Week 5: Question 4 (drugs)
TASK 1: Read the sources below. Highlight anywhere where the writers convey their
attitudes towards addiction.
Source 1: From a 2018 article by Russell Brand.
The last time I thought about taking heroin was yesterday. I had received “an
inconvenient truth” from a beautiful woman and I was in pain. I cannot accurately
convey to you the efficiency of heroin in neutralizing pain. It transforms a tight,
white fist into a gentle, brown wave. From my first inhalation 15 years ago, it
fumigated my private hell and lay me down in its hazy pastures and a bathroom
floor in Hackney embraced me like a womb. This shadow is darkly cast on the retina
of my soul; whenever I am dislodged from comfort my focus falls there. It is 10 years
since I used drugs or drank alcohol and my life has improved immeasurably. I have a
job, a house, a cat, good friendships and generally a bright outlook. The price of this is
constant vigilance because the disease of addiction is not rational. Recently for the
purposes of a documentary on this subject I reviewed some footage of myself
smoking heroin that my friend had shot. I sit wasted and slumped with an
unacceptable haircut against a wall in another Hackney flat (Hackney is starting to
seem like part of the problem) inhaling fizzy, black snakes of smack off a scrap of
crumpled foil. When I saw the tape a month or so ago, what is surprising is that my
reaction is not one of gratitude for the positive changes I’ve experienced but envy
at witnessing an earlier version of myself unencumbered by the burden of
abstinence. I sat in a suite at the Savoy hotel, in privilege, resenting the woeful ratbag
I once was, who, for all his problems, had drugs. That is obviously irrational. The
Source 2: From the autobiography ‘Confessions of an Opium (heroin) Eater’, by
Thomas de Quincey, 1820.
It will occur to you often to ask, why did I not release myself from the horrors of opium
by leaving it off or diminishing it? To this I must answer briefly: it might be supposed
that I yielded to the fascinations of opium too easily; it cannot be supposed that any
man can be charmed by its terrors. The reader may be sure, therefore, that I made
attempts innumerable to reduce the quantity. I add, that those who witnessed the
agonies of those attempts, and not myself, were the first to beg me to desist. But
could not have I reduced it a drop a day, or, by adding water, have bisected or
trisected a drop? A thousand drops bisected would thus have taken nearly six years to
reduce, and that way would certainly not have answered. But this is a common
mistake of those who know nothing of opium experimentally; I appeal to those who
do, whether it is not always found that down to a certain point it can be reduced with
ease and even pleasure, but that after that point further reduction causes intense
suffering. Yes, say many thoughtless persons, who know not what they are talking of,
you will suffer a little low spirits and dejection for a few days. I answer, no; there is
nothing like low spirits; on the contrary, the mere animal spirits are uncommonly
raised: the pulse is improved: the health is better. It is not there that the suffering lies.
It has no resemblance to the sufferings caused by renouncing wine. It is a state of
Q4: Consider both sources. Compare how the writers convey their different
perspectives on drug addiction.
In your answer you could:
- Compare their different perspectives and feelings about drug addiction
- Compare the methods both writers use to convey their different perspectives
and feelings
- Support your answer with references to both texts
1
TASK 2: Plan your answer the question.
Consider :
- Physical and emotional effects of withdrawal and abstinence
- To what extent the writers describe or don’t describe the effects of heroin
- What aspects of drug addiction they focus on
- The purpose and audience of the writing- how does this affect their perspective?
- How the writer uses language to describe drug addiction
- How the writer uses structure to describe drug addiction
Source 1: Russell Brand Source 2: Thomas de Quincey
2
TASK 3: Write three / four paragraphs answering the question.
3
4