Gulliver's Drug High?

Dear Gulliver,

I happened to catch you on the Television set. I was eating dinner. I happen to always watch Q and A on on Monday evening on the ABC after finishing up for the night late with a group of actors I work with who have an intellectual disability. I don’t watch much T.V these days but Mondays are a Television night for me. Usually this is because I need some time out to be a passive kind of traveller, not like Gulliver on a grand adventure but more as a voyeur into a reflection of how people are interpreting their current realty. When I heard you talking about drug testing I realised todays reality is not the much different, on one level, as it was when I was your age back in the old University days. I remember sitting with boys your age from time to time and having the age old discussion about drugs and concerts and the so called delights of a cookie packed full of euphoria. I remember being asked to a cast party after a great time making a piece of theatre in an outdoor venue, feeling fit and fresh and alive by the sense of making something new and interesting. I remember yawning on the inside while a boy with long hair and a goatee ruined that feeling by trying to convince me of the merits of hash for the artist’s eye. I remember leaving early alone being one of the only non-drug takers, feeling depressed and like a bit of a loser. Wasn’t I enough? In those moments, couldn’t a conversation be high enough, deep enough, funny enough or intriguing enough to move the mind to a different place? It always felt like a rejection of self for me. You couldn’t say that. You couldn’t admit that. It was a positively daggy admission in such situations. One could either sit there bored out of one’s brain while young people ran aground off their heads or one could leave.

I don’t judge people who become addicted to drugs because some people’s experiences are beyond a sadness that they should have to endure in the human experience. I really feel for such people. I encourage them with all of an open heart to get help and live again.

The discussion on Q and A though failed to look at the issue of drug taking, particularly where young people are concerned at a deep enough level. Gulliver, you came across as a fairly cool kind of cat being supported by two fairly nice kind of panel members purporting “harm minimisation.” The police officer in uniform, as a result, was somehow positioned as Mr Stricty Pants from the dark ages. It’s important to remember that he has been a police officer at the ground level and up. It’s important to remember he sees the whole gamut of drug use, from that which is recreational to that which is extreme addiction, drug dealing and crime families and you do not. It’s important for everyone, including yourself to be reminded of how those dots very often meet up. It’s important to remember that when you purchase drugs such as MDA for a festival there is a child in a crime family who is quite possibly ashamed of that reality, of who his or her family are. It’s important for you to remember that shame is a type of child abuse and that when you take drugs that, you are part of that very sad cycle.  I don’t think legalising the drug would result in those people feeling any more pride in their drug dealing pursuits. One day you may have a child. One day you may feel very differently about drug use. Perhaps you already do. I’m not making assumptions. It’s important to remember that when you were talking about your “right” to be a panel member on Q and A in taking drugs you are part of a cycle that costs the world a lot of money especially that which goes towards police protection.  Whether you intend it or not, your healthy and modern look and your educated way of representing an argument is compelling for young people who want an excuse  to take drugs, It’s important to remember that when you talk quite freely about taking drugs at a festival and spreading a message about this recreational leisure activity that someone in an impoverished background may or in fact probably will go without as you add to the myriad of issues politicians and police and teachers and more need to address around the issue of drug taking and drug abuse.

For every dollar spent on drug testing that might mean a cut back on services for indigenous communities for example. Are you aware of that delicate balance? Do you think that our indigenous communities, particularly children, deserve priority over your recreational drug use? I mean they were here before you. It’s a philosophical question you might ask yourself.

Even more than all of these issues though, is my fears for you, though I felt there was a sense of overt entitlement in your argument and lack, of life experience, I was also sad that you weren’t able to attend a music concert without having to depend on drugs. Why not? Most of the music that reaches peak play at a festival,  is pretty dam good. Learn to get high on that. If you don’t always feel enough of a high, then get used to the down times. That’s life boy. It’s up and down. It’s not perfect. Looking for a false high is dangerous at any level and I can understand how, in today’s action packed, phone beeping, internet bombardment of immediate gratification your brain is on high alert. You’re being trained to want a high. Don’t listen to your brain when it calls for something like that. Slow down, let your breath come back to the place of the water’s edge, look deeper into the crowd, listen to that beautiful loud hard work that comes to you for the concert and be happy with that. THAT IS ENOUGH. Don’t be greedy for more more more. You are enough. You are in control of your own body. You can be healthy. Not everyone can be and if you’re not completely healthy do what you can to live without the crutches of something so manufactured. Engage in meditation and teach people about that. Save lives. You don’t have the right to put lives in jeopardy. That’s never your right. You did last Monday night.

Drug testing may be a seemingly successful undertaking but I simply don’t care if Germany is coughing up misconstrued statistics on saving lives at festivals. It’s not a scientific study if the study only looks at the one event. Did the study follow the lives of those who took drugs or didn’t after pill testing was offered? Was the study longitudinal? I doubt it. Did the study reach out to the drug providers and the social/emotional impact of those people and their surrounding communities? Can the pill testing study determine whether pill testing as a quasi-symbol of decriminalisation actually encourages or discourages communities of young people to take drugs in the long term, not just on the day or night of the concert? You would need at least three years or more to conduct this kind of study and even there you would be left with a rather arbitrary result.

The woman on the panel who was representing harm minimisation conveyed to me a rather defeatist attitude. It was her claim that, you can never stamp out recreational drug use. It is my claim that we can try a bit more even though it sounds a big daggy at the moment. I think smoking has taken a massive nose dive in the cool cat stakes. I think party drugs and the subsequent addiction to these that might arise can go that way too.

Gulliver, you have all of the world at your feet. Get high on life, on music, on people, on the tastes and sounds and feelings of everything around you. When you feel like crap, its’ ok. Feel like crap for a bit then get up again. Go for a walk or wheel yourself to a new adventure. Don’t waste money on indulgencies such as drugs, give your drug money to a busker or donate it to a drug addiction body (that’s harm minimisation mate) or whatever you like. You’re so lucky you can afford the concert at all. Be grateful for that honey. You’re one of the lucky ones. Did you know a little girl in Cambodia can’t afford to go to school? Give her that money you were going to spend on drugs. Don’t wear your blinkers. Keep your eyes, your heart and your mind wide open because you matter as much as the next person and I believe you are more important than risking that beautiful chance to make a difference that lives in your own choices.

Also, the man who had lost his son to drug addiction was not addressed by you, though a panel member did mention him. That was very impolite. His grief was wider than anything you could ever imagine? Or wasn’t it? Perhaps that’s why you need your MDA. In either case, remember that while the drug you had tested might not have killed you, somewhere out there that same batch of pills will kill someone else somewhere along the tree. Isn’t it better to support life than a risk that can actually be avoided? In a real world, a real community, in a place where people love each other enough to avoid the high and face the pain you would have offered your open arms to the man who had lost his son and said “I’m so sorry for your loss.” Instead you were smiling, joking and making serious faces all at once about your drug use. His son is dead. You’re not. Live a good life for him and more importantly for yourself.

Nicla.

ps be the new Gulliver. The original story is a bit sexist. Why wasn't your female counterpart talking as much as you on the show? The original story missed the point in some ways but not others. Ironically, the world of Gulliver had people arguing over silly causes. Put your mark on a cause that does save lives not on the rights of people putting themselves in danger and then asking for help with that risk. You sound more like the giant self entitled king than the well meaning traveller from the story. Perhaps the giant is different now. It's mother Earth and you need to bow down to that wonder and not rise above the beauty of life itself in its natural force of gorgeous real and non drug manufactured offerings.