SYRINGES AMONG THE TEACUPS - HEROIN CAN BE MADE TOO EASY

When I was researching a short book on heroin in 1999, the thought crossed
my mind that I might just try the drug myself. "It just makes everything
OK," said Ben, a clever young artist. "Every insecurity, every self-doubt,
guilt complex, every memory that shouldn't be there, everything that's ever
negatively affected you just disappears. Everything is taken care of." The
notion of escaping from all anxieties and stresses seemed highly seductive.

And heroin is much easier to take now that you can smoke it, as well as
inject it. A big change occurred in the 1980s when Western markets were
flooded with Iranian and Afghan brown, replacing Chinese white: brown
heroin could be smoked or inhaled. Injecting heroin is alarming, but
smoking seems so accessible.

I didn't do it: I came to my senses, but I had glimpsed the temptation. The
idea was daft; it was also illegal, and the fact that heroin is against the
law can be a useful deterrent.

This was brought home to me in an interview with Alexander - another
pleasant young man I met. Alexander had a private education, was
intelligent and well spoken, though his home background had been troubled
and marked by early loss. He started experimenting with drugs at 15 -
basically, he says, through lack of supervision. Nobody was "watching over
him".

He used heroin for about 12 years, and began to think about quitting only
when he was busted, flagged down in Brixton with more than UKP1,000 worth
of heroin in his vehicle, and UKP2,500 in cash.

He was charged with possession, and finally appeared in court. He got a
suspended sentence and a strong, but fatherly, scolding from the judge.
This event turned him around: it wasn't just the shame of appearing before
a court, but the year's apprehension leading up to it. He made his first
attempt to quit and got clean three years later.

I met several other recovering addicts from middle-class backgrounds for
whom an entanglement with the law was the trigger to quit. In one case, a
successful young photographer had been using heroin for about eight years
when he got busted by the gardai in Dublin.

Understandably, he pulled every string he had in the media to keep the case
out of the papers. Surprisingly, his mother - whom he thought of as a
"1960s liberal" - reacted with tongue-lashing disapproval, which also
helped him turn away from the habit. Ten years after the event, he was
still clean, though still attending Narcotics Anonymous.

I learnt a lot in my conversations with heroin users, and one salient fact
that emerged was that it is by no means confined to the Trainspotting
milieu of inner-city squalor. There are plenty of drug users who come from
"nice" social backgrounds, and who live in Tunbridge Wells. Indeed, the
middle-class addict is better able to cover up the habit and, if he is
rich, he may be quietly using for years, even decades.

Lucy, a former addict, has a rich cousin who has been doing heroin for 30
years. His wealth has protected him from street heroin and the attentions
of the law alike. But there is a cost, all the same. "Emotionally, he
remains like a teenager. It closes down your ability to develop as a
character, or to have any other interests." Long-time heroin users
eventually become terrific bores, to themselves and others.

In researching heroin, my initial question was why people use it in
particular, and a wider menu of drugs in general. There are many answers
besides the mere "feelgood" attraction of the opiate, which, in any case,
is always followed by a "feelbad" sequel. Ben, the artist who had said that
heroin made everything OK afterwards, added that it also dragged you down
to the deepest depths of despair you could ever know. And all heroin users
have known friends who have died from an overdose, a freak hit, or an
adulterated quantity.

Other factors included a personality that is vulnerable to addiction, a
childhood bereavement through death or divorce, the undue influence of a
glamorous peer group, and a desire to take risks. For a few, there is also
something akin to seeking a mystical experience in a world where mystery
and even heroism seem wanting. ("It's not called 'heroin' for nothing," one
long-term addict said. "We seek the heroic in heroin.")

But it was striking that all the middle-class addicts whom I spoke to had
had liberal parents - and some had had absent parents. Lucy began, at the
age of 15, to drink quite heavily. Then she moved on to cannabis, ecstasy,
cocaine, LSD and heroin. Looking back on her teenage years, she said that
nobody had ever showed any disapproval about her drinking habits. (Her
father had died when she was 12.) Nobody had ever pulled her up or tried to
stop her.

As a mother herself now, she realises that she was testing the limits, and
what she really needed was a bit more authority against which to push
boundaries. Vanessa, a diplomat's daughter who began experimenting with
heroin as a teenager, said her parents "were too busy getting divorced even
to notice me".

Sex played an interesting role almost by default. When it used to be
forbidden fruit, one young woman observed, you could push out the
boundaries by behaving flagrantly sexually. But now sex was "no big deal",
and had been so tamed that it didn't represent any rebellion at all. That
just left drugs.

There are no easy answers to the problem of drug abuse, but I did feel that
I learnt a lot from talking to users and recovering addicts. They were
seldom in favour of a more liberal approach by the law to hard drugs, and
sometimes had cause to be thankful that the law pulled them up.

They were generally in favour - looking back - of much more parental
supervision, and even of more parental authority. Some had been helped by
de-tox programmes, but the de-toxification in itself never did the trick:
you had to have follow-up, and a daily support group, sometimes, to get you
through.

I came to believe that some of the fancier clinics, which can charge
UKP3,000 a week, can be a rip-off: I came across more than one case of a
young person emerging from an expensive clinic and going straight back on
to the gear - sometimes subsequently dying. The clinics that help are the
ones that prompt some kind of real follow-through.

There are a few, very serious heroin addicts who will never recover, and
there is a case for careful clinical administration of heroin for such
unwell individuals. But virtually all recovered addicts say that for the
rest, the most important thing is that family, friends, society and
community should not "enable" drug addiction - not do anything to make it
possible.

Margaret, a former heroin addict who very nearly committed suicide, and was
pulled back by the spiritual support of a friend, said that this is always
the bottom line. Do nothing to enable. Support, help, disapproval,
supervision, tough love, treatment - all may have their part to play in
healing this affliction. But do not enable.