About the Artist
Vedanshi Das (she/her) is a Bengali-American 13-year-old girl living on Long Island. Her interests are writing, poetry, and reading. When she's not writing or reading, you'll probably find her running, listening to music, or swimming in summer. She found her passion for writing in her fourth-grade classroom with the best teacher in the entire world. After that, she continued to explore different areas of literature, such as poetry, classical literature, Renaissance literature (Shakespeare, exciting!), and much more.
Written Submission
This composition illustrates the relationship between a person with substance use disorder and the drugs that they are taking. It also highlights the stages of an addiction, which is seen with the contact name changes throughout the visual story. It begins with “My love,” when the person with substance use disorder hasn’t realized that their drug use has turned to drug abuse.
The next stage is “Master.” This stage demonstrates helplessness in an addiction. The person with substance use disorder is helpless, unable to do anything, because the drug is what controls them, what swallows their life whole. And of course, if their addiction becomes them, that is when others surrounding the person with substance use disorder begin to notice what is going on.
This brings us to the next stage of “Disease.” Once their loved ones find out about his/her addiction, the person with substance use disorder becomes self-conscious, embarrassed even. Hence, an embarrassing disease. And the power dynamic still remains; the drugs are in control. But they can’t do anything about it, can they?
The goal my composition aims at is to help a person with substance use disorder understand that the pain that they are living in isn’t forever, and their situation certainly isn’t hopeless. It isn’t something to be embarrassed of, or to allow to control you. But to escape that, they need to learn to ask for help. And finally - it brings you to the stage of “Opponent.”
Text in the next illustration says:
Your addiction isn't your lover
It isn't a controlling master
It isn't a disease to be ashamed of
It is your opponent
And you never let your opponent win easily
Initially, I intended on creating a simple writing piece with the same concept; displaying the stages of an addiction and the relationship between a person with substance use disorder and their drugs. However, I also wanted to personify the drugs in order to illustrate an abusive relationship. By doing this, it helps viewers understand how severe and abusive an addiction can be; just like relationships with people can be. I thought the best way to illustrate this was by creating the visual display of a conversation through text messages.