I have a terrible drug and alcohol problem. For decades now, it has resulted in shame, lies and the devastation (or, at least, slight irritation) of my loved ones.
No, I don’t have an exciting, out-of-control addiction a la Christopher in The Sopranos or Nurse Jackie in Nurse Jackie.
My drug and alcohol issue is actually that I’ve never much liked taking them.
And while the Just Say No propagandists may suggest this is a desirable state, if you have spent any time outside a government health leaflet you’ll understand that this makes me an enormous social liability. Possibly even un-Australian.
Fact: while most drug and alcohol scandals focus on overuse, abstinence or immoderate moderation can also cause social mayhem.
(Only those of us who have a secret not-drinking problem can know the shame of being unable to participate in chain sculling during celebratory toasts, summer barbecues and girly cocktailapaloozas.)
Fact: while popular mythology – not to mention popular phraseology – suggests drugs and alcohol are separate entities, both alter your consciousness, cause health problems in excess, and are linked to extraordinary peer group pressure.
(Only those of us whose idea of a big night is a single champagne snifter know the relentless badgering from heavier drinkers to loosen up, learn to have fun, stop being such a sour-sack sober-puss and so on.)
The overwhelming normality of heavy social drinking and, yes, also discreet social pill-popping is the debate du jour thanks to New South Wales Labor Government Scandal Number Ohgodnotanotherone.
The back story is that Matthew Chesher, chief of staff to the Roads Minister and rising political star, has stood down after allegedly being busted for buying a $20 tablet of ecstasy.
While many Sydney-siders consider “procuring party drugs” as tautological with “Friday night”, the political reaction to Chesher’s charging has been one of pantomime shock horror.
Premier Kristina Keneally is insisting – yet again – that she is furious with the self-indulgent behaviour of her staff, while Chesher’s wife, marginally seated Education Minister Verity Firth, says she is angry, hurt and disappointed.
Chester is slated to appear in a Sydney court on April Fool’s Day – shortly after NSW voters have the chance to express their own disappointments with the rorterific state government at the polls.
It’s unlikely, however, that many punters will be protest voting solely because someone linked to the government was linked to a naughty tablet.
This is partly because there is so much else to protest vote about: corruption, office underwear jiving and computer smut ogling to name just three. A dill with a pill hardly constitutes a Watergate-strength – or even Iguana Joe’s-strength – political scandal.
But it’s also because many members of the public reckon the real crime here is that possessing a party pill is still regarded as such a crime.
“The fact that Matthew Chesher feels that he has to resign from his position because he was caught carrying a single ecstasy table highlights the absurdity of the drug laws in NSW,” read one letter to a newspaper.
“If everyone in Sydney who possessed or used drugs on Friday night resigned the city would come to a standstill.”
And from another citizen concerned about all the concern: “For many weekend users, popping an ‘e’ is no more unusual than cracking a champers.”
That many people sometimes do something is not in and of itself an adequate reason for changing the law. If that were the case, we’d be allowed to belt people up or knock folk off whenever we didn’t like the cut of their jibs.
But the main argument against the legalisation of illicit drugs is rooted in subjective (and, given the widespread tolerance of alcohol abuse, highly selective) morality rather than evidence-based decision-making aimed at harm reduction and efficient law enforcing.
As previously admitted, I say this as someone who has no personal, vested interest in changing the status quo.
I grew up close to the drug capital of Nimbin and many of my teenaged peers were dab hands at whipping up ripper bongs out of old Orchy bottles, bits of hose and halved macadamia shells.
Despite admiring their craftstonership, I soon discovered my tolerance for Aunt Mary was sub zero. As a result, I always ended up in the derided non-smoker’s corner with the Mormons and the asthmatics.
When I set up camp in Sydney in my 20s, the illicit drugs preferred by hard-partying pals often came in pill and powder form.
Once again, my insurmountable psychological and physiological incompatibilities with mind-altering substances rendered me positively freakish at many social events.
My teetotal tendencies were most conspicuous before rock gigs where I may have been the only punk bass player in history to desperately try to score raw vegetable sticks backstage.
Drugs weren’t just around in the head-banging scene either. Many mates from less rock professions such as medicine, teaching and law thought nothing of pill-popping or Peruvian marching dust-snorting to help make sense of duff music or shout about their new screenplays for hours at trendy parties.
And man, did they give me heaps for being such an unadventurous, straight-laced, early-to-bed nana.
Now I’m in my 40s and am getting old and atrophied round the edges, I’ve been hoping the whole pressure-to-party thing will diminish.
Unfortunately, it’s worse than ever. Most of the time, the social dealers traffic bottles of wine. The cliché of the tattooed narcotics peddler targetting vulnerable teens is nothing compared to the chardonnay pushers at middle-aged, middle class dinner parties.
And oh, the adolescent accusations hurled if your shindig drinking habits don’t precisely mirror their own.
I much prefer those professionals cusping on senior citizenship who still indulge in Alice in Wonderland substances at dance parties.
They’re less vocal because they feel like their habits now constitute mutton-dressed-up-lambness – though research actually shows an increase in the number of middle-aged people using ecstasy.
“Most people taking illicit drugs do so because they enjoy the experience,” says the director of the Alcohol and Drug Service at Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital, Alex Wodak.
“For many people life is quite stressful. A brief chemical vacation is one of the ways many people cope with the vicissitudes of life.”
It’s a cogent point – though politicians and their staffers should probably choose slightly more licit locations for their holidays until Lisbon-style law reform transforms low level drug use into a health and social issue rather than a criminal concern.
That said, as one shrewd letter writer to The Australian put it this week, those connected with the Keneally Labor government are likely to continue being desperate to escape reality any way they can.
Read Emma Jane at The Australian here
ej@emmajane.info
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