Another Reflection

My Argumentative Research Essay is coming along well.  I feel like it’s a little rougher than what I expected, but after troubleshooting I’m almost one hundred percent sure that comes from me over thinking main concepts, ideas, and details of this paper.  I wanted this paper to reflect the connections I have made concerning the effects of acupuncture on drug addicts, but I have started to revise my paper and made sure to keep in mind the purpose of my paper.  Even though I feel like I have taken a step back by simplifying my paper more than what I was expecting I know that when I finish it will be even better than before.  The easiest thing for me was the planning process.  While planning in the beginning I knew exactly what I wanted to say and the connections that I wanted to make in the paper.  I feel the most important step for me to do while revising my paper is to go back to my original plan and make my paper reflect what was in my original plans.

            My research paper appeals more to the logos and pathos of the audience.  Since pathos deals with the emotions of the audience my paper revolves around the emotional connection that sympathetic people make with people in need.  In this case it is the addict that needs the helping hand.  Relating it back to my thesis; the patient should be mentally a physically tested before treatment can occur.  To make sure that they are in good health and sanity to provide testers with good results, so that they can come to a conclusion on whether acupuncture is an acceptable treatment for drug abusers.  This applies to the logos aspect as well, appealing to the reasoning side of the audience.  If a person does not feel well they most likely won’t perform well.  Not just dealing with the patient alone, but also concerning their environment.  A testing environment is not the ideal environment for someone trying to get some help.  Reasoning should tell anybody that a testing and experimental environment can be stressful, so making the patient aware that can have a huge impact on the results.

            Intellectual growth and maturity is one of the main concepts that have really stood out to me, along with responsibility for one’s own learning.  The maturity of my writing has to develop from the understanding of what I could do better so that I can improve.  I don’t think either of these goals can take place if I do one but not the other.  These key concepts are an important aspect to this course.  Since three is not a lot of book work involved, being proactive in the learning processes is a key component to being successful in the class.  This class has made me realize I only gain as much as I put in to it.  This includes my peer editing skills, personal inquiry, work ethic, general organization, and clarity of my papers.

A Brief Update

My inquiry project is coming along quite well.  I ended up finding an acupuncturist office that specializes in drug and rehabilitation acupuncture, but I could never get a hold of the doctor himself to get an actual interview.  An interview with him or any of his patients would have contributed a lot to the argument in my research paper, but I’m still going to keep trying.  Considering the amount of evidence out there on my specific topic I feel as if I’m doing a good job putting together a well thought out research paper.  However, I do think certain aspects of my research paper needs to be a little more concrete.  For example, when I state my stance on the topic I don’t want it to seem as if I am pulling to one side or the other, simply because I’m adding a new opinion into the academic conversation.

            My working thesis acknowledges the fact that there’s not enough evidence to conclude whether acupuncture is a better drug addiction treatment than rehab and the reason being is because they fail to give attention to the physical and emotional state that each individual has before treatment starts.  In my paper I am arguing that everybody reacts different to certain kinds of treatments.  Just like medicine.  Some may be more emotional distraught than others and some may be physically ill depending on how the addictive drug affected their body.

            So far I would say that my working thesis would be similar to the gap model in Chapter Five.  I am clearly bringing up an issue that seems to be overlooked when the doctors and neurologist conduct the tests.  My aim is to have my main claim to be a claim of fact.  I’m not quite sure if my main claim is that developed for me to classify it yet, but it is still a work in progress.

Eavesdropping

Starting my annotated bibliography I knew that I was looking for credible sources that could answer the question “Is acupuncture a better way to break a drug addiction than going to rehab”? I’ve concluded that neurologist, acupuncturist, and the actual patients have the most to say about this topic.  Although there were further test and research done to determine whether one method is better than the other, most doctors do not come to one specific conclusion.

            Being that acupuncture is still a controversial topic most of the experiments, results, and conclusions have been conducted by neurologist.  They have tried to assess the effects between acupuncture and addictive drugs to prove if acupuncture works.  They’ve done the scientific method and assessed the results. Some neurologist concluded that acupuncture does not work with specific drugs, such as cocaine, but speaking generally most have varied data and results bringing them to conclude that acupuncture is an alternative method for people dealing with drug addictions but doesn’t necessarily work for all drugs and a questionable method to be used in general.

            Acupuncturists see the treatment in a different way. Although acupuncture is known for handling anxiety, pain, depression, arthritis, and things of that nature.  It seems as if acupuncturist feel as though acupuncture can be used for anything.  They are a little skeptical about the results as well but they seem to be a little more optimistic about the mixed results.  They didn’t really conduct any experiments.  They mostly surveyed different patients to see how the acupuncture was helping them to cope without the drug.  The most common response was that it helped with the withdraw symptoms and anxiety.

            The most important source that is a huge part of answering my inquiry question would be the patients themselves.  I haven’t found any journals or blogs that talk about a personal experience dealing with addiction and acupuncture but I know that there are some out there. I’m going to keep looking, and maybe if I call an acupuncturist or alternative medicine clinic to see if I could interview the patients then I can have an accurate and credible source for my research paper.

            One of my sources comes from an optimistic acupuncturist named Wayne Stephens.  He is a life time athlete who turned to acupuncture for muscle pain and anxiety.  From there he began to study is now an acupuncturist and believes strongly in its ability.  His website describes acupuncture, trigger point therapy, and athletic health.  He talks about acupuncture and his personal experience as well as the history of the alternative medicine.  He is a strong advocate for acupuncture for most if not all physical aspects of health, strongly recommends it for athletes.

            Another source comes from Jaung-Geng Lin, Yuan-Yu Chan, and Yi-Hung Chen, a group of neurologist that conducted a study dealing with people and acupuncture.  They ended up getting mixed of reviews concerning withdraw symptoms and anxiety.  They are very impartial in their research.  They talk about acupuncture from both sides and ultimately conclude that there isn’t enough evidence to prove that it does work but they also do not have sufficient evidence to determine that it doesn’t.

Dialogue:

Stephens:  How’s Lindsey doing Mr. Lin?

Lin: She’s not doing so well.

Stephens: What’s wrong with her?

Lin: Well she’s skipping out on rehab again.

Stephens: Have you tried prescribing acupuncture for her, to help with the withdraw symptoms?

Lin: No, because it’s not proven to help the particular narcotic she is on.

Stephens: You never know until you try. Besides the basic anatomy of the human body is the same, but not all acupuncture patients have the same feeling after. That part is individualized.

Lin: I’m not sure about this.

Stephens: Come on Lin! The first session is free. How does that sound?

Lin: Okay, I’ll try to get her in your office as soon as possible, and that sounds wonderful. Thank you.

From Addiction to Acupuncture.

 With all the talk about what being healthy means and how to be healthy, a lot of subtopics concerning health has stood out to me.  The idea of how health affects your everyday life is truly a concept that boggles my mind.  Take exercising as an example, the fact that people plan when they eat sleep and other activities around a period of time where they work out their bodies just for the simple satisfaction of feeling healthy.  It’s truly amazing how you can even develop an addiction to exercising or supplements or even food itself.  However, trading in an addiction for acupuncture is a bizarre but healthy decision.  It is said that acupuncture has a way of filling in for addictions, from alcohol and hard core drugs to thing such as cigarettes and overreacting.

                Acupuncture is an unorthodox practice for relieving stress.  Many people know that there are good kinds of stress, which allow you to perform at your best, and then there are bad strands of stress that can cause you to be overwhelmed and make it harder for you to concentrate and stretch yourself to unknown limits.  Questions I have about the subject would include:   what nerves would the needles have to come in contact with to fill the addiction, does it actually feel the same way as a drug addiction would make you feel, is it more cost efficient, would it be better off to get acupuncture than to go to rehab, and what would make more sense for an addict with an average cost of living than an addict who is a celebrity whose cost of living is higher?  Out of all these questions I think the one I would inquire about the most would be if it is better to go and get acupuncture than to go to rehab.

                I chose this question because acupuncture is a unique way of “treating” an addiction, and finding information that compares acupuncture to rehab sounds like a huge task. Since acupuncture is so unique and scientists aren’t sure on how it works, it doesn’t have a lot of in depth information out there concerning this particular question.  Of course there is the history but not much information beyond that.  This complicates my research a great deal.  Although I believe it is possible to find information that can help me develop an opinion on where I stand in all this concerning health, finding credible sources might be my greatest obstacle.

                I truly believe most of my information would come from blogs or articles written by people who have actually experienced the transition from drugs or alcohol to acupuncture.  I don’t know if that would be enough but it would be a different type of read to base a research paper off of. Facts from personal experience versus what science and results have to say about acupuncture as a whole.  I’ve never done a paper like that.  I just wonder where would be a good place to start looking? On the internet or in a book?  Should I think of a different inquiry question?   And could this be a controversial topic?