Basketball Diaries

Basketball Diaries

Basketball Diaries
I have been pounded with drug facts my whole life, as you said in class, so I knew a lot about this subject. I did learn some things about heroin though. I didn’t know that it was painful to be without it for even a couple of hours. I understand that it is painful because heroin mimics endorphins, but I thought that it was just impossible to stop pain; but they showed me that the pain was caused by just withdrawal. I have always known that drugs can lead you down hill, especially heroin and cocaine, so that was not a shock.
This move relates to the altered states of consciousness section of psychology. It gave an in depth look at many of the drugs in the book. Cocaine was the first drug that they revealed the after effects of using it. He started to become addicted and then he said that his poems started to become worse. This shows that the cocaine started to affect his brain in negative ways, and he suffered for it. In addition, when he used the cocaine he became more aggressive; though I think his reaction to the basketball coach in the showers would have still been violent, but the cocaine magnified his aggression. His next drug of choice was heroin. He described this as a warm rush over his body, which disposed of any pain or negative feeling that he had in his body. After awhile he became addicted and started to need larger doses to ease the pain, which is caused by the lack of neurotransmitters such as endorphins that accompanied withdrawal.
This movie was very direct on its message. It was based on a true story; Jim Carrel, the character played by DiCaprio, was who the movie was based on. The movie was defiantly trying to give an anti-drug message. Jim started out as just a kid who was having fun with his friends no matter what he was doing, playing basketball or doing drugs. After awhile he started to get into drugs like heroin. There was a dialogue in the movie about the first time he used heroin; he was in the basement of his...

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