Requiem for a Dream depicts four people struggling with addiction, each in very different ways. Sara Goldfarb is a widow who lives alone and spends her days watching television and is obsessed with having a day on television herself. Sara's son, Harry Goldfarb, is a heroin addict with his girlfriend, Marion Silver, and her friend, Tyrone Love. All three also deal drugs to achieve their dreams in life; Tyrone wants to escape poverty and make his mother proud of him while Marion and Harry want to open a clothing store. Sara receives a call with an opportunity to appear on television, and when she realizes she doesn't fit into her favorite red dress, she seeks help losing weight from a doctor who tells her prescribed amphetamines. Harry notices the obvious signs that his mother is on top and encourages her to stop taking her medication, but she protests that her chance to be on television is one of her only reasons to live. Sara later develops amphetamine psychosis from her constant use of weight loss drugs. Meanwhile, Harry and Tyrone struggle to find heroin until they hear of a shipment arriving in New York from Florida at a high price. Harry asks Marion to have sex with his therapist for money so they can buy heroin, which she ends up doing. Harry and Tyrone's efforts to buy heroin are ruined when the place where they were buying heroin was destroyed by a bullet. Sara's amphetamine psychosis becomes so severe that she takes the train to the TV station in a hallucinogenic state. She asks station employees when she will be on television, who then call the police due to her alarming mental state. Sara is then interned in a psychiatric hospital and undergoes electroshock therapy. Tyrone and Harry decide to travel to Florida to buy heroin directly from the source. During their car ride, Harry complains about his arm being badly infected from injecting heroin. They stop at a hospital to treat Harry, leading to both of their arrests. While Tyrone and Harry travel to Florida, Marion is desperate for drugs and sells her body to a pimp in exchange for heroin. Sara's electroshock therapy leaves her in a vegetative state, Harry's infected arm is amputated, Tyrone is harassed by racist prison guards, and Marion becomes involved in prostitution. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Requiem for a Dream is rife with psychological issues resulting from drug abuse and addiction. The specific psychological disorder I will discuss is substance abuse, the high-risk behaviors associated with addiction, withdrawal, and the psychological effects that addiction can have on a person. Each of the four main characters struggles with addiction in very different but also extremely similar ways. This analysis will examine the impact of addiction on each of the main characters in Requiem for a Dream while chronicling these characters' struggles with the issues prevalent in today's society. Sara Goldfarb becomes addicted to amphetamines after being prescribed by an unscrupulous doctor to help her lose weight. Even though this movie was released in 2000, amphetamine addiction remains a reality for many Americans. Although it is difficult to quantify the number of people addicted to amphetamines, we do know that the United States hasexperienced a 53% increase in prescriptions for ADHD, one of the most widely used amphetamines, between 2008 and 2012. Sara becomes obsessed with losing weight so she can fit into a red dress that she wants to wear on television. She begins to abuse her prescription and falls into a state of amphetamine psychosis. Drug-induced psychosis has been noted in 8–46% of daily amphetamine users (Glasner-Edwards et al., 2008). Some of the symptoms of amphetamine-induced psychosis include paranoia, hyperactivity, loss of appetite, and insomnia among others (Bramness et al., 2012). All of the above is prevalent and can be seen in Sara. In the film, she hallucinates and sees her refrigerator shaking violently, almost begging her to open it and eat after not eating due to her loss of appetite. Sara is hyperactive and suffers from insomnia when she is shown staying up all night rearranging her house and cleaning it from top to bottom. Once Sara is admitted to a psychiatric hospital, doctors try different treatments without results. They use electroshock therapy, which puts her in a vegetative state. While Sara struggled with amphetamine addiction, her son, Harry, was going through his own struggles with addiction. Harry, like 626,000 other Americans, is addicted to heron). Harry begins using heroin infrequently at first with his friend Tyrone. The first time they are shown doing heroin in the film, Tyrone dances to hip hop music while Harry is seen kissing his girlfriend. Later, they throw a party where everyone does drugs. At first, Harry is full of motivation and dreams of opening a clothing store for his girlfriend, Marion, to sell her clothing designs. Harry and Tyrone make a lot of money from drug dealing and are apparently happy with the way their lives are going. Harry and Marion also have a healthy relationship at first. This all stops when there is a lull in their drug supply, and all three are desperate for drugs and money. The healthy relationship Marion and Harry once had begins to deteriorate as the craving for heroin intensifies. They begin to experience heroin withdrawal which includes restlessness, sweating, vomiting, and many other symptoms (Kampman and Jarvis, 2015). These withdrawal symptoms are present in a scene where Marion wakes up in the middle of the night, sweating profusely because of her and Harry having run out of heroin. The next day, Harry and Marion have a heated argument about not having heroin. The two frequently argue about how they are going to get their next heroin fix throughout the film. In many scenes in the film, the characters are also seen sweating, often followed by arguments, implying that they have not used heroin for an extended period of time and are in withdrawal. When talking about this film, it is important to understand the psychology behind drug abuse and addiction. Why do people continue to use these drugs even though it causes them so much physical and emotional pain? Psychology can help us understand why people use drugs, even if they know it is harmful to them. People use drugs because they know they will benefit from them. Whether the benefit is stress relief, the pleasure of the drug, or a coping mechanism for negative situations, it all has to do with the fact that drug use is, above all, an easy way to escape one's emotions or to manage them more easily than tackling the cause. of the problem. In Requiem for a Dream, Marion actuallya therapist, someone who would do him good to seek help for his addiction problem. Marion's addiction however is at a point where she doesn't recognize that she needs help, so she never talks to her therapist about it, she even stops going to her therapist. This is important because many addicts typically deny their addiction and rarely seek help for themselves. Requiem for a Dream also highlights the high-risk behaviors associated with drug use. The film shows behaviors such as risky sexual behavior, submission to violent situations, and physical harm resulting from injecting heroin. The film shows Marion in several scenes engaging in risky sexual behavior to obtain heroin. She has sex with her therapist for money and later gets involved with a pimp in exchange for heroin. The pimp tells her about a sex party he is hosting and tells her that if she performs sexual acts at the party, she will receive a large amount of heroin as payment. Desperate for heroin, she performs at the party in order to obtain heroin. These acts of prostitution aimed at people struggling with opiate addiction are very widespread today. A 2011 study of 65 at-risk women found that 44.6% of subjects were opiate users and it was also reported that sex work was the primary source of income for more than half of them. sample (Roshanfekr et al., 2015). Although this study had a relatively small sample size, it is important to note that data on this topic is difficult to collect because most people do not want to disclose this sensitive information to researchers. These data show that Marion's recourse to prostitution is not an isolated phenomenon. She resorts to prostitution to satisfy her drug needs, even though she doesn't want to, as many other women addicted to opiates do. In the film, we see her struggle with the idea of ​​having sex in order to satisfy her addiction, but the physical and psychological effects of her withdrawal symptoms overwhelm her rationality and feeling compelled to do so. I found it very important that this film highlights the prostitution of women addicted to opiates, which is little talked about. It also shows how strong the psychological craving for drugs is when the withdrawal symptoms are so severe on a person's mind and body that they may go to extreme measures in order to satisfy those symptoms. Keep in mind: this is just a sample. Get a custom paper now from our expert writers. Get a Custom Essay Requiem for a Dream shows the very real and frightening consequences of drug addiction on a person's emotions and body. Addiction is a complex psychological disorder that is still being researched and professionals are still working to understand today. This film discusses multiple aspects of drug addiction, such as the psychological effects due to drug abuse, mental and physical withdrawal symptoms, high-risk behaviors adopted by drug addicts, and many more. When we think of psychological disorders, the disorders that often come to mind are usually not substance-related. Substance abuse and addiction is a significant mental illness that should be recognized by more people. Requiem for a Dream shows the hell thousands of drug addicts live in every day. This film helps shed light on a psychological disorder that is often misinterpreted by society that drug addicts=1409