Part I – The Daughter of My Research

I know a man, who never graduated from high school, who never had a chance to go to college. I
know a man that now divides his time between the streets, rehab, and prison. I know a man who
detoxed from heroin by poisoning himself with vodka and orange juice – while he lay in a room
with pink curtains over the windows, a pile of stuffed animals in the corner, and the potent smell
of addiction in the air. I know a man who pawned his family’s generator for his next fix, trading
away his family’s warmth during a winter power outage. I know a man who stole a safe
containing over a million dollars; got caught; and went to prison - one week before his daughter
started high school. I know a man who injected the entirety of his child’s college savings into his
arm, just one year before she needed it.

I know a girl who has been hurt by the mistakes of others, a girl committed to the vision of a
world where no one has to feel that same pain. I know a girl who will be the first of her family to
earn a college degree, the first to see the unfolding of all the possibilities to follow. I know a girl
that now divides her time between double majoring at UW, working full time, conducting drug
abuse research, and developing programs to reduce prison recidivism. I know a girl who
struggles to support herself and her mother while finding time to work towards her visions of a
world not shattered by addiction and incarceration.

I know a man, that man is my father.

I know a girl, that girl is me.

My story is tragically far from unique. Thousands of families are affected by drug addiction in
the Seattle area alone. Thousands of fathers, thousands of daughters, siblings, mothers are
impacted by a disease that plagues its community with a cascade of poor judgment, skewed
priorities, hopeless abandonment, poverty, and--all too often--death.

Entering the University of Washington, with the harsh implications of having an addicted parent
still encompassing my reality, I sought to devote my education, career, and passions towards a
world not plagued by the disease of addiction. I aimed to gain an in depth understanding of the
brain and neural mechanisms underlying the disease while developing the skill sets to engineer
solutions to aid in the research and treatment of addiction. To achieve this aim, I have been
applying my personal motivation and education to aid in the university’s current
neuropharmacological research in the Chavkin Lab. The Chavkin Lab studies the function of
opioid peptides on the nervous system. We study the nociceptive, emotional, and addictive
effects of endogenous opioids at the molecular, cellular, systems, and behavioral level. The
ultimate goal of the Chavkin lab is to understand the molecular and cellular mechanisms of
addictive tendencies to develop treatments for addiction.

During my time at the Chavkin Lab, I realized that a huge barrier to the research of addiction is
the fact that we have a limited understanding of how neuronal populations communicate to drive
drug seeking and abuse behaviors. As the focus for my senior year Bioengineering Capstone
project, I am designing a device to record the activity of neurons in awake and behaving animals
with the ultimate goal of unraveling the neuronal circuitry involved in drug seeking and abuse. In
order to achieve this goal, I am designing a device that can be attached to a mouse’s skull with
fiber bundles that will project into the brain regions of interest. The fiber bundle will include
optic fibers for optogenetic modulation and electrical fibers for electrophysiology recording. I
will also be developing programs to (1) link specific timepoints of behavior to time points in
recorded data and (2) analyze the data for trends in behavior-linked neuronal activity.

In addition to my neuropharmacology research, I also took an opportunity offered through the

UW Interdisciplinary Honors Program last summer to work with the inmate education program
at the Twin Rivers Unit of the Monroe Correctional Complex. Thank to this opportunity, I have
been working with 3 inmates at the prison to develop a research proposal to initiate the first
study of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) on a prison population. The ultimate aim of
this study is to develop prison programs for ACEs victims to reduce recidivism rates.

Part II – Living Under One Roof

I entered this course with a combinatory background of personal experience, lab based research,
and social science initiation. While these experiences share a common theme, I have never had
the opportunity to explore their innate co-influences under the general topic of ‘addiction
research.’ This course provided me with the unique opportunity to see how all aspects of
addiction research including personal experience, lab based research, and social science are not
only necessary but interdependent on one another to fully understand and address the contextual
framework of the disease.

The goal of the course was to bring together insights from all fields of addiction research with
diversity in both speakers and participants. Disturbingly however, the course illuminated
barriers, both intellectual and physical, between the lab based and human based researchers.
From the first day of the course, the room was divided with the lab based researchers sitting
across the aisle from the social sciences researchers and workers. On first glance, this separation
was benign in its nature; lab researchers know lab researchers, social researchers know social
researchers. However, as discussion developed, it was clear that there was an inherent
intellectual clash between the two sides of the room. I witnessed frustration during discussions,
acute attempts to prove the worth of one’s research, eye rolling at opposing opinions, and a
general lack of interest in understanding alternative viewpoints.

Introspectively, I found myself with a similar conflict in my own viewpoints on the topics. I
struggled to meld my categorical experiences into cohesive discussion points. The lab based side
of my brain was constantly questioning the methodologies of the social science research,
scoffing at hand-wavey correlations and non-controlled studies. While the social science side of
my brain argued that animal models and pharmacological treatments could never address the
complexity of such a societally rooted disease. All the while, my personal experience with the
disease had me frustrated at the lack of holistic discussion into the broader implications of
addiction on the addicts, families, and surrounding communities.

The one point in the course that I felt equalized every participant to a fundamental level of basic
humanity was during the statements of Joey Stanton. Joey was the only person throughout the
entirety of the course that gave firsthand insight into the personal experiences and implications of
the struggle with addiction. His statements were powerful, emotional, and raw. He gave calls-to-
action to both lab researchers and social researchers with the same level of purpose and intensity.
He was the only person throughout the course that seemed to fully appreciate the collated effort
of everyone in the room while bringing to light the previously neglected, crude human condition
accompanying the disease.

An aside:

Particularly notable was the moment in which Joey received a message from his grandson.
While he was visibly embarrassed to have opened the message in the context of the lecture hall,
that very incident was the most powerful moment in the course for me.
Through Joey’s statements, he had encompassed a human experience all too similar to
the one I had witnessed my father go through. As I’ve gotten older, I have started
wondering things such as, “will my father get to see me graduate from college?”, “will
my father be there to walk me down the aisle?”, “will my father get to meet his
grandchildren?”
Seeing Joey receive that message from his grandson gave me a small amount of hope that, with
the proper intervention, the answer to some of those questions may be “yes.”

Part III – Future Generations

I have always felt empowered by interacting with individuals who have experienced adversity;
be it addiction, incarceration, homelessness, or any of the other not-so-pretty realities of
humanity. Seeing the harmonizing power of firsthand accounts has given me motivation to
remain involved in both fields of addiction research while making direct human interaction a
priority as I move forward in my career. I now recognize that, to make a meaningful impact on
the field, I don’t need to choose between lab based and human based research. Instead, I must
combine the breadth of knowledge gained from both of those areas into a cohesive approach to
shape future questions and motivations.

I will make an effort to not look through the critical lenses of lab based research or human based
research. Instead, I will teach myself to look through an interdisciplinary lens and ask questions
such as, “How can this research interact with the other branches of addiction research?” By
choosing to understand the critical importance of both micro and macro scale research, I will be
able to gain better insights into how to treat the individual instead of just the disease.

With a refreshed sense of purpose and a newly broadened look into the many aspects and
consequences of addiction, I return to my original goal: to devote my education, career, and
passions towards a world not plagued by the disease of addiction. I seek a world in which no
child grows up to tell a story like mine.