Alcoholism In Part Time Indian Essay

Alcoholism is one of our nation’s largest social issues to date, and carries with it many negative aspects, the most dire being death at the hands of this disease. Alcohol and alcoholism have been part of societies for centuries. This habit was brought over to the new world when the first settlers landed on the shores of what was to become America. Furthermore, in bringing alcohol to this new land an entire nation of Native American Indians were introduced to a product that has affected them more negatively than any other to date, and continues to suffer from today and probably well into the future.

In chapter three- section four, “You rot the guts of our men, “of the Native American Testimony book, King Haglar talks about the sale of alcohol and the influences it has on his men. He writes a letter to the White men in regards to stop the sale of alcohol with the Native Americans. He says that alcohol has lead the Indians to act out in an inappropriate manner and have had extreme intoxications that has lead them to extreme sickness or their death.

F. Scott Fitzgerald once said “First you take a DRINK then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.” Later Fitzgerald capitulated and died of a heart attack due to being an alcoholic the last 2 years of his life. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian written by Sherman Alexie talks about a 14 year old Indian boy changing his life. He goes to a white school, and changes into a different person throughout the story. The story talks about other real life dilemmas, like death and alcohol. There are multiple themes that are present throughout the story, but one theme that protrudes is that alcoholism kills.

Furthermore, by being surrounded by this statement, the fear and endangerment that their father caused them with his reckless drinking. There is a normalization of fear during “What Mom called Dad’s ‘beer phase.’ We could all handle that. Dad drove fast and sang really loud, and locks of his hair fell into his face, and life was a little bit scary but still a lot of fun” (Walls 21). Jeannette’s description of her father's alcoholic episodes sugar coat what she experienced and calls these events fun, because of the resilience her parents have forced on her with the idea of ‘not surrendering to fear.’

April’s parents and Cheryl turn to alcohol to blur out their problems, but it only causes more damage. The author uses the themes of addiction, racism, and trauma to illustrate that it can damage identity and create problems that affect more than one

Like many other people living on the reservation, the narrator struggles with alcohol addiction. Part of the culture surrounding the use of alcohol is to escape from problems. It is used like a crutch in times of fear. The narrator explains on page 129 that he drank heavily before visiting the hospital; “so I wouldn’t be scared of all the white walls and the sound

Ward et. al. explores alcohol and other drug abuses specifically in Native American college students. Using referenced data, the author clarifies that while Native Americans are one of the lowest percentage of groups that use alchol, they have the largest percentage of being a binge drinker. Relavent information clearly compares alcohol abuse in the Native American college population to that of the average US college student. The paper gives a transparent view of the data and thorough discriptions of what they deemed as alcohol “use” and “binge drinking”. Ward’s findings showed that there was no statistical evidence that Native American college students were more likely to binge drink than non-Native American students.

Binge drinking is the most common form of substance abuse among native americans. The heavier the drinking is usually because they are depressed, anxious, or hopeless. A lot of these native americans feel powerless and conflicted, a reason they become so dependent on alcohol.

Native Americans have struggled to rise above and escape their impoverished reservations because they use alcohol to cope. The alcohol causes the Natives to lower their ambitions and become self destructive. Many might claim that alcohol abuse is not that common on reservations and is not the main source of scarcity of Native success. Not all Native Americans engage in alcoholism. There are “many tribes and individual Native Americans [who] practice abstinence and drinking in moderation, aligning the substance abuse levels of their tribe with the rest of the country” (addictiontreatment.org). It is evident that there is no absolute when it comes to the amount of Native Americans who abuse alcohol. Many are conscious of the disastrous effects

These two problems go together, as most of the crime committed by Native Americans are directly related to alcohol. As said by Brenda Donelan, “Native Americans constitute less than one percent of the total population in the United States; however, Indian offenses amount to nearly ten percent of the overall federal cases (68). They make up such a small amount of the population, yet account for so much of America’s crime, proving how the use of alcohol not only affects their health, but the well being of the people around them. For Native Americans, alcohol is involved in seventy percent of all fatal accidents, eighty percent of all suicides, and ninety percent of all homicides (Grobsmith 286). Alcohol has such a negative imprint on Native American life, and affects their community so severely.

The impact of various kinds of substances to cultural groups has historically been precipitated by the significance of particular substances on different cultural groups (Moore, 2010).This is mainly because the long term usage of these substances leads to the integration of the consumption of the substance into the cultural patterns of the given group. One such group that has been affected by the extensive usage of a particular substance is the Native American community. According to the Associated Press (2014, August 28), as noted on the MSNBC website, out of ten deaths among the Native American population, one is Alcohol related. Additionally, the prevalence of Alcohol consumption among the Native American population relates to

Alcoholism is a prevalent social epidemic for Native Americans, especially among youth between the ages of 13 to 18 that reside on the reservations. Alcoholism and chronic substance abuse among Native America youth is increasing at a rapid rate in the past few years. Alcoholism is risk of substance abuse or dependence is consistently elevated in adolescents who had been victims of assault or who had witnessed violence (Kilpatrick, Acierno, Saunders, Resnick, Best, & Schnurr, 2000). Inherent risks associated with substance abuse range from minor poor judgement errors to life-threating events, for example dose overdose or acute drug hypersensitivity (Beauvais, 1992). Studies have not yet found a clear biological mechanism that would explain alcoholism and excessive drinking, but a number of them have suggested a possibility of some kind of predisposition to the condition (Clinard & Meier, 2015). This paper presents an analysis of family structure, alcoholism diagnosis criteria, and psychological effects associated with chronic alcohol abuse among Native American youth.

Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism have caused a major chaos for the people in the Native American culture. Furthermore, the Native Americans have gone through massive physical and emotional problems that cause an unfortunate stereotype that has further troubled the Native communities of North America. By this stereotyping the Natives, it extended the image that all Indian people are afflicted

Native American Reservations Native Americans have extremely high rates of alcohol and drug abuse, especially by young people. “According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, nearly 9.2% of Native Americans ages 12 and older were current heavy alcohol users, the highest rate of any ethnic group. In 2015, approximately 346,000 Native Americans reported binge drinking within the past month” (Guarnotta). This increases the rates of youth dropping out of school, exceeding the rates of White, Hispanic, and African American youth dropouts. Native American teen suicide rate is 2.5 times greater than the national average (Guarnotta).

     The book has many short stories that sometimes are connected with others. The book focuses mainly on showing the degraded Indian society, where everyone is or will be an alcoholic. The story ?The Only Traffic Signal on the Reservation Doesn?t Flash Red Anymore? (Alexie p. 43-53) is an example of how the author depicts alcoholism in the Indian society. In this story there is a young Indian that could have a nice future playing basketball. However, he turns out to be just like most of the other Indians in his reservation. He was committing crimes and then started drinking.