You Keep Talking We Keep Dying

As a teenager I hated that I had a baby face. That, as well as other aspects of my personality, meant that people were protective of me. Offering me drugs seemed about as likely as selling Rupert the Bear a knuckleduster.

And yet I found myself writing about valium in Glasgow. It was easy to write about a drug linked so closely to shit life syndrome. I could understand that perfectly well, I had seen it, felt the drag of it and could convey with the deepest sympathy, a young man seeking an escape from it.

A couple of years ago, Cupids a Psycho was completed and homeless. Not prepared to compromise on the Glasgow dialogue I knew London publishers and agents were unlikely to be interested and so it seemed, those in Edinburgh were not biting either. The prospect of it staying completed in a folder was looking very real. But I couldn’t move on, despite always saying I wrote for the pleasure of it. Yes it was true, very true and yes, I desired another project but it was apparent that the hope that someone else would eventually read it played a rather significant part of my creative process.

Meanwhile, drug deaths in Scotland were the highest they had ever been, the highest in Europe and continuing to rise. I’d thought the crisis I’d touched upon, was being acted upon. If so, it was not working. As I’ve gotten older, I understand that knowledge in the public sphere, on its own counts for nothing. A few more years have ticked by and keeping it on the agenda, remains difficult. You keep talking, we keep dying. Those are powerful words that need to be heard but the ground swell, the fuel that activists need to keep fighting, isn’t keeping the pressure where it should be.

In my frustration, I worried that my thoughts were leading me to decry that other causes were less worthy. That is not a road I ever want to go down. I don’t want to pull down a good cause to raise another. Tribalism sets the agenda so rigidly because dialogue that falls beyond it melts away. It doesn’t help a group ‘win’ morally or politically. All the tribes agree in principle, drug deaths are acknowledged but that's it. Nothing happens. If you really open your eyes, the stark truth is enough. There were 1,339 drug deaths in Scotland in 2020. 328 drug deaths in Glasgow alone in 2021. And they are dying still.