Writing's a fight and this boy needs a battle
How else can you discover a state of grace?
The Science Museum Group describes “Oblivon” as a “sedative to calm anxiety and fear”.
It was launched in 1953 by British Schering Ltd.”. Time described it as “taking the terror out of visits to the dentist”. The label advises adults to take “two capsules about 15 minutes before an ordeal”. The name “Oblivon” was a play on the word oblivion, “a state of complete forgetfulness” but “did not relieve pain”. In the UK it was only available “on prescription and was completely withdrawn in 1967”.
An answer prompted by Mike Power‘s article in Vice about the way drugs cause environmental damage, but mostly because of prohibition.
It is no surprise that illegal drug production causes environmental problems. Prohibition is an act of alienation, a policy that only makes sense when seen as justification for ever more intrusive policing strategy.
I would argue that prohibition has corrupted our relationship with drugs. Think about that for a moment. Every culture has a sacred substance, a drug that offers users a state of grace. How different is dropping a pill and dancing all night, from smoking peyote by the indigenous peoples of south America. I would say the only difference is location. When someone says they’re high, what do they mean? I’d say they’re referring to the heightened sate of being they’re experiencing. They’re seeing and feeling things at a heightened level. If you were being unkind, you’d call it escaping, otherwise you might think of it as seeking.
Prohibiting needs to be stopped because we need to reestablish a healthy, considered, relationship with drugs. One that sees drugs in context both socially and environmentally.
There’s something both very concerning and extremely funny in this story by Agence France-Presse in The Guardian.
Cocaine “in all shrimp” tells me those responsible for water purification are allowing contaminated water into the environment. I can’t imagine these cockroaches of the sea racking out lines, so there’s Charlie in the water.
There’s also a heavy dose of funny in the appalling lapse of public safety. The population of Suffolk must be partying hard to secrete that much marching powder into the water supply. I can see the internet going bonkers over the idea that people will be able to get high eating shrimp.
Daniel Boffey’s report for The Guardian exposes a couple of things. Not only are drugs being bought anonymously online, and shipped using the relative anonymity of the postal service, it also confirms what the authorities don’t want to admit, prohibition doesn’t work, never has, and most definitely never will!
“Dead Dog on the Left (2018) isn’t just a documentary about the use of ecstasy in treating PTSD, it’s a story of the lengths one former marine will go to for friendship.”
Interesting to see in Anthony Gunter’s article the argument that “serious violence is a public health issue”.
The same argument could be made against prohibition. The “war on drugs” should be seen not as a policing problem but instead framed as a public health issue. But harm reduction runs counter to the paternalistic tone that underscores the bias that blames degenerate youth.
In the story world of Carrion, drug users are the enemy. As a distinct social group they are to Reiner and the prohibitionist what the Jews were to Hitler and the Nazis, “if we did not have them we should have to invent him. It is essential to have a tangible enemy”.
They’re the outsider, the other, the enemy, the threat that people can be united against. Defeat drugs and the world will be a better place.
From Reiner’s point of view, the choice to do drugs represents a kind of desire for freedom, that poses a direct challenge to the security he craves. This makes Adam’s animosity towards drugs, more about his desire to be part of something bigger. Which raises the question, if you strip away that belonging would the animosity go with it?
Adam wants to be part of something bigger. The price to become part of that something is his sister. Unwilling to pay the piper he is exiled, forced to experience the world thusly.
Does that make Adam’s animosity to drugs environmental, a learned behaviour that has more to do with his relationship with Christine, than some innate hatred of drugs and users.
I ended my last post with a question; what does Christine’s desire line look like?
It would be easy to say Christine’s desire is to escape prohibition but I don’t think that adequately describes what she wants. To truly understand her desire we first have to understand her need. What must Christine fullfil within herself to have a better life?
Need is about overcoming her moral and psychological weaknesses. The knee-jerk reaction to this question identifies her drug use as her weakness, but as I tried to explain in my previous post, Christine’s drug use is not a negative. That understanding just doesn’t fit with the moral vision or theme I have for the story.
As I understand it Christine’s weakness is her rebelliousness, that impulse she has to resist authority, control, or convention. In the chapter “Character Web by Archetype” of “The Anatomy of Story” John Truby notes that the rebel’s strength is the “courage to stand out from the crowd and act against a system that is enslaving people”. The weakness of this archetype is that they “often cannot provide a better alternative, so end up destroying the society”.
I think of the link between the two sides of her weakness like this. If Adam’s self-righteousness is a product of a positive pushed until it becomes a negative, his responsibility, taken to the extreme, is oppressive.
Christine’s weakness is a product of her bravery pushed until it becomes destructive. At the beginning of the story her rebelliousness is the wellspring of the conflict with Adam. Her defiance exasperates Adam. He reacts with self-righteous indignation and arrests her, which reenforces her will to resist. She has a destructiveness about her at the beginning of the story.
The question then becomes, what is she at the end? In purely technical terms she needs to achieve the polar opposite. Put simply if her weakness is destructive she needs to create something.
That insight brings me to the conclusion that Christine’s need is to change the society she lives in. Ironically, a need she is only able to fulfil through Adam. When, at the end of the story, Adam chooses freedom over security, he is fulfilling Christine’s creative need to free society. He is doing it because of what he’s learned through Christine.
A conclusion I wasn’t really aware of until now. Christine’s desire line is not to escape prohibition, it’s to change Adam. This insight changes the way I look at Adam and how he relates to Christine.
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about Christine Leigh. Who she is? What she wants? Why she takes drugs?
Christine’s relationship with Adam is the cornerstone of Carrion.
She is the reason he goes up against Reiner. Without her Adam would remain inactive, Reiner’s actions would go unchallenged, and our view of prohibition would remain inviolate.
The story only gets under way when Adam’s desire to save Christine kicks in. But there is a problem with characterising Christine as something that needs to be saved. Certainly it allows Adam to justify arresting her at the beginning of the story, but it has the potential to make her incredibly passive.
There is another thing. “Characterising Christine as something that needs to be saved” underestimates, or more accurately, misrepresents her drug use. Overall it presupposes she is victimised by drugs. Certainly she is persecuted by prohibition, but when I think of her drug use I don’t see her as a victim.
The understanding of drug user as victim relies heavily on the popular perception of those who take drugs as damaged individual running away from something. While there are undoubtably a percentage of individuals who fit this profile. I know the vast majority of people who use drugs take them for entirely different reason. If the truth were told there are probably as many reasons for using drugs as there are people who take them.
There’s also another misconception at play, one that presumes everyone who takes drugs is an addict. I view this as prohibitionist propaganda. The truth is less hysterical. Just as not everyone who drinks is an alcoholic, not everyone who takes drugs is an addict.
Which brings me back to the question, why does Christine take drugs? The short answer is she’s looking for something. If I had to pin it down I’d say she is actually seeking a state of grace. I don’t think of Christine as a religious person. I think what she seeks is less devine grace and more secular enlightenment. In an earlier post I outlined something of Christine’s character.
Born in 1995. She was two when her brother joined the army. In the years that followed she saw him occasionally. His absence from the family home meant she actually grew up an only child. The sole beneficiary of her parents emotional, physical and financials resources, the constant attention lead to a strong willed girl sensitive to disapproval. Denied competition from a sibling she exhibits a certain possessiveness with her time, space and belongings. Perfectly happy to spend time alone and fiercely loyal, she prefers the company of a few close friends to the superficial connections exhibited by her extrovert peers. (2)
I view Christine’s drug use as her way of connecting to others. It’s not just that she has a small group of friends who are united by a common activity, or the feelings of empathy that comes with the use of a drug like ecstasy. I think she uses drugs because she has a deep-rooted need to short circuit the barriers between people.
At the core of that need are the barriers she feels between herself and Adam. The flip-side of this need to connect is her great weakness, her rebelliousness, that impulse to resist authority, control or convention. All of which raises a question, what does her desire line look like?
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