Prescription Drug Abuse and the Death of Flawed Diamonds - Essay Example

Their lifestyles are glamorous and set apart so much that they unintentionally put themselves in vulnerable situations, caused by exhaustion, less stable peers, destabilized relationships, irregular hours, identity issues, and efforts to deny mortality and the impermanence of social status. This paper will examine this issue through the celebrity porthole, and will consider the answers Confucius offers to the problem and how his teachings apply. As with most social issues, death by unintended drug poisoning, is contributed to by a number of factors.

Some of those factors include accepting drugs from friends; securing multiple prescriptions; taking prescription drugs in combination with other drugs and/or with alcohol; Relying solely on drugs to relieve pain, gaining dependency; using prescription drugs for emotional support without making necessary life adjustments (Paulozzi, 2010); using drugs to maintain a certain social image when one’s true situation doesn’t fit the image. Another factor is profit that pharmaceutical companies make and, consequently, the ways they pressure doctors to prescribe particular drugs for their patients.

Doctors are often too busy to notice what drugs their patients are still taking, and patients too often fail to dispose of excess medication (Paulozzi, 2010). Exposure to constant advertising is another significant factor. The most recent death of a celebrity, apparently due to a combination of prescription drugs and alcohol, driven by lifestyle irregularities and destabilization, is Whitney Houston, who just died at 48 years of age (Dolak, NG, & Vega, 2012). Her peers in the music industry referred to her as one of the greatest voices to ever grace the earth, a true original and a talent beyond compare, one of the most iconic voices of my lifetime (Marikar, 2012).

Her regretful and untimely death is included in a long lineage of unintended deaths by prescription drug poisoning, alone or in combination with alcohol or other drugs. This lineage includes Marilyn Monroe (intentionality controversial), Dorothy Dandridge, Jimi Hendrix, Freddie Prinze, Elvis Presley, Keith Moon, Steve Clark, Rob Pilatus, Dana Plato, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Chris Penn, Gerald Levert, Anna Nicole Smith (and her son Daniel), Pimp C, Heath Ledger (Katie, 2009), Brittany Murphy, and Michael Jackson, among others.

Speaking from the teachings of Confucius, I observe that a superior individual must be virtuous, educated and well-mannered, a combination of saint, scholar and gentleman (Shinn, 1997). Right conduct is of extreme importance, in honor to ancestors, for the satisfaction of doing right, and to avoid punishment by T’ien, the God of Heaven. T’ien often punishes those who do not have good conduct, with an early death (Shinn, 1997). Sincerity, benevolence, filial piety and propriety are basic principles of virtuous conduct (Shinn, 1997).

The celebrities mentioned were people whose lives were extreme, lived in the context of the entertainment field. It is a field that discourages sincerity (replacing it with performance), benevolence (substituting competition), filial piety (substituting the constant reinvention of self and values), and propriety (replaced by partying, drugs, alcohol, loud behavior, and gaining attention). Alcohol, drugs, domestic battery, suicide attempts, promiscuity, heavy competition, betrayal, scandals and gossip,