Final Blog for Women's Studies 326 Women and Addiction

I want you to reflect on your experience in the class-- How has your understanding of addiction changed? Are you able to integrate what you have learned in your real life or your major? Has the way you talk about, feel about, empathize towards addiction/addicts changed?

Before taking Women's Studies 326: Women and Addiction I though I understood addiction, maybe even a bit more than the average person. Now, after almost 10 weeks of reading and discussing addiction, I realize just how little I knew and understood about addiction, especially the relationship between addiction, patriarchy, hierarchy, and capitalism. Without a doubt, Charlotte Kasl's "Is Addiction Inevitable? Patriarchy, Hierarchy, and Capitalism" and Dr. Northrup's "The Patriarchal Myth and the Addictive System" are my two favorite readings from the quarter. Both of these readings are from the first weeks of the quarter, when I realized just how little I understood. I don't remember if I really even had an opinion on why people resort to addictive behaviors before this class. I think I felt like the reasons were mostly personal. Now, nothing seems personal to me. Everything seems so much more connected to the world in which we live, even how people behave and interact. Kasl's piece really helped me to see this. She writes (emphasis mine):

"Patriarchy, hierarchy, and capitalism create, encourage, maintain, and perpetuate addiction and dependency. Patriarchy and hierarchy are based on domination and subordination, which result in fear. This fear is expressed by the dominators through control and violence, and in the subordinated people through passivity and repression of anger. The external conflict of hierarchy between dominants and subordinates becomes internalized in individuals, creating personal inner chaos, anxiety, and duality. To quell the inner conflict people resort to addictive substances and behavior."

Kasl's talk of psychic numbing and dissociation really helped me to understand how people with addiction issues don't see that the problems they face in life are caused by the addiction and not something else. While listening to the news or hearing other people talk about the problems we face as a society, I find myself thinking of her illustration of hierarchy and patriarchy and I've even yelled at the TV "outside solutions don't work for inside problems!" (yes, I know the people talking on the TV can't hear me).

Dr. Northup's writings really spoke to me as well, probably due to her talking about how women don't trust their bodies anymore, especially in relation to birth. Every time I teach, my main objective is to get women to trust their bodies and their inner wisdom.

I could write for hours about these two authors but since this blog was due 7 minutes ago I won't. I do want to end with an example of how my deeper understanding about addiction helped me at work.

Last week I took a young woman expecting her first and her mother on a tour of labor and delivery. The pregnant mom was very quiet and seemed very uncomfortable. While showing them a postpartum room the soon-to-be grandmother asked how long after delivery her daughter would be able to go downstairs and smoke. Ten weeks ago I would have been appalled. While I would have done my best to hide it, I know my feelings would show on my face. But I wasn't appalled. I answered the mother's question. The young woman then opened up a little bit and said she had tried to quit but wasn't able to give it up completely because everyone around her still smoked; her boyfriend, sisters, and parents. I told her that her situation makes it that much harder to quit. She seemed to perk up a bit more and said that she was able to cut back quite a bit. Her mom told me she was really surprised at how well her daughter was taking care of herself since becoming pregnant and that she was proud of her. I excitedly told the pregnant mom that she was doing awesome; that her cutting back was helpful, and, in taking better care of herself and eating healthier foods, she may be able to minimize some of the risks associated with smoking. We continued the tour and the pregnant mom seemed so much more comfortable with me. She even starting asking questions about the rest of her pregnancy, labor and birth. Had I not reacted the way I did to her mom's question, I think the situation would have been very different. But I didn't judge her and I didn't blame her, which is so often what I see others in the medical field do. This class did changed that for me.

Thank you, Ms. Genetin. Your class was awesome.