One of the classic story forms is ‘rise, fall and redemption’. Once you start looking for it, you can see it everywhere.
At its most elemental, it is the story of Jesus’s journey from carpenter to Golgotha and the empty tomb on Easter Sunday.
Fans of Wallace and Gromit will recognise it in A Close Shave where Gromit is locked up for sheep-rustling; and it’s there in The Lion King too where Simba goes from hero to zero only to be reborn as king of his people.
It’s a journey many of us go through in real life too. For most of us there are ups and downs.
The actor Robert Downey Jr is perhaps an extreme example. From Hollywood box office royalty, his fall from grace was precipitous. His return to stardom after a period walking through hell completed his story arc.
Drug misuse was his undoing, and a series of arrests, spells in rehab and prison made him unemployable.
Downey was six when he tried marijuana, and he was still a child when he first tried cocaine. He was given the drugs by his father, himself an addict. Downey later said: “… it was like him trying to express his love for me in the only way he knew how.”
But Downey was one of the lucky ones. For many with addictions like his, there is no happy ending. They exist on the fringes of illegality, living desperate lives – hollowed out by their addiction.
For too many, death claims them before they have had a chance to live.
The most recent figures for drug-related deaths in Northern Ireland show that in 2022, 154 lost their lives to drugs, almost 70 per cent of the victims being men.
Although that represented a fall from 2021 when there were 213 drug-related deaths, 154 is a shocking figure – it’s the equivalent of an Airbus A320 falling out of our skies.
We tolerate these figures (and in reality they are only the tip of the iceberg) because, as a society, we do not value these lives.
The victims of drug misuse are treated as ‘outsiders’; they are seen as individual sad stories of lives gone wrong; the consequences of their actions are ‘self-inflicted’ and the result of ‘lifestyle choices’.
Their deaths don’t make the headlines because, collectively, we don’t really care.
Just across the water, Scotland has the highest rate of drug-related deaths in Europe. The figures for 2023 sits at 1,172 – dwarfing Northern Ireland’s total even when population size is taken into account.
The human cost – economic and social – is horrendous; and although there are many dedicated people working to support addicts in health and social services and in charities, they are having to do so with their hands tied behind their backs.
Lack of resources is one thing holding them back; but much more important is the limiting impact of an attitude of mind which insists on treating drug misuse as a criminal issue rather than a health issue.
Until that mindset is changed, our ability to reduce drug-related deaths, and our capacity to support vulnerable people to rebuild their lives, will be severely constrained.
Politicians are susceptible to instances of moral panic, and the development of public policy and legislation in this area has been severely constrained by their unwillingness to see drug misuse as a matter of public health.
There needs to be a proper debate about the decriminalisation of drugs, alongside a health-focused approach to addiction, and increased support for families coping with loved ones with addiction issues.
In Glasgow yesterday a new facility opened providing a safe space for intravenous drug users to take their drugs and to receive support if they want it.
The opening of the Thistle is the culmination of a decade-long campaign – until last year the initiative was blocked by the British government.
Scotland’s Lord Advocate has said there would be no prosecutions of people injecting drugs under medical supervision. Health professionals, not police officers, are in command.
It is only one small step, but an important one. And it needs to be rolled out across Northern Ireland too.
Reflecting on the impact of drugs on his life, Robert Downey Jr said: “Just because you hit bottom doesn’t mean you have to stay there.”
We urgently need to give victims the help they need to get off the bottom and rebuild their lives. Another death is one too many.
Everyone’s story deserves to end with redemption.