Month: August 2008

The Hazing Game

I thought that I knew what hazing was all about. You know, when young people are initiated into a team, organization, or fraternity through some kind of humiliating ritual. I was a Boy Scout and had to walk blind-folded through a Girl Scout camp in nothing but my Fruit of the Looms.

I was curious to find out more. I was never a part of a fraternity, but I knew they did some bizarre things. It turns out that college fraternities do some crazy things to their “pledges” to make them worthy of their membership. I read about some kid who drank himself to death due to alcohol poisoning. His peers didn’t realize the severity of his condition. They drew all over him, unaware that he was dieing and was in need of immediate medical attention. By the time they realized that he was fatally intoxicated, it was too late. Some of the deceased friends were charged with crimes of negligence and have some heavy weight on their consciences.

Hazing is most commonly associated with university fraternities and sports teams, but it also happens in the military, police forces, rescue services and even community service clubs. I found out that it is not gender specific. Females are just as guilty of hazing as males. Many sports teams and cheerleaders came up over and over again in my research.

Despite laws against hazing in most states, it continues to occur nationwide. Many young people feel obligated to go through these rituals, even thought they suffer humiliation, pain, degradation, and ultimately risk bodily harm and death. Why do they do it? It’s a kind of peer pressure; “a rite of passage and a part of the process of becoming part of a team or society.” For more about hazing, check out the web for various articles and reports on the subject. I found the following sites to be eye-opening:
o https://www.cbc.ca/news/background/bullying/hazing.html
o https://www.stophazing.org/news/index.htm
Be sure to see the video by Dan O’Rourke called “The Pledge”

Criteria for diagnosing addiction

The DSM-IV is the diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. This is a handbook, published by the American Psychiatric Association, which is used by mental health care professionals that lists different categories of mental disorders and the criteria for diagnosing them. The DSM-IV is used all around the world by clinicians, psychiatric drug regulation agencies, researchers, health insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and policy makers.
Some criteria from the DSM-IV that may qualify someone for the disease of addiction are as follows:
– You reduce or completely blow off your social, school of recreational activities.
– You increase your time and energy spent on using or getting substances to use.
– You have tolerance; it takes more than it used to in order to feel an effect.
– You have symptoms of withdrawal (i.e. hangovers, irritability, sleeping after binges, “crashing”)
– You have unsuccessful or persistent efforts to cut down or control your using, or you have consequences of using.
– You use longer than you intended to of you use for a longer period of time than you intended to.
– You continue to use even though you know it causes physical of psychological problems or despite knowing that it aggravates a physical of psychological problem.
– You continue to use despite legal consequences.
– You continue to use despite poor performance/consequences at school or work.
You can have the disease of addiction with or without physiological (physical/body) dependence. This means that even if your body isn’t addicted to drugs or alcohol, you may still have the psychological dependence.