The Addiction Epidemic

[Survivor]

Drugs of pleasure are an escape from earth.

Living in a place known as imaginary paradise.

Once addicts come back to the world and reality,
The toleration of life is torturous.

Craving drugs as if they need food to satisfy an appetite.

Betrayal is being committed to support the habit of vileness.

Desperation leads to a life of crime for artificial gratification.

Recovery only occurs when the spirit is broken,
Willing to travel the rough journey to genuine happiness.

[tectak]

Drugs of pleasure are an escape from earth.

Living in a place known as imaginary paradise.

Once addicts come back to the world and reality,
The toleration of life is torturous.

Craving drugs as if they need food to satisfy an appetite.

Betrayal is being committed to support the habit of vileness.

Desperation leads to a life of crime for artificial gratification.

Recovery only occurs when the spirit is broken,
Willing to travel the rough journey to genuine happiness.

Unusually, I am going to stray from my usual ascerbic first assault on a serious posting and say something I may regret. No.I won't.
This is not poetry. This is not even poetic. This is a statement of the bleedin' obvious and is without any merit worthy of the posting.
OK . Now let's workshop it in novice. This may be a first.
You must take every line and make it sparkle. Add imagery. Do not tell me what you think/believe/presume. Describe your passage through the piece and enlighten me with the small and detailed nuances of progressive POETIC influences which you feel...and help me FEEL the same way. Use clarifying metaphors. Add colour an texture. Paint your points with words.
Go away and try it. Repost.
I look forward to READING your POETRY.
Best,
tectak

[Todd]

Hi,

First thing to consider: Making propositional statements, whether they are true or not, carry nearly no emotive power. For poetry to be effective it can't make vague, flat statements like this.

Example:

Craving drugs as if they need food to satisfy an appetite.

This simile stops short of actually doing anything. However if you took this line and developed it into the central conceit of the poem you could present us with a scene of someone eating at a banquet table, the food delectable, but ultimately those eating getting thinner and weaker. You could tie drugs into the title and not mention them in the poem.

Obviously, I'm not saying this is what you must do to salvage the concept. It's more an approach you might consider to take this in a new direction.

Just some thoughts, good luck with it.

Best,

Todd

Drugs of pleasure are an escape from earth.

Living in a place known as imaginary paradise.

Once addicts come back to the world and reality,
The toleration of life is torturous.

Craving drugs as if they need food to satisfy an appetite.

Betrayal is being committed to support the habit of vileness.

Desperation leads to a life of crime for artificial gratification.

Recovery only occurs when the spirit is broken,
Willing to travel the rough journey to genuine happiness.

[metalfan91]

Drugs of pleasure are an escape from earth.

Living in a place known as imaginary paradise.

Once addicts come back to the world and reality,
The toleration of life is torturous.

Craving drugs as if they need food to satisfy an appetite.

Betrayal is being committed to support the habit of vileness.

Desperation leads to a life of crime for artificial gratification.

Recovery only occurs when the spirit is broken,
Willing to travel the rough journey to genuine happiness.

An earlier post beat me to it, I was going to use the "Craving drugs..." line as an example of what you did wrong, although any line could do.

This seems like a precursor to the actual poem. What you have here are its thematic elements. There's no strong metaphor in this, just a succession of informational statements.

You can incorporate these themes of craving, betrayal, desperation, and recovery in a much broader way.

You say "Desperation leads to a life of crime for artificial gratification." Indeed it does, but how and why, and what visuals, situations, sensations can you attribute to this or juxtapose with each other.

Good luck with this,

Daniel

[Survivor]

Drugs of pleasure are an escape from earth.

Living in a place known as imaginary paradise.

Once addicts come back to the world and reality,
The toleration of life is torturous.

Craving drugs as if they need food to satisfy an appetite.

Betrayal is being committed to support the habit of vileness.

Desperation leads to a life of crime for artificial gratification.

Recovery only occurs when the spirit is broken,
Willing to travel the rough journey to genuine happiness.

Wow, wasn’t expecting that; everybody else on many other poetry websites I go seem to have a different view. I have numerous writings with many writing styles. I approach choose the writing style which I feels is best for the topic. This is a social issue—not a raw, powerful emotions. If you read my poem based on intense feelings, such as depression and anxiety, you would see different writing styles. I also write with strong logic in which I let the reader pick up on by themselves and I occasionally want to let the reader use their imagination. I chose this topic because the drug problem in my area is the worst it’s ever been, and now my bother is now in a forced rehab in order to come off of drugs, so I just wanted to address the issue.

---

Hi,

First thing to consider: Making propositional statements, whether they are true or not, carry nearly no emotive power. For poetry to be effective it can't make vague, flat statements like this.

Example:

Craving drugs as if they need food to satisfy an appetite.

This simile stops short of actually doing anything. However if you took this line and developed it into the central conceit of the poem you could present us with a scene of someone eating at a banquet table, the food delectable, but ultimately those eating getting thinner and weaker. You could tie drugs into the title and not mention them in the poem.

Obviously, I'm not saying this is what you must do to salvage the concept. It's more an approach you might consider to take this in a new direction.

Just some thoughts, good luck with it.

Best,

Todd

Drugs of pleasure are an escape from earth.

Living in a place known as imaginary paradise.

Once addicts come back to the world and reality,
The toleration of life is torturous.

Craving drugs as if they need food to satisfy an appetite.

Betrayal is being committed to support the habit of vileness.

Desperation leads to a life of crime for artificial gratification.

Recovery only occurs when the spirit is broken,
Willing to travel the rough journey to genuine happiness.

Wow, wasn’t expecting that; everybody else on many other poetry websites I go seem to have a different view. I have numerous writings with many writing styles. I approach choose the writing style which I feels is best for the topic. This is a social issue—not a raw, powerful emotions. If you read my poem based on intense feelings, such as depression and anxiety, you would see different writing styles. I also write with strong logic in which I let the reader pick up on by themselves and I occasionally want to let the reader use their imagination. I chose this topic because the drug problem in my area is the worst it’s ever been, and now my bother is now in a forced rehab in order to come off of drugs, so I just wanted to address the issue.

[Keith]

Hi Survivor
The topic you have chosen is solid and since it is that close to you, you should be able to address the issue with images of social decline turned around by support structures. I can give you many examples of poor poetry I have written that other site have told me is brilliant, this is no use to me when I want to improve the poem. This site is very blunt when you ask for feedback, to grow as a poet my advice would be take the advice, I still write crap poems but because of this site I now know they are crap. I would very much like to see some more of your work and I would like to see this poem developed to do the topic justice. Best TOMH

[ChristopherSea]

On those other sites most folks vie for stars or top ten lists. What they say about your poetry has little validity and absolutely no critique. They are looking for reads and ratings. Here you receive the honest truth, which can bite, but you can work to edit a much better piece. You can ask a moderater to move your poem to miscellaneous if you want none. All of the comments are on target for your poem. It's a list of statements with common antidrug slogans. However, some of them are not accurate. The addict's spirit is not broken when they are cured, in fact, it's fixed. Try to say those things that you have outlined and do it differently and use metaphor. Folks will work with you, cheers!/Chris