Susie Student
Mrs. Leskie
CP B – English II
21 December 2006
Drugs and Addiction as Portrayed in Contemporary Fiction
Valiant A Modern Tale of Faerie is about a girl who discovers her mother is sleeping with her boyfriend. Val, acting out of anger, runs away to New York city to meet new friends who introduce her to a world of living in subways, a world of fantasy and faeries and a world of magical drugs. Val and her friend Lolli get in trouble with a troll so Val offers to work for him so he’ll spare their lives. She runs errands and delivers medicine to all the ill faeries who have been exiled to the city. This medicine is the magical drug they all use, but here’s the catch, someone has been poisoning the faeries and who better to blame than the alchemist, Ravus, who makes the drug or the delivery girl, Val It is Val’s challenge to find the real murderer and to win Ravus’ heart back, both literally and figuratively.
Themain characters in this are Val and her subway dwelling friends. Val is a female lacrosse player who is full of angst. Lolli is a crazy girl who invites Val into the subways, tells her abou the fairier and introduces to the drug, “Never.” Another character is Mabry who is a faerie and has a deep hate for Ravus who caused her exile. She tried to kill him and frame him for the poisonings. Ravus is a troll. He gives the other exiled faeries in the city potions for iron poisoning, which is deadly to them. There are two additional characters, Dave and Louis who are brothers. There is a conflict between the brothers over Lolli; Lolli wants Louis while Louis wants nothing to do with her whereas Dave loves Lolli and she won’t give Dave the time of day. Holly Black accurately depicts the problems that drug use and addiction can cause in Valiant A Modern Tale of Faerie.
“Drug addiction involves compulsively seeking to use a substance regardless of the potentially negative social, psychological and physical consequences” (Drug Addiction). Nevertheless, most drug addicts will do anything to get their drug of choice, they don’t care if they are looked down upon by society. “you want to use the drug again and again. When you stop taking it, you might have unpleasant physical reactions” (Drug Addiction). The bottom is addiction is the feeling that you need to use the drug over and over again while withdraw is the unpleasant physical reactions that come along with trying to quit the drug.
A symptom that shows that a person is addicted is “failing repeatedly in attempts to stop using the drug” (Drug Addiction). That’s when the addict knows it’s time to seek help because “very few addicts actually just stop on their own (Lesherner). That is why it is important to have someone help you to stop using drugs. “Though she is almost six feet tall, Wichter dropped to 120 pounds and her skin turned gra” (Sandham). Weight loss is a very common symptom of drug use. “I do meth because guys like me now that I’m so skinny, Johnson says” (Sandham). This aspect of drug use is alluring for body conscious young women. So, teens believe that taking drugs can make you look and feel good.
The first reason for teenage drug use is that it is learned from another person, which can be a parent or a friend. “She watched him shoot up in front of her, she recalls, and wanted to experience it herself” (Sandham). Jessica Sandham in “Cracked Up” argues that some popular drug prevention programs such as D.A.R.E may entice students into drug use because “the thing D.A.R.E. does is give kids a selection, it’s like a menu for drugs.” The program discusses every drug and explains how each drug can make you feel. Finally, some teens believe that “users can initially stay up all night, still function and concentrate the next day, even perform better on tests” (Sandham). However, with time this will change.
The statistic for drug use are alarming. “There are an estimated 500,000 to 750,000 heroin addicts in this country” (Leland) Death is not stranger to addicts. John Leland in “Heroin Use is a Serious Problem” estimates that “between 3,000 and 4,000 users die of heroin annually.” The statistics for those trying to quit are quite startling. Only “between three and seven percent of people who try to quit on their own each year actually succeed” (Leshner).
Does the research on drug addiction support the author’s portrayal of the problem in the novel. Actually the portrayal of the issues was very realistic. Research has determined that peer pressure is a major factor in whether teens will use drugs. In the novel Valiant, “Lolli drew up the stuff with a needle. Val wondered if she could ever feel that nothing touched her. It sounded like oblivion. It sounded like peace” (Black 95). Sandham’s research determined that weight lose, along with other factors, is an indicator of drug additions. In the novel Val whispers to Dave, “What’s wrong with him? Why’s he so skinny? Just cracked out” Dave answers (Black 39). Most research says some drugs make you feel euphoric, “”making people at first feel euphoric, capable, and full of life” (Sandham). In the novel there is a similar description – “…but the euphoria meled her bones. The world turned to honey, thick and slow and sweet” (Black 96). Drugs also make people feel disoriented. “Drugs acutely modify mood, memory, perception and emotional states” (Leshner). This can be seen in the novel when “Val tried to think about the night before, to the terrible things she must have done but it was as if she were remembering a story told by someone else. It was a blue that despite everything made her skin itch for Never-more” (Black 118).
Using drugs is bad enough, but many people have to steal from their friends and family to pay for their drug of choice. One sure sign of drug addiction is “doing things that you normally wouldn’t do such as stealing” (Drug Addiction). In the novel, Val, in an act of desperation, steals the potions from Ravus. “Did you know she’s been stealing from you – skimming the top of your potions like a Bogart drinks the head of cream off a bottle of milk?” (Black 235)
The characters in the novel seem very much like drug addictions. One researches describes how a girl “wakes up every morning with scars on her arms and cravings for the drug” (Sandham). Holly Black illustrates the same thing in Valiant. “Her body felt bruised, as though something else had been riding around in her skin