Drink and Drugs News DDN July_August 2019 | Page 16

Reviews
READING FOR RECOVERY
These two books show the power of reading in rehabilitation and recovery, says Mark Reid
The Man Who Came
Uptown by George
Pelecanos
Published by Orion Fiction
ISBN: 978-1409179733
The Reading Cure
by Laura Freeman
Published by Weidenfeld
& Nicolson
ISBN: 978-1474604642
GEORGE PELECANOS IS A BRILLIANT CRIME ACTION
THRILLER WRITER who also attends American prison
reading groups. The Man Who Came Uptown (got out of
jail) is Michael Hudson. His early release is down to
acquaintances who constrain him to commit one last
crime – so serious he believes he has killed someone.
This convinces him to stay on a new path. His reading
facilitator, Anna, encouraged an interest in stories of
redemption and small kindnesses. It grows into a
personal affection for books. Michael buys shelving to
proudly ‘start my own library’. When Hudson read in
prison he was taken ‘outside himself and his troubled
mind’.
Laura Freeman needs ‘a thick, sustaining book’ for
her peace of mind in overcoming anorexia. She is
liberated and exhilarated by the gusto of certain literary
characters when they tuck into a meal. Theirs is a hearty
love of life and company. ‘Thanks to Thomas Hardy, I
drank proper milk’. The personality of the authors is a
big influence. There is identification especially with
Virginia Woolf: her creative highs and desperate lows.
Laura seeks a happy medium. Gluttons put her off.
So do real-life faddy chia seed ‘clean’ eaters who
compound the preoccupations ‘which once existed only
in my unhappy mind’. Ultimately her progress allows
her to enjoy cooking and its rituals. A favourite is crispy
chicken baked with fennel.
There is ‘one last taboo’. Chocolate. ‘It is so tangled
up in my mind with ideas of sin, greed and loss of
control’. She tries to read through this. Twelve whole
pages are devoted to books delighting in chocolat(e).
Laura last ate it in January 2003 (a third of a Mars Bar
MEDIA SAVVY
‘Michael Gove is a
man who invites
a number of
opinions, a great
deal of them
unflattering...’
MICHAEL GOVE is a man who invites a
number of opinions, a great deal of
them unflattering, even within the
Conservative party, but I am yet to
meet a Tory MP who sincerely believes
that it would have been better for
anyone had he spent a decent chunk of
the early noughties in prison. Yet the
official position of his party, and that of
the main opposition, is that it would.
Stephen Bush, Observer , 9 June
16 | drinkanddrugsnews | July/August 2019
EIGHT OUT OF THE 11 TORY
LEADERSHIP CANDIDATES have at
various times admitted to taking
illegal drugs. But all politics is
hypocrisy, an edifice of pretence,
insincerity and deviousness. The art
lies in how you pull it off… The
regulation – or non-regulation – of
narcotics is quite simply the greatest
social curse in modern Britain. It
blights every corner of society. Gove
nibbled at an airport vending machine). She reveals the
tortuous obsessions of the anorexic: not eating
chocolate keeps in place ‘the discipline, so that, if ever
again I was determined to stop eating, I could do it’. Her
abstinence is akin to that of the recovering alcoholic or
addict. They are alike in the roles played by reward,
aversion and anxiety. ‘One chocolate would mean never
stopping eating it’. Anyway, as Laura points out, we
don’t ‘need’ it and now
she eats a range of
nutritious food.
In The Reading Cure,
Laura Freeman can read
a book a day; it was
always her ‘indulgence’.
Michael Hudson says
‘books scared him’. They
weren’t in his old life. A
friend now notices his
new passion and says
with suspicion ‘you read
books?’
From these two very
different starting points,
reading transforms both
their lives.
‘From these
two very
different
starting
points,
reading
transforms
both their
lives.’
The news, and the skews, in the national media
should lead a campaign to end the
indefensible 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act,
and set Britain on the road to reform
now being pursued by governments on
both sides of the Atlantic. As a former
justice secretary, and former drug user,
he would be uniquely qualified for the
task. At present, eight out of 11
candidates for British prime minister
are criminals on the run.
Simon Jenkins, Guardian , 10 June
IN THIS DAY AND AGE, many people
from all walks of life and in all levels of
seniority, have experimented with
drugs – and politicians are no different.
But it shows a certain hypocrisy when
they lecture the rest of us about the
dangers of substance abuse. However,
their experiences will not go to waste
if whoever wins No10 launches an
open and honest debate about drugs
in our society… Only a Royal
Commission examining all the facts
can establish the right policy for this
country. And the next PM should set
one up without delay.
Mirror editorial, 9 June
OPPONENTS OF LEGALISATION are
fond of taking the worst drug
scenarios and saying, ‘So you want to
legalise that, do you?’ To which the
answer is, ‘no’. Much is made of the
link between potent strains of
cannabis and psychosis, for example,
but the fact those strains have spread
owes much to their illegality. You could
say similar things about crack cocaine
and heroin, or Spice, the horrible
synthetic cannabinoid that now
saturates our prisons. Legalisation of
cannabis in some American states has,
admittedly, led to a free-for-all, with
little focus on regulation of any sort.
Starting later, this country could do
something more controlled.
Hugo Rifkind, Times , 3 June
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