Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs by Johann Hari – digested read

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jan/25/digested-read-chasing-the-scream-johann-hari

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I buried my face in my tear-stained pillow. Many of the people I knew were suffering from their drug addiction. I, too, was drinking more coffee than was healthy for me. Ah, I hear you say, that Johann Hari is at it again, exaggerating and making things up. I understand that. Which is why I am making all the research I have undertaken for this heartrending book available online (exhibit 1: a receipt from Nespresso for £95). I needed to find a way out. Not just for me, but for everyone. I wanted the world to thrum with hope.

As I waited in the drowsy, neon-lit line at JFK (exhibit 2: Virgin Airlines boarding pass), I tried to remember precisely when the war on drugs started. It then occurred to me that I didn’t know precisely, so the next morning I went to a public library to find out (exhibit 3: day pass for Manhattan branch of the New York Public Library). After extensive research, I concluded that the war on drugs had started either on 23 July 1904 or 8 November 1920.

Harry Anslinger, Arnold Rothstein and Billie Holiday were all Americans (exhibit 4: birth certificates of Harry, Arnold and Billie). Harry was an FBI agent, Arnie was a hood and Billie was a jazz singer once described as “the finest ever” (exhibit 5: the back of one of my CDs). They all talked in clipped, pacy sentences that helped the book race along. It was Harry who had started the drug war by criminalising all drugs, Arnie who had fuelled it by becoming the world’s first dealer, and Billie was its first ever victim (exhibit 6: Billie’s death certificate).

My head was abuzz, but I needed to know more. I heard of a book that no one had ever read and tracked it down to a secondhand bookstore in the Bronx (exhibit 7: receipt for $2). Suddenly all became clear. The war on drugs was not initially actually a war on drugs – it was a war against black people and poor people (exhibit 8: letter from my psychotherapist confirming I really hadn’t known that and wasn’t just using a lack of knowledge about something widely known as a narrative device).

We need to freeze the story and go back to me. I was feeling an intense desolation as I listened to the testimonies of those such as Leigh, Hannah and Rosalio, whose lives had been destroyed by the war on drugs, and all too often my howls of despair would drown out what they were saying (exhibit 9: an interview with someone talking in Spanish in which I can clearly be heard sobbing, so occasionally I may have had to make intelligent guesses about what they were trying to say, though they all later agreed I had more or less got the gist).

Having flown several times around the world (exhibit 10: I may have lost a few of the boarding passes, but trust me), it became clear to me that the war on drugs had not worked. Rather than containing the problem, it had made it worse. At that moment, a lightbulb went on in my head (exhibit 11: this isn’t strictly true, but it’s justifiable hyperbole). What, I wondered, would happen if drugs were decriminalised?

As a watery sun filtered through the dappled sky over Lake Geneva (exhibit 12: Instagram selfie of me in Switzerland), I witnessed a scene on its shores I never believed possible: hundreds and hundreds of junkies hopping and skipping with joy. I quickly boarded a flight to Lisbon. The first thing that rocked me on arrival was the intense heat and the large sweatstains appearing under the armpits of my Gap T-shirt (exhibit 13: receipt for £12.50 for M&S T-shirt, not quite the same, I know, but I can’t find the right one). There, too, I saw thousands of addicts shooting up with large grins on their faces as they got ready for another busy day gouching out in front of the television.

My heart stopped (exhibit 14: cardiograph image showing I technically flatlined for 37.24 seconds). The war on drugs was really a war on feelings. There was nothing intrinsically harmful in heroin, cocaine and crystal meth. The harm came from denying people the right to take them in industrial quantities. Left to their own devices, all addicts grow out of taking drugs by the time they are 50 (exhibit 15: a taped conversation with a bloke I met at Cafe Nero). More tears flowed from my lachrymose ducts. This time, though, they were tears of joy. There was an end to the war on drugs. It wouldn’t be easy and, heaven knows, I knew that better than anyone. The way forward was connecting with people. Making the little people in Mexico and the favelas of Rio feel they were valued. Even though they aren’t.

Digested read, digested: All he needs is love.