Pubdate: Mon, 12 Nov 2007 Source: Irish Independent (Ireland) Copyright: Independent Newspapers (Ireland) Ltd Contact: http://www.independent.ie/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/213 Author: Ian O'Doherty Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine) WHY I GAVE UP COCAINE... YOU CAN BELIEVE THIS ONE Of all the terrible programmes RTE have inflicted on us in recent years, the two-part "expose" High Society, which started last Thursday and continues later this week, will go down as the worst. For those of you have been living with your head in a bucket for the last week, High Society purports to lift the lid off -- shock! -- the fact that now middle class people are doing drugs. The obnoxious naivety in this very proposition -- it's okay for working class oiks to use drugs, but when nice, respectable people start then we need to get worried -- is exceeded only by the ham-fisted, cliched and frankly unbelievable testimony we were shown. Hear about the pilot who likes to do lines of gak in the cockpit because "planes fly themselves these days"? Justine did. Hear about the teacher who racked out lines during her free classes? Justine did. Or what about the middle-class drug dealer who is so blase about his work that he allowed Justine to accompany him on his nefarious rounds of the top offices and boardrooms of Ireland? Or the Government minister? Or the gakked-up nun? Yup, you guessed it. Justine did. And, of course, snugly wrapping herself up in the cloak of journalistic ethics and protecting sources, we have absolutely no proof that these people even exist, let alone whether they are guilty of the things this woman claims. But what would certainly lead me to believe that there is no evidence to prove that Wilson is not simply the Jayson Blair of the Irish media is the fact that each scenario we saw last Thursday just looked completely unrealistic, while the experts interviewed were prepared to rattle off statistics off the top of their head. Dr Chris Luke is a long-standing anti-drugs campaigner who claims that anything up to 10pc of the population uses coke, despite the fact that we simply do not know how many Irish people take it. But still, amplify the figures, get the mammies and daddies of Ireland worried that their kids will try it and immediately become monsters and you have high book sales and high viewing figures. It's the equivalent of shouting "shark" on a crowded beach -- when you panic people, you get their attention. The one notable exception to the dubious hyperbole was Stephen Rowan of the Rutland Centre. Rowan is an intelligent, thoughtful man, and by far the most interesting and reasonable figure on the anti-drug side. The only anti-drug campaigner who refuses to take the "Chicken Licken" approach, he has an undoubted and admirable concern for the victims of addiction. But he is also brave enough to admit that the vast majority of people who try charley go about their day perfectly well and that the proportion of people who become hooked could be as low as 1 in 12. Or it could be higher. As he said himself, we simply don't know. As someone who would fall in the 11 out of 12 category, I could see where he was coming from. Like many people my age, I haven't just tried coke, I was an enthusiastic indulger of the substance. But I don't take it any more and can't even remember the last time I did. That notion-- that people will take it and then stop of their own volition -- seems beyond Delaney-Wilson and her cohorts. And why did I stop taking it? Was I missing work? Was it causing relationship problems? Did I get a pang of guilt over handing money over to criminals? Not at all. Like most of my mates who used to indulge but no longer do, I stopped taking it because it stopped being fun. It really is as simple as that. Because regardless of the horror stories peddled to us, regular charley use becomes extremely dull after a while. There comes a point where you simply realise that spending a hundred quid on a gram of grit that's going to burn your nostril hairs -- not a nice smell, believe me -- and will, by the end of the night, probably turn you into a dickhead just isn't worth the hassle. Irish coke is expensive and rubbish and, really, you shouldn't be bothered with it. But the fact that the vast, vast majority of coke users experience that trajectory with the drug doesn't wash in a black and white media. One of the small but obvious defects in the programme was the language used by the people. According to the addicts, they were on "cocaine or "coke". Nobody I know who uses the drug ever says cocaine -- they call it charley, or gak, or chang or one of the innumerable slang terms for it. It's a bit like someone asking you down to the pub so you "can drink some alcohol". It just doesn't happen and is another reason to simply not believe her. And I also have proof that she is dodgy -- one of the people interviewed for the book is a friend of mine and is furious at the way his comments were distorted. I'd say who it is, but I have to protect my sources. Something Justine will understand better than most. I'm certainly not defending coke. As I said earlier, it's not a particularly nice drug. And frankly, I really don't miss either it or the paranoia -- or Dr Fear as we used to call it -- which kicks in after a particularly heavy weekend of dipping your beak. But if we are going to have a debate about drugs, we owe it to people to at least talk about it honestly, rather than spreading dangerous misinformation. - --- MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman