The topic of addiction is one of the more prominent issues taking people’s interests. It is a topic that screams urgency and depth to outsiders looking for stories to tell, however the truth is that this story has been told many times before. This story lets you in to people’s lives, lets you view the destruction and pain caused by these substances. The moral of the story is; stay away from drugs. My goal is to tell a different story using a cast of similar characters. I would like to venture down the less trodden path and portray addiction in a more holistic way. I want to ask society “why the pain?” not “why the addiction?” Of course this perspective is not entirely original either (no story can be) but it is certainly the angle less discussed.

An important point in understanding my view is to recognize that it isn’t just drugs. It can really be anything. During the course of my background research I found a Ted Talk where a man describes his very real addiction to classical music, and how even that has the potential to ruin someones life.  I don’t want my purpose to be scare tactics or my message to be for kids to stay away from drugs. I want to utilize local stories to illustrate the symptoms of this societal disease, but I want my message to be about the bigger picture, about why these problems exist in the first place and what we’re doing wrong. Why is it that the current system for dealing with this issue mainly augments the problem.

I want to find out what it is about the way we live that makes addiction such a common result. Addiction isn’t a sickness of the individual, but a sickness of society. We can’t only focus on treating individuals because that is only treating the symptoms, not curing the disease. It is my belief that in this story missing pieces will be found. I believe that telling the story from this perspective makes solutions more possible.