alcoholism in spokane indian

Alcohol has always been one of the most profitable industries in the business world. More than $400 billion worth of alcohol purchased in the US alone in 2013 according to an economic website. Alcohol is a common figure where it can be easily spot in every household to grand restaurants, however, it is a huge factor contributed to the death rate each year. It has ruined an innumerable number of people lives due to excessive drinking or affect by an alcoholic person. In his book, “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian”, Sherman Alexie emphasizes how significance alcohol can affect a teenager life, where Junior, the main protagonist has lost 3 family members because of alcohol. He shows that alcoholic should not be taken as a simple threat; people from teenagers to elders must pay more attention to prevent alcohol from ravaging any new life.

According to Alexie, Indians who live in The Rez choose to be drunk to forget all the unhappiness, consequently, their drunkenness devastate themselves. “If you’d given me a room full of sober Indians, crying and laughing and telling stories about my sisters, then I would have gladly stayed and joined them in the ceremony. But everybody was drunk. Everybody was unhappy” (212). Mary, Junior’s older sister who moved to Montana to live with her husband, has died by burning to death in a trailer fire. The Rez citizens illustrate their unhappy by consuming more and more alcohols, which make Junior disgusted by that action. He prefers a normal ceremony where people do not forget that alcohol is the main reason behind his sister’s death. The people who are too drunk and go off in their own world without notice their surrounding can be seen as alcoholics. It is a disease in Junior’s perspective as people in The Rez try to forget about the unfortunate things happen by drinking more alcohol. The alcohol can only make a person forgets their pain only for a short moment, until he/she wakes up from the dreamland, the