Let’s Talk Amanda: When Drugs Are at Play Valentine Nyaradzo Kagande 4 June 2020
Here I was again on YouTube the other day, and as usual I wanted to put my mind to good use. While in this frame of mind, I found myself watching the second edition of an interview featuring Amanda, a prostitute. This was the first time I was coming across her story. Her appearance was striking because she had a ‘black eye’, which to me meant that there would be more to her story. For sure this is what happened as I ended up watching two more videos telling this story, all revealing not just the story of a prostitute but also one of a homeless drug addict in the US.
What really made watching Amanda’s story more revealing and touching is the fact that these videos captured her journey with drugs spanning a period of about four to five months. Her story begins as one of a young and intelligent woman (1st video), moves to become one of an intelligent woman whose life was beginning to get rough because of
drug use (2nd video), and lastly to that of a destroyed individual who could barely seat still during the interview or strike a normal conversation (3rd video).
I am sure looking at these three different phases of Amanda’s life helped many people to get a rare glimpse of the impact of drug use on one’s social and mental state. Drug use also had a negative impact on her dignity as a woman, as drugs made her vulnerable to abuse. This was manifested in the discussion that these videos raised. One of the biggest issues raised was how she could be helped, more so considering the fact that she had refused to get help in dealing with her problem. The question of an involuntary intervention did also come up, and personally I also considered it as an option, since by the third video it had become clear to me that she was no longer fully in control of her mental faculties, and thus incapable of making an informed and conscious evaluation of her current state.
It seems the common approach when dealing with drug abusers is to wait for them to take the first step by accepting to get help. From what I gathered from the discussion, involuntary intervention is said to be reserved only for those cases where the drug abuser’s actions are considered a threat to the life of others, or their own. So this is where Amanda’s case was proving to be complicated as these conditions were not present in her case. Looking at Amanda in the last video updated on the 15th of April (2020), it was clear to me that a voluntary decision on her part would never be a possibility, and thus only a radical approach would help her.
Her story goes on, and the debates continue as well, what will become of her could be a mystery to some, but what is clear though is that the story so far calls us to reflect more on the problem of drug abuse, and the moral and ethical debates that surround it. As for me the important question becomes whether to intervene or not to intervene?
Amanda 1st video https://youtu.be/hPvLoXfenmA Amanda 2nd video https://youtu.be/OT0tfC4NDYM Amanda 3rd video https://youtu.be/SozWG_WAWl0