Drug Use and AIDs
AIDS is a disease that has altered
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AIDS is a disease that has altered a number of societal practices and patterns in a relatively short time. The disease has been known widely for no more than about 15 years, and in that time it has had a profound effect on human sexual behavior in Western society. Not every community or group is affected by AIDS in the same way, which is also one reason the scientific, medical, and governmental response was so slow in developing. AIDS has had its greatest effect in what are considered by many to be marginal communities rather than the mainstream, marginal in the sense of minority and stigmatized, like the homosexual community and the population that uses illegal intravenous drugs. Arguably, it was only with clear evidence that the disease was spreading into the non-drug-using heterosexual community that a stronger response from government and the medical community was forthcoming. AIDS has been devastating to those who are part of these marginal subcultures. The psychological effects of AIDS have been strong in the IV-drug using community, though this has not necessarily meant a change in behavior in a positive direction. Rather than abstaining from the practices that spreads AIDS, many drug users see this as only one more reason for the despair that drove them to drug use in the first place, and they use drugs even more as a way of escaping. In addition, many users are interested only in the immediate effects of their drug use and do not think past th
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raumatic stress and depression for large numbers of men affected by the epidemic (Kanouse, Berry, Gorman, Yano, and Carson, 1991, xii).
Scheper Hughes and Locke (1991) note that societal and cultural responses to dreaded diseases such as cancer and AIDS create a second illness, or "double," involving layers of stigma, rejection, fear, and exclusion. While the symptoms of the illness are biological entities, they are also coded metaphors that speak to the contradictory aspects of social life, expressing sentiments, feelings, and ideas that must otherwise be kept hidden. The authors feel that this harks back to the 1972 model of T. Parsons of sickness as deviance and to the understanding of Karl Marx of worker alienation as it is expressed covertly and symbolically in religious belief and behavior (Scheper-Hughes and Locke, 1991, 409-432). Sontag (1989) agrees with this general assessment and notes how cancer was made synonymous with evil metaphorically, while having AIDS is seen today as an imputation of guilt, and in this case the guilt comes from a known source: "Indeed, to get AIDS is precisely to be revealed, in the majority of cases so far, as a member of a certain 'risk group,' a community of pariahs" (Sontag, 1989, 24-25).
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Approximate Word count = 4451
Approximate Pages = 18 (250 words per page)
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