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‘You fall back’: Life inside Scotland’s drug death crisis
GLASGOW, Sept 3, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – One-armed addict Michael arrives at a
derelict scrap of land near Glasgow city centre littered with used syringes
and other drug detritus to inject cocaine.
He is helped by a fellow user, Bryan, who quickly mixes the white powder
with distilled water in a small spoon and draws the liquid up into two
needles.
Moments later, the pair, barely hidden in the wasteland site, drop their
trousers and shoot the narcotic-laced fluid into their leg veins.
Bryan, an addict since the age of 16, licks the tip of his needle to get
every last drop.
“It’s from just living on the street constantly — (it’s) just readily
available,” Michael, 42, said, of his chronic cocaine habit, noting it was
also currently easing the pain from a severe abscess on his ankle.
“I started out with heroin but I’m on a methadone programme so I don’t
touch heroin anymore,” the gaunt and emaciated addict added, in his thick
Glaswegian accent.
The pair, identified only by their first names, are examples of worsening
drug misuse across Scotland, where drug-related death rates are now the
highest in the European Union, according to the National Records of Scotland
office.
The statistics released in July show a record 1,187 such fatalities last
year — up 27 percent on 2017 — with heroin, the synthetic substitute
methadone, other opioids and depressants most commonly involved.
Cocaine was implicated in nearly a quarter of the deaths, while a third of
the nationwide total occurred in Glasgow and surrounding areas.
– ‘Go into a coma’ –
The average age of those dying was 42 — placing Michael in a particularly
at-risk category.
“Most of the people I grew up with are dead, through heroin and cocaine,”
he told AFP, while begging near one of Glasgow’s busiest shopping centres.
He also blamed the spike in deaths on street valium — thought to contain
benzodiazepines like the potent Etizolam, but often simply a “cocktail of
everything” — which is increasingly rife.
“People take like 30 of them for a tenner (o10, 11 euros, $12), go to
sleep and go into a coma and die,” Michael said.
He added that he had resisted the so-called “street benzos” after seeing
their “Jekyll and Hyde” effect.
“A good friend of mine hit me with a bottle one night, gave me six staples
in my head and the next day couldn’t remember doing it,” he recounted.
– ‘Not enough money’ –
Raised in Pollok, a historically deprived neighbourhood in south Glasgow,
Michael became homeless at 14.
A year later, he was electrocuted by a power pylon while “messing around”
on railway tracks and lost his right arm.
With a spiralling substance abuse problem that eventually led to a heroin
addiction, he went on to father five children from two relationships.
But he is estranged from them now and has spent much of his adult life on
the streets.
“You end up clean and then you fall back,” he said, of his constant
relapses, noting it was getting increasingly harder to get support in an era
of government austerity.
“There’s not enough money for the addiction services, they’re shutting too
many rehabilitation centres down”.
BSS/AFP/AU/09:05 hrs