Chasing the Scream
January, 2015 will mark a century of the war on drugs in the United States: one hundred years since the first arrests under the Harrison Act. Facing down this anniversary, Johann Hari was witnessing a close relative and an ex-boyfriend bottoming out on cocaine and heroin. But what was the big picture in the war on drugs? Why does it continue, when most people now think it has failed? The reporter set out on a two-year, 20,000-mile journey through the theater of this war--to find out how it began, how it has affected people around the world, and how we can move beyond it. Chasing the Scream is fueled by dramatic personal stories of the people he meets along the way: A transsexual crack dealer in Brooklyn who wanted to know who killed her mother, and a mother in Mexico who spent years tracking her daughter's murderer across the desert. A child smuggled out of the Jewish ghetto during the Holocaust who helped unlock the scientific secrets of addiction. A doctor who pushed the decriminalization in Portugal of all drugs--from cannabis to crack. Powerful, propulsive, and persuasive, Chasing the Scream is the page-turning story of a century-long mistake, which shows us the way to a more humane future.
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28recommend
65mentions
39people
2015–2026years
72% recommend26% neutral2% critical
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What Hacker News says
- Fundamentally I disagree. Specifically about heroin, because that is the junk I am referring to specifically. It does not follow that legal heroin leads to job loss, alienation, etc. Because those are social penalties applied by pious douchebags who wish to punish the addicted.
Perhaps give the book “Chasing the Scream” a read. It is eye opening and respectfully, you seem to need that.
We do have a legitimate interest in making sure people don’t ever take that hit. BUT .. in the USA punishments take precedent over everything. Because we’re cunts from what I can tell.
- You have to understand that drugs roughly break down into two categories IMO: the touchy-feely stuff that creates empathy and kindness and healing on the one hand. On the other hand you’ve got stuff that makes people “hard-charging” — going off and doing a thing without thinking it through, with a tinge of anger, fury, unstoppable raw power. Think: cocaine, booze, caffeine and any other stimulants. These reduce empathy and create problems for people.
These two camps are pretty wildly opposed! If I had to guess, I’d bet my money on the people in power liking and using the hard charging stuff while loathing the touchy feely stuff.
All this feels a bit trite, over-simplified, and maybe even a but concocted on my part. But after a lifetime of being around these drugs, it fits well with my experience.
I’d add, too, that the book “Chasing the Scream” gives a better perspective on drug laws & their origins, which really began much earlier than the 1970s.
- Everybody has heard of "the rat study" where all the rats do cocaine until death, simply by pressing a button.
What is often omitted is that those rats were deprived of their normal environments, and were thus "bored out of their gahd-damn minds," socially isolated.
A much better study is of the rat city, which showed that ONLY A SINGLE-DIGIT PERCENTAGE OF RATS would continue "pressing the cocaine button" when the study was perfomed in an area which allowed for ample "normal rat behavior," e.g. expansive cages with plenty of "rat fun" [food, territory, mates, playthings].
The latter study parallels (semi-well) to human populations that have opportunities [jobs, primarily; but functional IRL societies], where only a minority of people succumb to "drug addiction."
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Recommended drug policy reading:
Michael Pollen's "How to Change Your Mind"
Dr Gabriel Maté's "Chasing the Scream"
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I have lived speed-free 14 years, this Valentine's Day. All it took was leaving a toxic medical school environment.
- Maté's book "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts" helped me better understand my changed life — definitely fit more with my own struggles than Hari's also-good "Chasing the Scream" [which deals more with societal legalities].
- If anyone wants to read a really good book that puts the War On Drugs and addiction in perspective, I highly recommend Chasing The Scream by Johann Hari. Very well written, well-referenced and involves interviews with all sorts of people - drug users, prisoners, an ex-cop, ex-cartel members, psychologists.
His other book on depression, Lost Connections, is similarly great and insightful.
- Thanks for saying this, and I agree with you - lots of people making uninformed statements as fact. Drug Addiction is terrible, but stigmatizing drugs, labelling the user as a "druggie" or "junkie", and calling for tougher restrictions make the problem worse.
For those who wish to inform themselves better, I recommend reading "Chasing the Scream" by Johann Hari.
