People told me to see Breaking Bad so often and so heatedly that I got it out last week and watched with Annie three series in two days absorbed.
Out of only six premises — Walter’s lung cancer, his chemical expertise, his young son’s cerebral palsy, his brother-in-law the honest cop, his wife’s pregnancy, and the American health care system — a drama that reaches out into all aspects of America: the drug economy, border protection, divorce law, public education, police forensics, gun control, the unimpeded rule of gangsters in the southern states and Mexico and what, under capitalism, is an adequate preparation for death.
Walter kills a man and we still like him. He manufactures meth and we still somehow admire him. He is trying to look after his family, to do what in Scandinavia the state would do on his behalf. He is doing his best for his loved ones, his people.
What got to me though is what drugs do to you. As in A Dangerous Method it is hard to believe in the continuity of human personality any more, for the drugs change you so much. We are at the best of times just a wandering archipelago of random impulses, but drugs strip us down to less than that. We are saints and murderers, reliable providers and whingeing infants depending on what we are on. Bob Dylan’s varied incarnations from cowhand to activist to prophet to Christian wowser to suburban dad to metropolitan cynic show how deeply they cut into our being. John Lennon, chiacker, nudist, campaigner, house husband, smack addict, poet and artist, show how undecided in our wants and priorities they can make us.
They work on us like religion. They turn us into ‘the new me’, the new edition of self, the Second Act that Scott Fitzgerald said is not allowed in American lives. Worse they make deniable what has happened before: hey, lighten up, that was last year, I’ve moved on from there, I’ve shed that skin, get used to me now, I’m different, I’m another person now.
Sabina in A Dangerous Method goes from psycho to psychoanalyst, sadomasochistic sex-crazed mistress to respected medical theorist to babbling madwoman jumping at shadows depending on what drug she’s on. Freud takes cocaine and believes he controls the universe; and Sherlock Holmes does too. Churchill administers World War Two while brain-deep in brandy, Hitler on cow-dung and bull-sperm injections, and so world history unfolds. Jack Kennedy, on steroids, needs sex three times a day. I found out last week that I am V8 Juice-deficient, low on iron, and I have been jumpy, impatient, suspicious and anxious for forty years for no other reason. And I might have a different personality soon. So watch this space, as they say. Are we anything more than a space, waiting to be filled? It’s a worry.
And the ideas of crime and punishment get very wobbly at this point, as Walter White’s grim journey of the soul so ably demonstrates. Are we truly responsible for anything? What vitamin or beverage or exercise regimen or frequent sexual position will make us so? Will prayer help? Religion? Are these drugs too? It’s a worry.
These are difficult questions, old friend, and worth thinking on.
Discuss.
Name:
What about crank spiritualism? I’ve decided I’m all for crank spiritualism. It’s the only way as, I believe, Christopher Hitchens once said. No one can ever do anything other than what they do at any given time, it’s a metaphysical impossibility. Thoughts occur, motivations and obsessions happen. But it’s equally impossible for the human mind to sustain anything other than the illusion of responsibility. The paradox is resolved under the auspices of crank spiritualism with the Noam Chomskeyesque central tenent that we are responsible for everything when in fact, we are responsible for nothing. We are free agents impacting on the real world and yet there isn’t really such a thing as a self in any unified, formed way. It all comes down to the relationship with the self, yet everything is interconnected.
Every time you bring crank spiritualism into a discussion, a dichotomy gets its wings. It might get philosophically convuluted if you think too hard but not when you throw in the Mayan calendar and peyote.
I also think that there’s always going to be something in life that cuts through you and influences you unduly on a fundamental level but if you play it too straight you risk losing the reigns of what those influences are in the same way as if you overdo it in the bent sense.
Yep, this series really does do an amazing job at setting drug use, drug trade and “the war on drugs” in context. I really like the way you drew those threads together. There’s little value in looking at drugs and their illegal trade without looking at the broader environment. Surprise surprise – when our social structures fail us (or we are excluded from them or don’t know how to navigate them) we find other ways of getting what we need. And for as long as those other ways pay better there will always be an incentive.
Do drugs make us undecided in our priorities and wants, or do some of us use drugs because we are undecided and maybe drugs give us a reason or excuse not to decide. The reality is humans like drugs because they have a physiological effect. For manypeople, they are used in a recreational setting after which we go back to our lives, responsibilities and priorities. For others, it takes a hold in their lives.
I’ve never been much of a partaker. I was always terrified of losing control of my life and becoming a “junkie”. Books like Andrew McGahan’s “Praise” and Welsh’s “Trainspotting” scared the bejesus out of me. But as an adult, I know that most people can take drugs recreationally on occasion and then return to their day to day lives and resume their responsibilities.
I spent my teenage years very unhappily in a coastal town about an hour out of a capital city. As seems to be the way in such places there was a lack of interest in the outside world. Lots of big fish in small ponds. Lots of surfers. And lots and lots of pot. I have distinct memories of hanging out with my boyfriend of that time and his friends while they passed the bong around for hours on end. Talking crap. I left that world long ago because I had priorities and wants that I wanted to pursue, but most of that crew are still there. Still passing the bong around and talking crap. Grown men and women now.. Some of them have lost jobs and families because of pot. Some of them never got to the families stage. Others have just never grown up, and have just never gotten it together. Did the pot make them like that? I don’t know. But because they couldn’t give it up they never grew into having any priorities and therefore having reasons to make decisions. Pot was a bit of crutch for some of them too. Something to keep them all connected so that no-one ever grew up and moved on. Moving on was frowned upon. As was thinking big. God, I hated that place.
I lived in South America in the 1990s, when the USA was still very active in America Latina, sending evangelical missionaries into every community they could find and when the Drug Enforcement Agency was everywhere. I was living in Bolivia, where coca is a staple crop. It’s used widely throughout society and is an important part of the Aymaran culture. I don’t recommend chewing the leaves, they taste like shit, but matte de coca fixes everything. You need to load it up with sugar though. The Aztecs used to have their enslaved populations use coca so that they could work for longer as it wards off hunger and fatigue. It is still used by labourers. In the mines of Bolivia there are regular offerings to appease El Tio and ward off the dangers of mining (OHS not a big priority in the mines of the developing world as we know). There is no doubt that the size of the coca crop exceeded the Bolivian consumption and that much of it probably made it into the USA cocaine trade. Because the USA wouldn’t acknowledge the futility of the war on drugs, they put much effort into the destruction of coca crops in America Latina. Most of these crops were produced by peasant farmers, and many were nestled in the ‘fruit baskets” of Latin America where the countries’ fruits and vegetables were grown. Crop dusting of coca crops was widespread, and the DEA often threatened to bomb crops. It had a huge impact on those communities. Was it the problem of these Bolivians that the USA had a smack cocaine habit? Was the war on drugs an effective framework? I think history has proved that it probably hasn’t but that it has been incredibly expensive.
What this issue needs is a policy response, not a moralising response (which is of course what crime and punishment is). Do we want to have an impact on the effect drugs have in our community, or do we want to moralise? Policy that is based on an ignorance of human behaviour is fundamentally flawed and time and time again it has been proved to fail. The response by Federal Labor to the Australia 21 report was disappointing but sadly not suprising. It showed a real lack of courage. Probably they knew they don’t have the communication skills to pull off such a strong and brave stance.
What do you think is the difference between the South American cultural drug users and the Australian coastal bong bogans?
The conexts are entirely different. What they have in common is that they are each using it for some kind of functional purpose in their life. Another example would be someone with a terminal illness of degenerative condition using marijuana to manage pain etc. The difference is that for the pot smokers of my youth it has become a functional purpose because they are now depdendent on it. They had other options and choices to have control in their lives. Doesn’t mean I take any satisfaction in what’s happened to them. I think it’s really sad.
The coca leaf chewing matte de coca sipping Bolivian peasant working in a mine is using that stimulant to help him work longer for his family. And he’s also hoping that the deal he does with the devil of the mines will keep him safe while he takes his life and the wellbeing of his family in his hands. By the by he has no employment protection and if anything happens to him then his family is kicked out of the house (which they might share with two other families) that comes with his job and they find themselves begging on the streets of the cities because there is no support structure. If it gives him peace of mind, comfort or whatever then so be it – cause he doesn’t have the beneift of any of the other structures that we do. I’m not saying that there aren’t other forms of drug abuse in Bolivia by the way.
As part of a uni assignment once I did a doco film treatment juxtaposing the Aymaran or Quechua myth of how coca came to be throughout Latin America against the geopolitics of the USA in Latin America and the drug trade. Wonder where that is.
I can’t begin to imagine what it must be like to struggle with drug or alcohol problem. Or to watch a loved one go through that struggle. Remember the movie Candy? Remember how she gets pregnant so they go cold turkey to get clean, and the withdrawls sends her into a premature birth and the baby is still born. That really got to me. The thought of your life being in a crappy place that you so desperately wanted to get out of, finally seeing a reason to get out of that place, trying and not making it and suffering a loss like like that. Being scared perhaps even of accessing the services that are supposed to help you.
Maybe there aren’t any differences actually. Don’t we all want to escape something in our lives sometiimes? Don’t we all sometimes think it’s all overwhelming?
I’m prepared to concede that there is an inconsistency in my argument here.
“Being scared perhaps even of accessing the services that are supposed to help you.”
…and if you are not scared and are willing to look for help, are there any effective services for drug addicts in this country to rehabilitate themseves.Or is the drug/alcohol rehabilitation as poorly funded as ,say,our mental health is.
What a wonderful response. Thank you so much. I’ll put it up in the main column when my wife, who knows how to do these things, comes home from shopping.
A very good review indeed Mr Ellis – you have captured Breaking Bad perfectly.
One point to Helvi et al, crystal meth is the worst of all drugs, It is far more damaging to mental and physical health than heroin or cociane or LSD.
The ironic aspect of Breaking Bad is that in order to care for his own family, Walter White brings havoc, death and destruction to thousands of others.
There is a brilliant scene in series III showing the hooker in the run down apartment giving dozens of blow-jobs in order to get enough money to buy her meth. There’s the boy drug dealer killing for his patch of meth ground.
Walter and Skylar are not sympathetic people; like Bonnie & Clyde, there crimes are ugly, evil and inflicted on civilians. And yet, as you say, we do perversely admire them.
I rate this is the best in modern American small screen production.
I remember a program 4 Corners did on crystal meth a few years ago, and the special unit they’d had to create in the major Sydney hospital (i can’t think what it’s called) to cope with the crystal meth cases they were seeing. I remember them talking to a couple of guys on their 50s who were meth addicts and how they had cycled through speed and heroin, often according to what the ‘market’ was doing (was there a heroin shortage at some point that made crystal meth come to the fore??)
I remember this guy talking about how he used to tell himself that as long as he wasn’t injecting he was ok. That that was the low point that took you from user to junkie. But how he then found himself at that point and crossing that line.
They were all very clear that meth was a drug in a league of its own.
I love Breaking Bad. Walter White is a good man doing a very wicked thing. Everything that can go wron, usually does – including more meth being made.
I love Breaking Bad. Walter White is a good man doing a very wicked thing. Everything that can go wrong, usually does – including more meth being made.
Ah, the human condition, … “a wandering archipelago of random impulses”. You know, when you think about it, this phenomenon we witness and experience, ‘my’ life, ‘my’ beliefs, actions, ambitions, foci, and so on & so forth, this constellation of behaviours and expressions, – it’s not hard to imagine there’s someone in charge, a little ‘me’ sitting in the driver’s seat or conductor’s podium, orchestrating events in a methodical and logical and creative way.
But is this how it really is? The flood of chemicals awash within the warm dark interior of our body make a significant contribution to our experience of consciousness or sense of reality, as any high-school science student knows. At the level of cellular interface, where enzymatic surface chemistry mediates entry or egress of messenger molecules such as the neurotransmitter dopamine, there’s a frenzy of unceasing action & reaction going on, large amounts of which, when aggregated from the single cell up to the teeming trillions, have surprising impacts on our thinking and behaviour.
So, where am ‘I’ in all of this? It’s clearly much too difficult for any social group of humans to operate at the level of matter-of-fact consensus that our natures are simultaneously far too complex to understand and at the same time almost predictably simple in their responses to stimuli.
Historically, every social group of humans on all continents have used substances to alter their consciousness, from the Amanita ingesting Siberian deer-herders to the Amerindian peoples of Mexico and central America who were ritual users of psilocybin-containing fungi hundreds of years prior to western awareness of these organisms, to the role that opium and its derivatives have played in societies for countless generations, or cannabis, for that matter, the drug of choice for the numberless millions of sentient organisms the same as you and me.
Recreational drug use is a relatively new thing for the human zoo. It used to be that the psychoactives were only used after initiation into their proper use, or were in the hands of the diviners like the Mazatec shaman Maria Sabina, or had wider cultural usage and acceptance, such as the coca ingestion mentioned by MGP, sensibly used to stave off the difficulties of high-altitude Andean lifestyles.
But, times have changed, as they do, at all times and in all places. Western consciousness of the potential of ingested chemicals for mood-changing, for pleasure, for enhanced intensity of experience, for creative indwelling and expression, was stepped up a significant number of notches over the last 100 years or so. Ah, friends, the genie is out of the bottle, and he’s not for return, despite the ‘best efforts’ of the international nay-sayers to demonstrate otherwise.
Here in China, possession of a smallish amount of drug material will get you needled or blasted into oblivion, if you’re a local. Foreigners get more lenient treatment, fined & deported. Yet this country swills countless millions of litres of extremely potent & toxic alcohol, and actively tolerates a culture of tobacco use at the higher end of global consumption, and no-one talks about the inconsistencies. Same in most other places as well. America’s extreme hedonism is a sight to see, but hell, America seems to be extreme at anything it has a go at, global policing, economic & corporate and financial managment for starters. America’s insatiable demand for mood-altering chemicals has led to the astonishing paradoxes of Big Pharma making eye-poppingly large amounts of money through selling chemicals that have the endorsement of the lawmakers, whilst the scheduled materials, the meth & speed & coke & E & smack and 50 dozen other things that people like to take, would prefer to take, would rather take, legally, if they could, they can’t. Or at least, they can’t, legally. And so there’s spawned an extraordinary fracturing of a large society, through criminalising and corrupt practice and double standards and punitive punishments that ruin young peoples’ lives, and a climate of fear & suspicion now stains that once great place.
It’s a debate worth having, and worth having until some sanity returns. Human’s are inherently interested in changing their consciousnesses. We’ve been doing it for thousands of years, and I dare say we’ll never stop doing it. And there’s something a little bit secret about this, a touch esoteric, associated with entering from a realm of fantasy and imagination into something more real. Countless millions of humans have experienced something of the nature of other, larger realities through their partaking of consciouness-changing chemicals. Surely as a species that’s changed the face of this planet to the degree we have, we’re capable of something more intelligent than the dominant modality of arrest and imprisonment or disgrace and fine for simply tinkering with your neurochemistry?
Indeed Canguro. We make an artificial distinction between common drugs such as alcohol, nicotine and caffeine, legal but restricted drugs such as valium, morphine and methadone, and illegal drugs such as heroin cocaine and marijuana.
The war on drugs has been comprehensively lost
see for example Ken Crispin, former Supreme Court Judge :
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2010/s2911436.htm
The interview is essential viewing.
There needs to be pointed out here that all drug users aren’t stable and sedate and function merrily and go to and from work. The stable would be a minority.
To every action etc. You can’t put strange things through the brain and body and not have consequences.
Legalizing would take the naughty delight and thrill away. It would lower the gangster image and promote self awareness. The mask would be off for many to self assess the scene and themselves. Organized crime circles that run into corporate would have some inclination stalled.
But the pro’s and cons of legalizing or not are very complex and run in depth. How far away would corner store gun sales be for protection?
It’s bad enough dodging drunks and drugged drunks now and the public wearing the individual and publican’s bills.
What price is freedom? That the commercial market of drugs became entrenched so much that the tolls were ignored as alcohol and the market of and govt forces demanded that the public just live with it more carefully in fear for the market’s sake.
It’s a good question. What price freedom? And good observations re. the stability of individuals and their behaviour while influenced by some drugs.
Portugal’s current position re. the social use of these materials is a step in the right direction.
On another note, I’d like to see a higher bar in place for people to jump prior to entering into public life in the political sense. Too many politicians who in my view fail to adequately respond to the big-picture items in regard to stewardship of the society and country. Too many laura norder acolytes and obsessives, an outcome of our houses of government being top-heavy and skewed by the presence of pettifoggers.
It will need to be a slow process, much as we would like fast action.
First step would be to decriminalise and regulate marijuana. Availability of cocaine and hallucinatory drugs should be restricted to prescription, not for medical practitioners to restrict on medical grounds, but to enable regulation of quantities to what a person may require for personal use, ie to avoid creating a secondary market.
Any further suggestions, readers?
Well said sir, you have nailed the proper policy course in one paragraph.
If only you were in politics!
Doug, I don’t think the drug market will be contained or regulated. The legitimate one may under legalisation under management but the black market one can never be stopped unless the market fails in monetary worth and reward for indulging. The party and dance chemical scene here may take a few generations to die out and still be pulling new patrons for decades.I don’t know how chemical drugs will be addressed.
If aspects of drugs- being used by people, waste of life and quality and repercussions on their children is to be addressed in accompaniment with legalization, why isn’t that happening now? Why wait till legalization in which the matter of education should appear in concerted with the decline effort?
The cities may have more assault protections but outside, what of protection there? It’s bad enough with your girl or family at a secluded fishing or swimming hole or picnic ground now with carloads of the local drunk and drugged boofheads , let alone drugs being legal.
The addictive drugs perhaps first for legalization. Address heroin and pot. Pot to take over and deflate the chemical drug trade or at least infringe highly on it and suffer a few back yard plants sold and pocket money for some. Heroin to take the cream out of top end markets and criminal social circles. Rehab programs would have to be in place and numbers expected forecast.
I think those two legalized,or thought on that line leaves room and time to study and assess results and next moves. But there is the matter of children exposed and monkey see and do aspect of generations taking pot up like with smoking. Let alone more babies rooms being filled with smoke.
Another thought is that many people types haven’t got access to the drug scene now. Those who don’t fare to well socially or move in the flocks of staunch and sharp friendships and tempered attitude to disclosure.
Free drugs will avail whole new sections of community types to usage availability that have yet to be experienced on the streets.
Pot and spirits mixes very poorly with many people.
You seem to assume that decriminalising or legalising (and there is a huge difference) will result in increased use and abuse. I do not agree that that will be the case.
There is such a thing as an addictive personality, and people who have it will seek out some substance which best suits them and attach themselves to it, for lack of a better term.
Now, if their substance of choice is legal, there are fewer problems with supply, use and repercussions.
But if the substance of choice is not legal they will be forced to accept a legal substitute or go outside the law. Once they go outside the law, their suppliers are by definition criminals, and for some substances so are the users.
The suppliers are able to recycle the profits they make into other activities – prostitution, illegal gambling, protection rackets and the like. Police will inevitably be corrupted, as will politicians and some medical practitioners.
Ban all illegal drugs? Great idea, pity it won’t work. The so-called war on drugs has been comprehensively lost; our attempts to ban suppress and eradicate them over the last 80 years have failed miserably. The Yanks even tried to ban alcohol, and look where that got them. They are still reaping the whirlwind today with organised crime such as the mafia enriched by the Prohibition of the 1920s.
So we need to bite the bullet on this and not regress into “But drug use will explode into our kindergarten class” type arguments.
Yes your right, I wasn’t discerning decriminalising and legalizing.
Drugs are a thing of peerage and status and fun for youth not just addictive personalities. Pot and the chemical especially. Works the same as smoking and drinking. The monkey see, monkey do factor is high in young children to teens.
My line of thought was mapping the mechanics of legalizing.
I see what you mean too, Jim; monkey see monkey do is a problem. But don’t smoking parents these days try to smoke where they cannot affect others? From what I see responsible adults go outside to smoke, and try to avoid doing it near their children. There will always be the irresponsible ones, but I say that we cannot deny sensible public policy for everyone else on the basis that some are irresponsible, else we would ban the motor car immediately – it kills 1,000 Australians every year, and over 1,100,000 people worldwide.*
We have to admit it has failed and seek to mitigate the damage – decriminalise in stages. It will take time, but we must start now.
*(in 2002 57 million died of all causes, and 2.09% died in “traffic accidents” as they are so euphemistically called – negligence by an other name)
see http://www.who.int/whr/2004/annex/topic/en/annex_2_en.pdf
I am a male baby boomer who has used cannabis for 40 years. I don’t drink, other than a glass of wine with dinner probably 5 times a week. I’ve never injected drugs intravenously. I’ve snorted cocaine twice and years ago I occasionally yielded to a dexamphetamine temptation if it was produced at a party. Way back in the day I took far to much LSD when we were all tuning in, turning on and dropping out but that was over 30 years ago.
Since then cannabis has been to the fore in both my recreational and medicinal regime and I use it as a colleague might use a whiskey or two in the evening. My drug won’t give me a headache, in fact I’ve known it to make one go away as recently as yesterday.
I want to be able to continue as I have lived for 40 years unmolested. I also want to be able to grow enough so that I know what is going into my body at a price I can afford and I want to be able to use it as a medicine for ailments that arise as we get older.
Yes, the problem is filled with minefields but I don’t see my part in the saga as being a problem to anyone, even myself. So what needs to happen to turn my furtive illegal habits into what they should be, normal activities in my everyday life?
State interference in what a person does is too often justified because the activity might lead to addiction. Someone’s ability to take advantage of substances that enhance their existence without becoming addicted is never discussed, Instead we are all put under the protection of the state for nothing more than seeking pleasure.
We are all seen as powerless to make a decision whether to take drugs, or not, This seems to justify putting a person under the protection of the state who is initially guilty of nothing more than seeking pleasure. Taking drugs might be irrational and for some a very bad idea but we all take actions every day that might be judged as imprudent. An addict’s desires are no different than desires for many other pleasures. People can become addicted to a whole range of activities without becoming like a child in need of the states protection. Some might argue that this is because things such as exercise, sex, sport, quilting and video games do not harm us but drugs do. The taking of drugs becomes a moral question that is decided by the state and to date the answer arrived at is so obviously wrong.
Don’t we all have the right to pursue the pleasures that we find valuable in life? The state seems to allow this if that pleasure is alcohol, sex, video games, twittering, over eating and such but any desire for a recreational drug is met with draconian measures. We all have a right to pursue the pleasures we find valuable, even though each of these pleasures might put us at risk of addictions.
When even commentators such as Alan Jones is declaring that the war on drugs is a complete failure it is surely time to find a more rational approach to drugs.
Well said hempanon; I am not a user of illegal substances, but I have three cups of coffee a day, and perhaps seven standard drins of alcohol per week. Why should my substance intake be legal, indeed favoured, and yours illegal and frowned upon?
It is very strange. Couldn’t care less about Jones, but certainly another shoulder to the wheel is welcome.
Edit : “standard drinks”