Fueled by ignorance and indolence, the press just says no to meaningful coverage of drug addiction
by MAIA SZALAVITZ
On the day that Smashing Pumpkins keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin OD'd on heroin, posters plastered all over New York City screamed, "Take the best orgasm you've ever had. Multiply it by a thousand and you're still nowhere near." The quote, describing heroin-induced bliss, was taken from "Trainspotting," the new British movie, and the posters were produced by Time Out, a New York culture magazine hyping their new issue's cover story.
"Trainspotting" is one of the few films that manages to capture the lives of heroin users without either glamorizing or demonizing them, but in ad-saturated America, consumers aren't used to being told of pleasures without being sold them, and as a new wave of heroin hits, the movie is already misunderstood.
When candid films like "Trainspotting" or "Drugstore Cowboy" do appear, critics are quick to wail that they glamorize drugs, and that they don't emphasize negative consequences strongly enough. Just last night on CNN, Clinton drug czar Barry McCaffrey said, "We don't want a movie industry that tries to add glamour to heroin use, and we're seeing that happen."
But in a sea of media, are films like this really the worst offenders? As a former heroin addict, what struck me when I saw "Trainspotting" was its ability to capture the attraction of the heroin high and the addict lifestyle, particularly for people who otherwise have few alternative sources of pleasure. Americans want to believe that addicts are stupid, and anything that presents them as rationally choosing anesthesia to avoid a painful, impoverished existence is seen as dangerous. Films or other media that honestly discuss reasons for drug-taking or in any way humanize addicts are all too rare.
And by refusing to show the truth about addiction without moralizing, the news media has been crippled in its ability to tell the truth about drugs.
It's not that the subject doesn't get enough coverage, but rather that the coverage is shallow and formulaic, coming in a handful of basic models. There's the "new scourge" story, wherein a certain drug is hyped as the latest, deadliest thing, sweeping the nation and waiting to strike our sleeping children from under their beds. (For a look at how often heroin has recently "made a comeback" -- despite a constant rate of addiction over the last 20 years -- see Jack Shafer's excellent summary in Slate.) There's the "demon drug" story, a classic of which was a piece in The New York Times this year headlined "Good People Go Bad in Iowa and a Drug is Being Blamed." And then we have the "evil addict" story, which customarily includes the exploits of a "crack-crazed man." A subgenre includes "My Drug Hell" where an addict repents of his wicked ways and finds God and/or therapy.
The media rarely gets further than these approaches to drug use because few reporters follow the issue regularly enough to know myth from fact. Even a respected journalist like Peter Maas can write a cover story for Parade Magazine on heroin which includes several important factual errors. He claimed that "China White" heroin is a phenomenon of the '90s when in fact it's been with us since the '70s, and he stated that heroin creates insatiable desire for more, the way cocaine does, when anyone who has taken the two drugs knows that this is false. And just last night, CNN called heroin "the deadliest drug," a seemingly interchangeable label also attached to crack in the '80s but more fitting of nicotine, a drug which is more addictive than either and kills exponentially more people.
Reporters covering drugs are so trusting of "experts" -- usually narcotics officers or drug treatment providers who certainly have their own agendas -- that they seldom do any further checking. How else to explain recent reports both in Newsday and in the paper of record claiming that heroin is sold in different forms for snorting and for shooting -- a patent falsehood?
Unfortunately, these factual errors point to the larger problem of how the media blinds itself on this issue. It is impossible to understand addiction if you don't know why someone would want to take drugs in the first place, or how drugs really feel and work, but any serious positive portrayal of drug highs is taboo. The subtleties get lost in the rush to frame the problem in stark black and white soundbites.
"Trainspotting" avoids the glamorizing versus demonizing trap by looking at drugs from the addict's perspective and emphasizing choice and responsibility. The film opens with a monologue by the main character, Renton, listing a series of life choices. Finding consumerism empty -- and meaningful career options for a working class kid limited -- he chooses heroin.
Of course, once made, choices can limit future options, as the rest of the film shows. Renton tries unsuccessfully to kick several times -- his community and his identity have become too wrapped up in drugs for these attempts to last for long. And when he does finally leave Edinburgh for London, the funeral of a friend who has died of injection-related AIDS draws him right back to heroin and crime.
The media avoids this story, which is also the situation of most drug users in American ghettos. It does fine with stories like mine, in which a middle class girl gets mixed up in coke and heroin, recovers when she realizes that she's self-medicating and moves on to better ways of coping. But it can't handle the confluence of influences which create most drug problems among the poor -- which include not only self-medication and poor coping skills but lack of opportunity. Odds of recovery are much better for me than for Renton. And the way the media frames the drug story obscures this, and in many ways, makes matters worse.
In the '80s, crack was "super pure," "new" and "deadly;" we now hear the same thing about heroin. Then, news coverage attracted people to that drug and now, it's surely doing the same with heroin -- the run of "heroin chic" headlines can't help but emphasize what they are supposedly decrying. And the real story of why people turn to drugs and the wide variety of reasons that they escape goes unexplored.
Maia Szalavitz is a journalist and television producer. She has written for the New York Times, Washington Post and Village Voice and is presently completing a book on drug policy from the addict's perspective.