meeting.

Scalise, E. (2009). The addictive cycle. Addiction and recovery. American Association of Christian Counselors. Retrieved from http://learn.liberty.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=/webapps/blackboard/execute/courseMain?course_id=_98206_1

When Augusten was checked into his rehab center, he had relatively few symptoms of clinical withdrawal. The only major one pointed out was a high blood pressure, which could have easily been due to the journey in which he knew he was about to embark on. But, it is a different story altogether when he is in the midst of a relapse. After a sleepless, sick feeling night, Augusten falls into withdrawal. It starts with hallucinations of spiders (criterion B.5 for the DSM diagnosis of withdrawal). After 24 hours of no alcohol he feels as if he is dying. His body is shaking and his hands have such bad tremors “they vibrate” (criterion B.2). His heart rate has increased dramatically (Criterion B.1) to the point that it “woke me up…beating so wildly in my chest…like someone pounding on the front door”. The

In the book, Addiction & Grace: Love and Spirituality in the Healing of Addictions, May explores how addiction develops and can be treated from a psychological, physiological, and spiritual standpoint. This theme is clearly shown through out the text as it shows addiction from a whole person view. The book covers the development of addiction from desire through the experience of addiction. The key focus on looking at the matter of addiction from multiple stand points in then broken down by explaining how addiction is an issue psychologically, physiologically, and spiritually. By focusing on these three areas the author is able to present the reader with a clear understanding of addiction from all sides of the problem. This is then

Through a variety of literary and cinematic techniques respectively, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice And Men and Sean Penn’s Into The Wild illustrate how the fulfilment of one’s life, and their pursuit of happiness, hinge upon friendship, dreams, and one’s attitude towards life and happiness in general. Steinbeck’s 1937 novella Of Mice And Men illustrates the importance of friendship and dreams in a context of hardship and economic downturn. This is done by using George and Lennie and their dream of landownership and material possession to demonstrate how dreams give people the hope required to drive themselves, and how friendship offers them the ability to keep going even if their own spirit should break. Sean Penn’s 2007 film Into The Wild

This experience has changed the way I see those who haven’t had enough and those who haven’t found away out of the addicted world. I’ve learned there is more to a person than their appearance and in these cases there is a lot of hurt and anger in their souls. Even after recovery some people still carry around guilt and anger. Some are ashamed because they let something affect them in a way in which they lost control. Others are angry at

The Breakfast Club, directed by John Hughes, is a movie that has become a classic for many generations. It is about five high school students, all from different cliques, that come together during detention and discover that they all share common problems they would have never imagined. Each student did something completely different yet they all broke the rules and ended up meeting. Those few hours in that room opened not only their eyes, but also the viewers’ eyes on how wrong we can be during those years of our lives. This movie has impacted so many generations because it is true to what the high school experience really is and how judgmental teens can be without really knowing each other.

The alarm clock went off. It was Monday, fight day, or for Mindy about every other day. Mindy was battling a stupid music-lover named Gazpacho. She honestly did not know why this dude thought he could actually get a scratch on her. She could flick him in the face just once and that would be all it took to put him in a coma for at least a week. If it wasn’t for her refusal to become a murderer, this guy would be dead within five minutes.

Waking up from the Matrix, for example, is agonizing in a similar way to recovering from an addiction. When Neo wakes up, he struggles to breathe as he pulls himself out of a thick pool of gelatin. With cords attached to all parts of his body, he is choked by a machine as it unscrews a plug once secured in his skull. In a less gruesome but still painful way, drug rehabilitation involves an excruciating physical withdrawal process. The choice to withdraw, similar to leaving the Matrix, is essentially up to the individual.

The truth is constantly avoided, as said by the author of The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, “The truth is like poetry and most people fucking hate poetry”- Michael Lewis. The Big Short connects to the tragedy, “All My Sons”, written by Arthur Miller in 1947 and the Volkswagen emissions scandal by valuing money over everything. The quote also connects to both the play and the scandal by running around the truth at all costs. The play, “All My Sons”, is a tragic play in which the father, Joe Keller, lies about his part in the transaction of faulty plane parts. Avoiding public shame and jail time, he throws his partner, Steve Deever, under the bus for the crimes before Steve’s son George ultimately identifies Joe as the true culprit. Minutes after