Peaches Geldof

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

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.

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

"epiphenomenon"

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

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.

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.

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/

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.

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.

This blog post says it all:

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

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.

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.

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.

Perhaps it is having what appears to be a purposeless life. At the wealthy end of the scale there maybe no 'daily routine' of going to work etc so you have to fill your time and at the other end of the wealth scale are the workless who have little to do to structure their lives and that is why it appears drug abuse is seen at each end of this continuum. I think it would be foolish to think drugs were not also an issue in the working community though.

Strange that it is a problem that affects [mainly] those highest and lowest on the social scale. As if it's a problem of losing one's role in life [which, in a lot of case it is, given the problems they have, for example, in old mining communities etc].

I don't know about an ugly sight - certainly pathetic. I think you have to look beyond the image, though, and see the person, what she is doing about her drug habit and what priority her child is to her. I'd rather see a young woman putting her child in the pushchair to go and get her supervised methadone dose each morning, than losing control and using street methadone or heroin to try to cope. Supervised methadone tells me she is engaged with local drugs services and subject to some degree of oversight from her GP and drugs counsellor.

PS

I am not feeling very happy with myself that I am tagging my comments onto a thread about a poor girl who it would appear had demons throughout her life. sad]

Am I the only one who finds the sight of a pregnant woman or women pushing babies in pushchairs to get their dose of Methadone a very sad and ugly sight?

Nobody has commented on the point I raised re the liberal thinking that allows an unborn child to have less 'rights' than it's mother, that surprises me.

I think there is a case for thatbags view but there is also the case not all drug addicts are taking drugs because of their gene pool. There is more to the overall question than genes, surely, albeit a factor to some cases possibly.

What makes us collectively allow this to happen? It is one of those things where our apathy and liberal thinking of human rights blows smoke up backsides.

I am not attacking Peaches and saying she was a bad mum, I am sure that was not the case. I am gneralising as to what society now considers appropriate behaviour. I watched a programme on children in the slums of Brazil and the poor little kids were mostly hooked on 'crack cocaine', like their mothers, it is beyond sadness to me.

I really don't know the answer, I just know it is not the way we should behave in a society that is supposed to value our children and their welfare. There are probably good and bad mum's but I don't think it should be left to chance once a child is born to find out. Sorry if I offend anybody but I really do get upset at the whole notion of this.

Methadone is a dangerous and lethal drug. But it does help many people who never "use on top". It continues to be a controversial way of dealing with a massively complex subject, but it helps to prevent the spread of HIV and Hep B&C amongst people who use drugs. It is also the WHO recommended "gold standard" treatment for heroin addiction. The big roll-out of the methadone programme in this country was I believe largely responsible for halting the HIV epidemic in the 1980s when heroin flooded in to this country and users of the drug in the UK went from about 20,000 to 200,000.

The Home Office register for addicts no longer exists, they stopped using it about 10 years ago I think. There is now the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System, which is anonymised.

That's the theory about methadone thatbags but unfortunately it is also sold on the black market by registered addicts. It's incredibly dangerous.

And they get clean needles.

I don't know who I could have learnt it from. They couldn't afford chocolate when I was little.

It seems we are agreed then, nightowl.

Going back to something pogs said, I gather that the reason for supplying some addicts with methadone is that they are less likely to get involved in criminal activities to satisfy their addiction if they are helped in this way.

Totally understand what thatbags is saying, and agree.

So difficult still to know whether addictive behaviour is genetic or cultural/parental- that old chestnut 'nurture versus nature' is still so relevant today. But I agree research is a good thing to try and elucidate this and take possible action.

Children of alcoholics often become alcoholics themselves- or on the contrary, very careful with alcohol or teatotal. Same for gambling, or even smoking.

I agree that the addiction gene seems to be stronger in some families than others. It doesn't mean it is a gene though. It could just as easily be learnt behaviour. Nature/ nurture again.