on cocaine

again, never again

another blurred morning filled with regret

and guilt

another night twisting and turning when you finally get the head down

fractured sleep

disturbed dreams

and guilt

always guilt

always never again

sleep in, what masquerades as sleep now, miss the first half of your day

slide to the floor, shower and black coffee, hope it'll get you through the afternoon

hands shaking so don't bother to shave

no breakfast

food's still not an option after last night

your appetite is the first to go and last to come back

you have to start looking after yourself

GUILT

you need to stop abusing your brain

there's only so much it can take

some day it might just burn out

so you make yourself a promise, again

never again will you... watch another fucking docu-drama made by Sky One.

last night's Coked-Up Britain, which has been hyped for the last week and a half as a cutting-edge hard-assed exposé of cocaine culture in the UK, was one of the finest examples of the garbage currently being produced by one of the most widely watched channels in these isles

it was crass, sensationalist, off-balance, one-sided...

they took three cocaine abusers, interviewed them, and then dramatised events that covered a period of very hazy length

case 1 - a 30 something woman, working as a secretary, becomes an addict/pregnant/unemployed neglectful mother in turn. child is taken by social services, goes through rehab, gets child back

case 2 - a 40 something man, hyper successful, hyper cocaine/alcohol abuser. just hyper. loses job, loses family, flies to America for rehab, gets family and job back.

case 3 - a 30 something male disaster, 30 grand in death, posts himself part of his cocaine stash every day so that he doesn't take it all in one go. loses everything, including his mind. takes up poker.

this tripe pretends to be journalism

at risk of sounding flippant, these are not your average cocaine users/abusers. granted they exist, but making a docu-drama exclusively on these lines only serves to further cloud the minds of middle-class, drug-ignorant viewers by painting a selective and extremely negative picture of contemporary drug culture.

it's not all broken families and premature babies in withdrawal

these are terrible things, but as long as mainstream media insist on pushing just one side of a story, society will never reach a full understanding of the real issues involved

demonise something for long enough and it'll retreat and stay underground, which is where it festers and becomes a real problem

bring it out in the open and have the balls to point out that drugs aren't something that Lucifer slipped on to Earth on the 7th day when God was resting, and maybe we'll start making progress

there are positives

there are times and reasons and ways of doing things that don't automatically equate a life derailed

if we're ever going to "solve" the drug "problem", an honest, mature education needs to be provided

at the moment, such an education is completely lacking in most Western societies

Coked-out Britain made me feel all those things that I opened this post with. although the tone was tongue-in-cheek, that kind of duplicity in the media makes me feel worse than any hangover from any substance that i've ever experienced.

it's an abuse of position, an abuse of the journalistic profession and most sickeningly of all, it's yet another abuse of the minds of the viewing public

who said tv wasn't a drug?

(by the by, look up cocaine on the Google Image search with Safe Search turned off and you'll find a picture of Woodie Allen on page 4. you see... positives...)

http://www.whitehouse.org/news/2005/072805.asp