Peaches Geldof

I agree perhaps this thread not the best place to discuss or debate the finer points of addiction and treatment and the rights and wrongs of it. Anyway it's another of those circular discussions with no answer at the end of it.

I agree, Penstemmon, but the working community tends to go for the 'party' drugs which give a high - heroin isn't like that, as nightowl pointed out. More of a pain blocking-out drug, apparently.

God yes! Heroin must be the worst drug to be addicted to. And it often seems to be people in really hard circumstances that get involved with it.

Nothing wrong with threads wandering Grannyknot.

This blog post says it all:

trschester.wordpress.com/2014/05/02/reflections-the-morning-after-wendy-dossett/

Just popped on to apologise for leaving the discussion. Unfortunately got rather tied up with 'family things' and when I got back you had moved on by leaps and bounds leaving this poor old soul well behind. Keep up the good work everyone.

That blog post is a very good read. Thank you, gknot.

There is a bit in the penultimate paragraph where it lost me a bit:
" Bruce Alexander’s view that addiction is an epiphenomenon of the neo-liberal fragmentation of society, the conference focused on questions about what it means to build meaningful communities in the context of modernity" but overall it's spot on.

I'm not sure addiction is a modern phenomenon except perhaps insofar as it's probably easier now to become an addict because there are more addictive substances around. I'm thinking Shamanism and the like.

Bags Bruce Alexander does get a bit jargony, but he does make sense too. Here is his website about the globalisation of addiction.

globalizationofaddiction.ca/

I think it's easier to become an addct now because 1) drugs are cheaper than ever and within the reach of all levels of society 2) they are very easy to obtain - they can even be bought over the Internet 3) recreational drug use is seen by the young as acceptable, mainstream, and no different from alcohol or tobacco 4) the rise of celeb culture increases the appeal of drugs and the normalisation of the lifestyle

I'm sure there are other reasons but those are ones that spring to mind without too much thought. From speaking to my own children and their friends I am aware that it is a very different world than the one I grew up in - despite thinking drugs had been invented in the 60's - and the ease with which young people can slip into drug taking now is frightening.

It is definitely not a modern phenomenon - think of the WW1 hampers of comforts from Harrods to send to the front, which contained hard drugs and the equipment to use them. Think of "Confessions of an Opium Eater" and the dependence of so many Victorian women on laudanum, that soother of pain and anguish. That was even given to babies who were teething and fractious. I wonder what that did to the ease with which they later became addicts!

Laudamun was a tincture of 90% alcohol and 10% opium. "It was first used by the ancient Greeks, and in the 19th century mostly used as painkiller, sleeping pill, or tranquilizer. It was cheaper then poppy oil and could be drank like you’d drink scotch. It took a while for the Victorian to figure out the negative side effect, only in 1919 the production and export of opium was prohibited, and in 1928 a law was passed that prohibited use." ( 19thcentury.wordpress.com/2008/03/02/laudanum/ )

Users included Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, all examples of creative "artistic" people, plus repressed housewives trapped in a cycle of useless inactivity in golden cages, plus the denizens of city rookeries with no hope of better lives. Nothing new there, then.

"epiphenomenon"

One of those words you don't bother to google because you just know you will never come across it again.

I'm still wrestling with "neo-liberal fragmentation">

I did read that her husband has been completely cleared of any involvement with supplying her with heroin. Which is good, especially for those little children.

An epiphenomenon is a byproduct of a phenomenon. Neo liberalism has got something to do with the 60s.