Different illicit drugs Essay Example for Free

Different illicit drugs Essay Janis Joplin’s experimentation with several different illicit drugs led to her overdose of heroin at the age of 27. Joplin began her fascination with the drug culture as part of the beatnik generation in coffee houses and bars across her home state of Texas and in New York City’s Greenwich Village. Joplin developed a love of speed and alcohol that rivaled man of hermale counterparts of the day (Rock n’ Roll Heaven, 2007). She had a heroin habit that she indulged in for years, but kicked until she began working on her final album â€Å"Pearl†. During the making of the album, Joplin began using heroin again. Friends and family members report that Joplin was always careful with her heroin usage. â€Å"She made every attempt to be cautious when using and made sure to buy from only one dealer who always had his stuff checked by a chemist. It turns out that the bag Janis bought that Saturday, October 3rd afternoon was not checked by the dealers chemist who was out of town at the time. The heroin was 50 percent pure and would prove to be a fatal mistake. (Rock n’ Roll Heaven, 2007). Official investigations into her death tried to blame on everything from a CIA conspiracy to silence the voice of her generation to an intentional suicide, but the coroner ruled that her death came as a result of heroin overdose complicated with alcohol use. Her death was a seriously tragic error. The dealer gave her heroin that was simply too good. Joplin’s alcohol use was legendary. She was rarely seen without a bottle of Southern Comfort and she appeared on national television drunk in 1970 not long before her death. Appearing on the Dick Cavett show, Joplin was so drunk she was slurring her words when she said she would be going to her 10 year high school reunion to face her demons and those who tormented her in high school. â€Å", They laughed me out of class, out of town and out of state; so Im going back. This was in response to her return home to attend her 10 year high school reunion, her first visit back to Texas since rock and roll stardom had struck. This would be the last time Janis would see her family. † (Rock n’ Roll Heaven 2007). Even before she achieved fame, Joplin was well-known as an alcoholic. Once she achieved fame, her drug use was just as well known. Joplin’s choices of drugs were influenced by her upbringing and her generation. Psycotropic drugs and mind-expanding substances were everywhere in the rock scene in the 1960s and Janis Joplin made a meteoric rise to the top of that scene. After being an outcast in high school, Joplin wanted desparately to fit in and would do whatever it took to get there. Unfortunately, according to the biography written by Laura Joplin, Janis found too quickly that it was lonely at the top and turned to heroin and alcohol as a cure. Joplin discovered the hard way what too many other celebrities have also found out: drug use is no substitute for good mental health. Joplin’s choice of drugs is especially damning considering what she was trying to escape. Alcohol, though a disinhibitor, is also a depressant and the long-term effects of heroin include depression as well. In short, she was trying to fight off the loneliness and depression of her situation by adding more depressants. Heroin, at least short term, may have made the loneliness appear less stressful. The short-term effects of heroin is an immediate rush of energy caused by the release of endorphins and then depressed respiration and the desire to sleep for several hours. In her already depressed state, and with the alcohol effects in place, Joplin regularly used the drugs as a way to â€Å"rest† between recording sessions. The problem was that on the night of her death, both the alcohol and heroin lowered her body’s metabolism and it fell so low that the body could not recover. Joplin’s pattern of substance abuse began when she left high school and began performing in coffeehouses, bars and anywhere else that would let her sing. She had been an outcast in her high school and looked for a way to fit in with the cool crowd of musicians and those who loved them. She found her answer in drugs. In the 1960s, the drug culture was so prevalent that almost everyone literally was doing it and Joplin found her niche right away. She began with alcohol, a reasonably well accepted drug of choice and then moved on to stronger drugs as she gained more fame. Joplin’s primary drug of choice, besides Southern Comfort, was speed. Like heroin, speed provides an immediate â€Å"rush† for the user and can act as a mood enhancer, making people who are lonely or depressed feel better about their situation. It is likely that Janis Joplin used it for this reason and because users report feeling more creative while using speed. This effect is a result of the hyperactivity of the nervous system and people who are taking speed often appear twitch or jumpy. There are no known indications that it does make a person more creative, but that was the message of the drug culture at that time. The curious question about Janis Joplin is whether her substance abuse began before her music career or after it. Though the legend of Janis Joplin as a hard-living rock star would indicate that she began indulging in drugs after becoming famous, her life would tend to indicate either that she had substance abuse problems dating back to high school or that she had other emotional and psychological factors present in her pre-fame life which mimicked the social repercussions of substance abuse. Prior to leaving high school, Joplin was an outcast, unable to fit in socially with her peers. She reportedly had behaviorial issues and was eventually kicked out of school for those problems. These issues may have been related to her role as a political activist in the turbulent times of the early 1960s, including her activism on behalf of African American rights in Texas. However, these issues are also consistent with alcohol abuse and other substance abuse. It is completely within reason to believe that Joplin may have developed her dependence on alcohol at a much earlier age than previously acknowledged and began supplementing that addiction with harder, illegal drugs as she gained fame. Unfortunately, most biographies of the rock superstar are written by friends, family or adoring fans and no one appears to have any desire to make the rock star culpable for any of her own behaviors. Instead, her drug use and sexual excess is put down to the era and the need for self-expression. The saddest realization is that in reality the use of drugs and alcohol probably stunted Joplin’s creativity and most definitely shortened her lifespan.

Life Changing Experience Essay -- Personal Narrative essays research p

Life Changing Experience   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Death. To people it means many different things. Some people may not think anything of it, until it strikes close to them. I know before I had my father pass away, I never thought once about it.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  When I first heard of my dad dying, it made me sad. I was ten or eleven, not old enough yet to understand, why someone would want to take their own life. I was crushed when it happened. It was like a part of me was missing, like someone had ripped my heart out and laid a direct attack on me.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  When I learned he had committed suicide it made me very angry. I kept thinking how could someone do that and hurt his whole family. Especially my brothers and I. I kept thinking how could someone be thinking for their self and not considering the effects it would ha...

The Computer: Humankind’s Greatest Scientific Discovery

Discoveries throughout time have moved mankind forward in many fields, such as medicine, technology, communications and manufacturing. These findings have also contributed to shifting the way humankind operates on a global basis. Defining the greatest discovery should encompass the revelations which have had the most beneficial impact on our societies. For our generation, it is the founding of the computer. The computer has affected virtually every aspect of our lives, from the way people do business to the way we communicate. Since its humble beginnings with the inventions of the first binary computer in 1936 by Konrad Zuse, and the mechanical calculator, the use of computer has become more than just widespread: it has developed into a phenomenon that has altered the lives of every human living on Earth today in some shape or form. In 1939, Hewlett Packard was founded and by 1945, John von Neumann had discovered electronic storage for data. Subsequently, the year 1967 saw the first metal oxide semiconductor built by Fairchild Camera and Seymour Papert, and it created a language on the computer for children that operated a mechanical turtle. Later in 1967, the first storage system for digital photography was invented by IBM, which had the ability to translate a trillion bits of information. In 1994, Windows first browser Netscape 1.0 was released. Additionally, the Internet search engine, Yahoo, was invented. From this point, computer technologies have constantly been improving and have resulted in modern wonders. Computers have made the technological advances we enjoy today possible. These include online purchasing, business and private communication through social networks, selling to global markets, creating personal websites, or talking to people while seeing them on our computer screens while they are thousands of miles away, and many more advances. All of this is done with little cost, except for a wireless connection fee. People tend to store information not in the public archives, libraries, or in other ways that require using physical media, but in a digital format with the help of cloud technologies. Many significant scientific discoveries are made with the help of computers, and even if the findings are made by hand, computers are still used to process and calculate data gathered during these researches. Computers are indispensable for many business and financial operations, exchange trades, freelance jobs, medicine, production quality control and studying – almost all aspects of life today are tied to the use of the computer. Clement Mok, former creative director of Apple, once said, â€Å"Five years ago, we thought of the Web as a new medium, not a new economy.† As civilization races ahead, technology also speeds up, creating new markets and jobs while helping with advances in medicine and agriculture. Computers have evolved from a simple mechanical calculator, which was still revolutionary for its time, into a sophisticated and complicated helpful tool that has become an essential part of humans’ everyday lives. Nowadays, it is difficult to find a part of modern humanity's existence which has not been reshaped by the invention of the computer, and there is no way of knowing where this great discovery will end up leading civilization in the future. ReferencesMok, Clement.   â€Å"Technology Quotes.† IT History Society. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Jan. 2013. .â€Å"Computer History Museum.† Timeline of Computer History. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Jan. 2013..

Comparing Dante s Inferno And Shakespeare s Play King Lear

Dante’s Inferno and Shakespeare’s play King Lear have many similar motifs within them that allude to human suffering. One such motif is as long as you can find the words to describe how bad a situation is, things can get worse. We see this concept in Dante’s Inferno when Dante the Pilgrim is traveling deeper into the depths of hell and he exclaims, â€Å"If I had words grating and crude enough that really could describe this horrid hole†¦I could squeeze out the juice of my memories to the last drop. But I don’t have these words, and so I am reluctant to begin.† While travelling through hell, Dante has seen the worst humanity has to offer, and the farther he goes, the less he can describe exactly what he is seeing, much like how in our lives, the deeper we travel within ourselves, the less we are able to describe what we are feeling. In King Lear, we see the same problem outlined through the fool when he warns Lear, â€Å"And worse I may be yet . The worse is not so long as we can say, ‘This is the worst.’† Both the Inferno and King Lear, explore the deepest parts of humanity in order to demonstrate that we may not always be able to explain what is within us because what is within us, is oftentimes unrecognizable to ourselves, so much so that even our language cannot put forth the words. Another motif found in both works is the matter of blindness, and when we are blind to the consequences of sin, it is much easier to jump into the unknown. In King Lear, Gloucester accepts death as a