Some of the themes included in “Transcendent Kingdom” by Yaa Gyasi are mental health, such as addiction and depression, the relationship between science and religion, the process of recovery and the search for meaning in life. Gifty grew up with a brother who died young due to an addiction and a mother who suffered from depression caused by her son’s death. I will be using a case study entitled “Interaction between cocaine use and sleep behavior: A comprehensive review of cocaine’s disrupting influence on sleep behavior and sleep disruptions influence on reward seeking” by Theresa E. Bjorness and Robert W. Greene. In this study, the goal is to determine whether there is evidence to prove that sleep therapy is an effective method of sustaining abstinence from drug use. The conclusions of this case study help to emphasize the effects that addiction has on the human body. It shows that even after the user discontinues abusing the drug, there are several aspects of their brain that need to be rewired in order to minimize the chance of relapse.

             Nana’s addiction began when he was recovering from a sports injury by taking OxyContin. Though his injury began to heal, Nana kept getting his prescription filled and taking the pain medication due to how it was making him feel. Perhaps it was helping him deal with the losses he kept having to endure such as the loss of his father and the loss of his sporting career. His entire life, Nana was looked at as special and regarded highly amongst his community and family. This type of pressure can be a lot for a boy and teenager to handle and may have contributed to his drug dependency. Though he did a good job of managing the pressure and expectations, one has to wonder whether he felt relieved when he was high and did not have to think of or feel that pressure he constantly felt. Nana’s OxyContin use then led to heroin use, which ultimately led to his death. He was not completely hopeless throughout the period of his drug use, as he attempted to quit several times and even went to rehab for his addiction. Nothing seemed to work and Nana ended up suffering a tragic fate.

            Bjorness’ and Greene’s case study sought to find evidence that would prove that sleep therapy is an essential form of drug treatment therapy because it reduces to likelihood of a relapse. They argued that sleep deprivation altered the reward system in the brain and caused former users of cocaine to crave the drug. It was concluded that “one night of sleep deprivation increases the perception of the strength of cocaine and reverses sleep deprivation-induced vigilance impairments in humans”. It is also stated that “Dopaminergic neurons do not change firing rate across state, though the pattern of firing does change as demonstrated by prominent burst firing during REM sleep which would be expected to increase DA release”. Therefore, a drug such as cocaine that causes sleep deprivation and increases the amount of dopamine released into the brain at a high rate, can cause a person to continue using the drug and depriving themselves of sleep because of the high amounts of dopamine their brain is experiencing, which causes them more pleasure than a restful night’s sleep. It has long been understood that drugs such as cocaine lead to day-long benders where the user does not sleep for much longer than any human should go without sleep for, but the effects and reasons behind this phenomenon are not spoken about as much.

            The study is relevant to the novel because Nana went to rehab and still continued to use heroin and eventually died from his addiction. People who are unaware of the intricacies of addiction may judge Nana, and people like him, for leaving rehab and not being rehabilitated. Nana was a strong-willed young man who figured out life on his own and it seems addiction was one of those things he decided to figure out on his own. The study shows that there are many aspects which go into fully curing somebody of their addiction, and some may not be widely recognized and treated by professionals. It adds weight to the argument that addiction is a hard behavior to kick and it takes more than just a willing participant to successfully come out of the other side alive and thriving.

            It is important to integrate literature and science to understand complex issues like addiction because it gives the reader some extra information to base their conclusions upon. It provides valuable information so that readers are clued into the details of these issues instead of being left to analyzing them at a surface level.

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