You Will Die: The Burden of Modern Taboos (55 page)

Is Mike an idiot? What sixteen-year-old does not know that a dried plant is not supposed to have a “chemical stench” that can stink up a room? What sixteen-year-old does not realize something might be suspicious about marijuana when he has trouble walking
the next day
? The government was running advertisements warning kids that if they smoked marijuana they might not bother to walk the dog.
⁴⁰
Did he not think the government would have it on every billboard in America if it caused paralysis?

I suspect that Mike is not an idiot. The following assertions are guesses, but it is my opinion that Mike knew exactly what he was doing. “Shy” kids who have never smoked marijuana before do not go and buy a sizable stash to start using at home. Mike had smoked marijuana before and Mike knew what it smelled like. Mike knowingly bought laced marijuana and knowingly continued to smoke it because he liked it. Mike’s parents caught him, so Mike lied his ass off. Mike told his parents that it was the first time he bought marijuana.

When his father, police officer, or anybody with a nose told his mother that it was spiked, she flipped her lid that her little boy could have been hurt. Mike saw the reaction and played it up. He said that he couldn’t walk, he wanted to hurt people, and that he thought people were after him. His mom probably cried. He was the victim of PCP and evil drug dealers (who were probably Mike’s friends). The story worked.

Mike’s parents bought it and told this horrible story to other parents and then
Newsweek
bought it too.
Newsweek
probably thought Mike did not want his picture in the magazine because he was concerned about his professional future. Mike did not want his picture in the magazine because other kids would realize he is a lying asshole. It is also my belief that if his parents were so naive as to believe his story, he
probably is not even shy, but plays that part for the folks because they are so ignorant to his world that they annoy him greatly.

What is more galling than people like Mike are idiots who behave recklessly and hurt themselves and other people when using drugs with near-suicidal abandon. These people make even more wonderfully lurid press for anti-drug zealots. Of course they usually blame their behavior on drugs because they are facing serious prison time, unlike shy Mike, who was probably facing being grounded and losing his allowance.

Play the Numbers
—The PCP article points to a forty-eight percent increase in PCP-related emergency room visits. To its credit, the article gives a nod to honesty by stating that PCP is “a small part of the nation’s drug problem,” right before comparing users to hand grenades without pins.
⁴¹

Perhaps instead of the bomb analogy it would have been useful to point out that the forty-eight percent increase brought the number up to nearly six thousand in 2001. For some perspective, it could have been mentioned that Tylenol (acetaminophen) overdoses account for 56,000 emergency room visits a year.
⁴²

Flat-Out Lie
—PCP does not increase strength.
⁴³
It is less addictive than caffeine. It does not promote violence. A junkie is, by definition, someone who is hopelessly addicted to a substance. The PCP article reads:

Never Point Out Actual Source of Harm
—In the above-mentioned Ecstasy story the father was quoted in a big text box saying:

This understandable grief is demonstrated frequently by parents and loved ones of those who unexpectedly overdose, and is given wide coverage by the media. The grieving parents, like many in their position, joined the campaign against the drug with the familiar refrain that, “. . . if I save one kid, if it saves one kid . . .”
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Parents often latch onto the tempting drug pusher myth to exculpate the deceased,
⁴⁵
and then some use their media coverage to crusade for tougher justice. The mother of a twenty-three-year-old, Kelley Baker, who “overdosed on Ecstasy,” managed to blame others for even broader behavior: “. . . a dealer had taken advantage of her vulnerability and gotten her involved in selling the drug to others.”
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In a sad irony, this mother worked to have Illinois pass “Kelley’s Law” to further toughen penalties for the sale and possession of Ecstasy. Now young Illinois women who use Ecstasy—like her daughter did—can go to prison for even longer time periods.

When David Nutt, one of the United Kingdom’s chief scientific advisers on drugs, called for lowering criminal punishments for Ecstasy because of its relative safety, a news article quoted a father: “I’d like that professor to stand beside Siobhan’s grave and say he wants to downgrade the drug. Or to stand by the graves of any of the other hundreds of kids who have died.”
⁴⁷

The articles never explain that tougher laws would not have saved these lives, but that legalization probably would have. If Ecstasy was legal it would have come in a package, with exact dosage described, and it would have been accompanied by
honest
medical warnings from pharmaceutical companies wary of being sued. If parents and loved ones of overdose victims really would do anything to save one kid’s life as they say, then they should press for legalization.

Preach and Teach
—The article on shy Mike concludes with the reader learning he is now in treatment. It is stunning that his parents or the judge actually believe he is addicted and in need of treatment after smoking such a small amount of PCP/marijuana— both of which are less addictive than caffeine. But it does not matter as the game must be played. The article ends, “‘I never want to do PCP again,’ Mike says. A lesson learned the hard way: it’s just not worth the risk.”

Until Helen Gurley Brown’s
Sex and the Single Girl
in 1962, all fictional female characters who had premarital sex had to suffer. This reflects the current state of fictional characters who use illegal drugs.
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Outside of marijuana, few writers have had the knowledge, courage, or license to present drug use accurately.

It was not always this way. The famous detective Sherlock Holmes regularly used cocaine and morphine intravenously. He was never shown to suffer because of it. In fact, the drugs stimulated his mind when a challenging case was lacking, and allowed Holmes to escape a commonplace existence and “a dreary, dismal, unprofitable world.”
⁴⁹

Sherlock Holmes mysteries were written primarily in the late nineteenth century, before the drug war began. It was only when the anti-drug propaganda started gaining traction that Holmes’ creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, ended Holmes’ habits in a 1904 tale.

Since then drug users have been presented as addicts who will do
anything
to score a hit and who will soon suffer or die. “Anything” has only been limited by the writers’ imaginations, and although fatal heroin overdoses are a real danger, to have them appear in almost every movie with heroin use is mathematically absurd.
⁵⁰

Compared to their flouting of the sex taboo, modern artists have been notably silent in telling the truth about drugs. Although many of them have used recreational drugs and continue to use them, few modern artists have honestly portrayed them in their work. Instead numerous artists have exaggerated their dangers.

An egregious example of this was the star-filled cast of
Requiem for a Dream
(2000). [Spoiler warning.] Ellen Burstyn was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for playing a mother who goes insane from taking diet pills (likely amphetamine) prescribed by a doctor. By film’s end she is incredulously reduced to a vegetable in a mental ward.

The other three characters—Sara, Harry, and Tyrone—take heroin. As a matter of course, the pretty white female must become a prostitute to feed her habit and have the requisite sex with a black gangster.
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Harry and Tyrone drive to Florida because they think heroin will be more available in that state than in New York City. (If heroin was actually this addictive, all heroin addicts would move to Mexico.) They
both end up in a Southern prison, but this is not enough punishment for these two drug users. Harry’s infected arm is amputated and Tyrone (a black man) is left doing hard labor under racist prison guards. The manic and dazzling cinematography make
Requiem
a modern
Reefer Madness
.
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[Spoiler end.]

Perhaps because of Hollywood’s relative street credibility,
Requiem
received reactions like this one from a college student: “Forget about the anti-drug programs schools have, this is the real deal.”
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There are reasons why artists consistently portray drugs so ominously. One, artists who use hard drugs are afraid to draw attention for fear of legal repercussions down the road. Second, most artists with anything but an anti-drugs message are afraid to portray their experiences honestly because they could lose commercial endorsements, lose opportunities (such as being sold at Wal-Mart), and be boycotted.

Because of this, the people who are willing to cover the topic are usually recovered addicts who can tell the sob story America wants to hear. Just like alcoholics, who are more likely to have stronger feelings about alcohol than casual drinkers, former drug addicts have strong feelings about their problem drug. The artistic rendition of drugs is arguably similar to the one that would be given of alcohol if only former alcoholics covered it.
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There is another phenomenon that influences artists who were users of hard drugs. Perhaps due to all of the exaggeration, drug addiction has gained an “I’ve danced with the devil” cachet. Former drug users often appear to embellish the “hell” of their addiction. By doing this they can portray themselves as a “bad ass” for their peers while simultaneously appearing as a victim for their family or their judge. In the case of artists, dramatization also entertains the audience.

Although these ornamentations usually pass unchallenged, the author James Frey was caught grossly exaggerating his “torturous drug-addled” life in his bestseller
A Million Little Pieces
. Frey wrote that he spent three months in jail because of an alcohol/crack binge that ended when he struck a police officer with his car and brawled with the boys in blue. The truth was that Frey hit a curb and was arrested for drunk driving. He was “polite and cooperative” and was released on bond.
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The book’s sales were not hurt by this revelation. This is unsurprising as
Pieces
gave the message America likes, true or not. Drugs are bad, the war on drugs is good, and law-abiding Americans aren’t missing out on any fun. This attitude is reflected in the initial response of a prominent talk-show host:

1.
        One historian calls our era’s bizarre demonization of drugs a “cultural trance,” Jennifer Hecht,
Happiness Myth
(2007), p. 71.

2.
        I calmed the officer down by buying him a drug—beer.

3.
        This was an e-mail received by Francis Moraes, a former heroin addict and the author of
The Heroin User’s Handbook
(2001). Ret.
HeroinHelper.com
, 5 Feb. 2007.