HAVE YOUR SAY
Write to the editor and get it off your chest
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They said what..?
Spotlight on the national media
CHOICE WOULD
BE A FINE THING…
SO FAR, the government’s
response to county line drug
dealing has been to point the
finger of blame at the middle
classes, alleging that their cocaine
use is fuelling the rise in knife
crime, which they erroneously
also link to county lines. While
it makes for an easy headline,
it neatly distracts attention
away from the underlying social
problems that an increasing
number of young people face
but appear to be invisible to
politicians. This cohort of young
people have been abandoned by
the state at a time when state
intervention is most needed.
Ian Hamilton, Independent,
7 November
As a society, we
need to do more to
recognise county
lines exploitation
before the offer of
support turns to
punishment.
THE TRAUMA of being involved in
county lines can leave deep scars.
Young people drop out of school,
become alienated from their
peers, and witness and execute
extreme violence. Many enter the
criminal justice system once they
turn 18, often becoming locked
into a revolving door of criminality,
their chances of living a normal
life reducing with the passing of
time… As young people get older,
WWW.DRINKANDDRUGSNEWS.COM
the way people perceive them
shifts from being the victims of
crime to perpetrators. As a society,
we need to do more to recognise
exploitation before the offer of
support turns to punishment.
Sonya Jones, Guardian,
25 November
PROBLEM DRUG USE IN
SCOTLAND has been allowed to
fester into a scandal, thanks in
no small part to the perpetual
and circular row over reserved
and devolved powers waged
between Edinburgh and London
for decades. Even in our current
febrile political climate, with a
general election looming and
debate raging over Scotland’s
constitutional future, that cannot
go on. But it will.
Martyn McLaughlin, Scotsman,
6 November
WHEN WILL WE EVER LEARN
just how much damage the
unrestrained use of marijuana is
doing to our society? When will we
ever do anything about it, as wiser
countries do? I make no apologies
for coming back to this subject, as
I remain amazed by the growing
support of ignorant politicians
and media for the legalisation of
this terrifying poison. If they get
their way it will take us straight
into a nightmare version of the
third world, with all the misery
but without all the sunshine…
Far from legalising marijuana, we
should be ferociously enforcing
the laws against its possession,
and driving it out of use, as the
sensible governments of Japan
and South Korea still do.
Peter Hitchens, Mail on Sunday,
10 November
M
As we approach ‘Dry
January’ Amy Dresner
asks, ‘Can sobriety be
both a health trend and a
matter of life and death?’
onths ago I innocently tweeted: ‘I’m all down with the
new sobriety/sober movement but please let’s not
forget among the mocktails, the trendiness and the
tees with cutesy slogans that for many of us, sobriety
wasn’t a health trend, lifestyle choice or a socio-
political statement but a matter of life and death.’
I got dozens of shares and ‘amens!’ and an equal amount of people
coming after me with flaming pitchforks accusing me of ‘gatekeeping
sobriety’ or sarcastically consoling me that ‘sorry being sober isn’t punk
rock anymore’.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the ‘new sobriety,’ it is a
new trend to not drink, to be sober but not because you’re alcoholic
necessarily. It was born out of ‘Dry January’ and alcohol-free events with
the precept of exploring your relationship with alcohol. It’s primarily
intended for people in ‘grey area drinking’ – not full-blown alcoholics, but
people who might send some stupid texts, occasionally regret how much
they drank, or not be as fully functional as they’d like the morning after.
If you want to take a break from drinking to see if you can be
social without liquid courage or not be hungover for your 7am spin
class, I fully support that. And if you can stay stopped because of
that, fantastic. I am not at all saying that you need to wrap your car
around a pole or have your parents remortgage their house to send
you to treatment half a dozen times before you realise that your life is
infinitely better without getting loaded.
But all the coverage of the ‘new sobriety’ in the media is missing
an important piece of the story: if you CANNOT do a full month
without drinking or if your life gets exponentially better when you stop
drinking… you might actually be an alcoholic. And sorry but there ain’t
nothing trendy or cool about that. And ‘alcoholic’ and ‘alcoholism’, the
words that really need to be de-stigmatised, are being left out of this
conversation and, frankly, the whole movement.
Granted, I’m a recovering blackout drunk and IV drug addict so a
‘Dry January’ was pretty implausible unless I was locked up in a rehab or
a psych ward. For us alcoholics, the idea of ‘moderation’, the myth that
we can stop or start at will, is an ethereal dream that takes many of us
out of recovery and keeps us experimenting over and over again till we
hit rock bottom or die.
I’ll be honest, when you’re an alcoholic this ‘new sobriety’ feels a bit
like people choosing to be gluten-free because it reduces inflammation
or whatever, when you actually have to thanks to your celiac disease.
And the popularity of this idea that you can just CHOOSE not to drink
undermines the current science that for many people there’s a genetic
component to their alcoholism, an anomaly in the reward system of
the brain that makes that choice… well, pretty much impossible.
This is an extract of Amy Dresner’s article for RecoveryWrx,
a site about recovery, for people in recovery, by people in recovery.
www.recoverywrx.org
DEC 2019-JAN 2020 • DRINK AND DRUGS NEWS • 25