Only Available in Black: The limiting of addiction services in the twentieth century
Abstract
The links between drugs and music are often speculated upon, but little research has been undertaken in this interesting area. Some authors have documented public concern about the probable links (Shapiro, 1988; Yates, 1998), whilst others have examined the relationship between drug use and preferences in music genre (Forsyth, 1997). This paper considers the parallel histories of a linked group of musical genres and the use of stimulant drugs and questions whether drug treatment services are in a position to respond adequately to new trends in drug taking.
The Beginnings of the British Beat Boom
Anyone reading a history of drug use in Europe would be pardoned for believing that nothing much happened between 1930 and 1960. But in fact, a great deal happened during that period which prepared the ground for the explosion of drug use and beat music which shook most of Europe in the 1960's. During the 1930's, a serious economic depression not only put paid to the post-war cocaine and jazz party of the flappers, but also significantly narrowed the gap between rich and poor. By the 1940's most homes had radio (then called the "wireless"). These two events alone ensured that when the new music appeared it was accessible to all and not just to an elite. The Second World War saw dramatic advances in drug production. Hitler's chemists were hard at work producing methadone whilst many of the Allies were being provided with large quantities of amphetamine to counteract combat fatigue. During the post-war period, throughout Europe, amphetamine was generally available over the counter and was used extensively by almost everyone from young women wishing to lose weight to pub football teams hoping to beat their hangovers (Glatt et al, 1967).
In 1958, in the UK, there came the the abolition of restrictions on hire purchase adding further impetus to the burgeoning youth industry. By the early 1960's, it was quite common for clothes, musical instruments (particularly guitars and drum kits) and household electrical items (particularly record-players for teenagers' bedrooms) to be purchased "on tick".
The "teenager" emerged in the latter half of the 1950's. Despite the austerity of post-war Britain, virtually full-employment and the universally low cost of living for most working class youths (who usually remained in the parental home until they married) bred a self-confident generation, anxious to make their mark on a drab, grey society.
"No-one could sit on our faces no more because we'd loot to spend and our world was to be our world, the one we wanted"
(MacInnes, 1980).
For many aspiring rebels, jazz was to be the grand gesture, but for the majority, the diet continued to be the sanitised crooning of Sinatra clones like Dickie Valentine and Paul Whitfield.
And then, towards the end of the 1950's, two things happened, almost at the same time, to change the shape of things forever. The first was rock'n'roll. The Blackboard Jungle, an otherwise unmemorable film featured the song Rock Around the Clock. The singer, Bill Haley, an aging, overweight bandleader, was an unlikely hero, but the song caught the imagination of British teenagers. But Haley was merely the advance guard for the king of rock'n'roll. In 1956, Elvis Presley streaked through the year like a comet. He had six top twenty hits in that year alone (including Heartbreak Hotel) and released his first film; Love Me Tender (Clayson, 1995).
Early in the following year, a very British phenomenon took the country by storm when Glasgow-born banjoist, Tony "Lonnie" Donegan achieved his first UK number one with Cumberland Gap (McDevitt, 1997). Donegan had begun his climb to fame as banjoist and guitarist with the Crane River Jazz Band. When he and Ken Colyer left to join the Chris Barber Jazz Band, Barber decided to continue Colyer's gimmick of including a skiffle feature spot, with himself on double bass. By 1956, Lonnie Donegan (he adopted the stage-name of his hero; legendary bluesman Lonnie Johnson) had already scored a considerable success on both sides of the Atlantic with Rock Island Line, but it was the second big hit that really launched the skiffle craze in Britain (Clayson, op cit.).
Bill Haley and the Comets were basically a jazz combo playing rock'n'roll. Elvis was essentially a singer in the Sinatra mould backed by session musicians and, increasingly as time went by, by a full orchestra. It was Donegan who pioneered the basic four-piece 'group' which was to become the hallmark of the British beat boom. Both the washboard and the tea-chest bass were quickly abandoned in favour of more orthodox equivalents (Broadway offered a Kat snare-and-cymbal set for œ10.4s.0d [122.4 nok], Jennings advertised a "professional" guitar for 52 weekly payments of 6s. 11d [34.58 nok] ) but the essentially homemade nature of the craze remained. Like Punk twenty years later, skiffle was a short-lived but influential episode spawning a myriad of sub-genres and departures to other types of music. Some, like the 5 Nutters (later, Johnny Kidd and the Pirates) went on to explore the possibilities of emerging R& B whilst others, like Martin Carthy were inspired by skiffle to turn to British oral traditions, pioneering the folk revival.
British Drug Policy in the Sixties
Meanwhile, drug misuse was becoming a high profile concern. Public opinion, steered by the media (and then quoted by them with great authority), was ripe for reaction to the flood of drugs epidemic stories which began to appear with increasing frequency in the late 1950's and early 1960's. In the 1920's it had been the dilettante rich and the louche, now it was wayward youth. Youth was out of control. They wore different clothes; they listened to 'jungle music'; and they scorned the attitudes and ideals of their elders. Man With a Golden Arm, an American film typical of an increasingly Americanised culture, saw Frank Sinatra portray a heroin addict (Thomson, 1994) and set the scene for the outcry about Britains 'heroin menace'.
Despite this growing public unease, the report of the first Government committee to consider drugs and addiction in thirty years was a model of complacency - superficial in its consideration of the evidence and almost totally without vision. The emergence of new drugs such as methadone (physeptone) and the discovery that some tranquillisers (at that time thought to be non-addictive) could be used in the management of withdrawal had prompted the government in 1958, to establish the Interdepartmental Committee on Drug Addiction:
"to review......the advice given by the Rolleston Committee in 1926 including the possible application of any new suggestions to other addictive or habit-forming drugs; and to advise on any possible need for additional special treatment facilities or administrative measures".
(HM Govt., 1961)
Their report, (usually called The First Brain Report after its chairman Lord Brain) was published in 1961. It found that there was little need to make any radical change. There was no significant increase in numbers (there is some suggestion that the Home Office failed to provide the Committee with adequate evidence) and the small post-war increase, they believed, was mainly the result of increased vigilance.
Members of the Committee who attended the annual symposium of the Society for the Study of Addiction later that year were embarrassed to hear a London pharmacist point out that he himself was dispensing heroin and cocaine to more patients than those identified in the Committee's report.
Over the next few years, newspaper reports of the heroin 'scene' in London's West End and of the 'purple hearts' (drinamyl) craze in Soho dance clubs increased the pressure and in 1964 the government reconvened the Committee. At Lord Brain's insistence, the terms of reference were made deliberately narrow:
"to review the advice they gave in 1961 in relation to the prescribing of addictive drugs by doctors".
(HM Govt., 1965)
This appears to have been mainly because annual reports by the Home Office Drugs Inspectorate appeared to have already identified the problem: the over-prescribing of heroin and cocaine by a small group of doctors in London. But the net effect of this narrowing of the focus meant that the Second Brain Report virtually ignored the emerging patterns of drug use outside London and the use of amphetamines.
The continuing and widespread use of amphetamines continued to gain prominent press coverage and led to some minor changes in the law; including an end to the over-the-counter availability of the drug. New drugs legislation was introduced in 1964, largely in response to a summer of violent clashes between opposing youth groups ('mods' and 'rockers') in English seaside resorts; particularly Clacton and Brighton. Contemporary newspaper reports claimed that the violence was associated with the use of amphetamines. Subsequent research (Cohen, 1972) failed to substantiate the claims and these developments seem to have had very little impact upon the deliberations of the Brain Committee.
The Second Brain Report was published in 1965. It was a further two-and-a-half years before the recommendations of the report were implemented within the provisions of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1967. Most of the major recommendations of the Second Brain Committee were implemented. In the future, although the basic tenets of the Rolleston model were to be retained, prescribing of heroin and cocaine would require a special licence to be issued by the Home Office. Licences would normally only be granted to psychiatrists working in specialist treatment units (based upon a model pioneered at All Saints Hospital, Birmingham) which were to be established across England at Regional Health Authority level. These new units were to be called Drug Dependency Units or DDU's (Spear, 1994).
Many observers - particularly in the USA (Schurr, 1963; Schur, 1964; and Trebach, 1982) have claimed that this was the point at which the UK abandoned the so-called British System and adopted a US-style approach which led to an escalation in drug use and criminality. This, however, is a misinformed analysis in a number of respects
Firstly, Britain did not abandon the Rolleston principles though it did restrict the prescribers who were eligible to carry them out. The fact that this was not resisted by doctors is further indication that most doctors were unwilling anyway to treat this kind of patient. In other words, the restriction in numbers of prescribers may have been in theory only. Kenneth Leech, then curate at St. Annes in Soho was of the opinion that there were only around 12 doctors in London prepared to treat addict patients - the new arrangements saw the establishment of fifteen specialist treatment units.
Secondly, by the time these changes were introduced in 1968, the numbers of users - particularly those under thirty - had already begun to spiral out of control and a blackmarket was already established; in London at least. In other words, the new arrangements in 1968 did not cause the changes in the drug-subculture; rather, they were an early response to those changes.
Thirdly, the analysis fails entirely to take account of the establishment of a National Health Service with treatment (and medication) free at the point of delivery. It seems hardly surprising that the majority of addicts in the 1930's and 40's were middle-class professionals when we take into account that at that time, they would have had to pay for their supplies.
Finally, the analysis also fails to take into account the enormous cultural upheavals - particularly amongst the younger generation - that were taking place in Western society at that time. These were often changes with which drug use became associated (although the use of drugs was not necessarily fundamental to them).
What is clear is that the result of the Brain Report was to narrow the focus of British drug policy debate to a limited list of substances; notably heroin and cocaine. The new treatment units were given a remit which extended only to the treatment of heroin and cocaine dependence. Within a year of establishment, the psychiatrists in the London units reached a private agreement to cease prescription of cocaine; thus further narrowing the focus (Strang et al, 1994).
In the immediate aftermath of the removal of GP's right to prescribe heroin or cocaine for addiction, many drug users outside London turned to other drugs - notably barbiturates and amphetamine. But this development was relatively short-lived and within a few years most had switched to a range of opioids including palfium, pethedine and dicanol: often continuing to use barbiturates as a kind of safety-net as today's heroin users use alcohol and benzodiazepines (Yates, 1981).
The earliest services for drug users in the voluntary or non-statutory sector were off-shoots of Christian-based youth services in London; although the Catacombs Coffee Bar in Manchester was closely linked with the genesis of the Lifeline Project and is a rare example of an out-of-London service. Most began in the late 1960's - Kenneth Leech's St. Anne's Centre, the Orange Street Mission and the Rink Club (Salvation Army) (Turner, 1994).
By the late 1960's a number of the founders of these services had gone on to establish Christian-based residential services such as Life for the World, the Cokehole Trust etc. Springing from a similar evangelical background, Lord Longford established New Horizon whilst ROMA, Kaleidoscope and Elizabeth House provided distinctive services with a strong Christian ethic.
Also in the late 1960's, some of the psychiatrists involved in the new Drug Dependency Units, recognising the narrowness of their remit, established community-based 'outposts'. Prof. Griffith Edwards set up the Community Drug Project and Dr. Peter Chapple moved his service to a day centre at World's End called CURE (Yates, 1981).
At around the same time a number of non-Christian 'street agencies' were established. Many of these - like Release, which started as a defence committee for Horace Ove et al after the mass arrests following the Grosvenor Square riot - had a stronger allegiance to the so-called British 'underground' than to their Christian counterparts. They did not see themselves as healing the sick in preparation for their return to society; on the contrary, they regarded themselves as 'field hospitals' for the British 'counter-culture' preparing the wounded for a new, alternative society.
Many of the psychiatrists involved in the new DDU's were inspired by developments in the USA and established therapeutic communities based upon the pioneering work of Charles Dederich in California who established the Synanon Community as an off-shoot of the Santa Monica branch of Alcoholics Anonymous. These included, Alpha House in Portsmouth, Phoenix House in London and the Ley Community in Oxford. These were generally described as concept-based therapeutic communities in order to distinguish them from those democratic therapeutic communities which were based upon principles pioneered by Maxwell Jones (Kennard, 1983).
The Legacy - or Non-legacy - of the Sixties Counter-culture
Ironically, although this wide range of treatment services certainly provided a vibrant alternative to the DDU's, perhaps simply because they were established as alternatives, they tended to provide services which echoed the priorities of the DDU's. Injectable white powder opioid drugs were their main remit and amphetamines and cannabis were largely ignored.
It is often said that if you remember the 60's you weren't there (a quote generally - and probably erroneously - attributed to Richard Neville, one-time editor of Oz magazine). But in truth, the 60's was a largely middle class phenomena. Self-indulgent and pretentiously pseudo-intellectual, it was hardly likely to survive in any meaningful sense and was far less influential that it would claim. As Willie McBride of Crew 2000 once remarked:
"If you weren't in a university town, the 60's didn't happen"
(quoted in Yates, 1998)
As the icons of the so-called counter-culture became increasingly self-absorbed, with even archtypal urban mod-band, The Small Faces, turning their backs on hard, consumerist, urban mod-rock in favour of 'getting it together in the country', working class teenagers turned back to music they could dance to.
For young working-class mods the transition was a relatively straightforward one. In the south of England and elsewhere, there was an upsurge of interest in West-Indian influenced music; particularly reggae. In Scotland and the north of England there came the birth of Northern Soul; an almost underground movement of young people based around all-night dancing to a back catalogue of Motown Records (Yates, 1998a).
The Wigan Casino became the venue for soul all-nighters. By the mid-1970's the Casino could boast a 100,000 strong membership and even an average night would bring 2,000 dancers from all over England and Scotland. The dancing was frenetic, often showy and usually non-stop. Dancers brought towels and a change of clothing and the whole was topped off with a liberal supply of amphetamine.
The phenomenon was virtually ignored by the mainstream music press and few of the records (many of which were changing hands for three-figure sums) ever found their way into the charts. The watchword was 'dance' and tastes remained surprisingly eclectic. Defining the Northern Soul sound is far from easy, but, essentially, anything with a hard fast beat that could be danced to might become a Casino classic. Martha Reeves, Edwin Starr and Al Wilson were all obvious choices for Casino sainthood. But many of Dusty Springfield's less well known releases became regular players too and interestingly, both Gary Glitter and Suzie Quattro (claimed by heavy metal fans for their own) were also minor icons.
For rockers, the traditional enemy of the mods, the path led by a less direct route to the heavy metal phenomenon. To some extent, the basic ingredients of heavy metal had been present from the beginnings of rock'n'roll. Link Wray, a Native American guitarist in the late-1950's had had a smash hit with a pounding guitar solo called Rumble, which was banned in New York and elsewhere because of it's brooding street-gang menace. The 'menace' was mainly due to the fuzz-box effect Wray had produced by jabbing a pencil repeatedly into his amplifier speaker. Chuck Berry produced a string of classic releases characterised by a pounding four-by-four guitar backing which laid the ground for much which followed after: not least, the heavy metal vibe and even the 'four-to-the-floor' rhythms of early acid house.
The stage-act - part Victorian melodrama, part Hammer horror - of heavy metal was also heralded in the work of such outlandish British rockers as David 'Screaming Lord' Sutch and His Savages (one of the few acts ever to feature on the short-lived Scorpitone - an early video jukebox) and, later, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown.
MC5 were one of the original right-wing bands and they undoubtedly provided the template for later National Front and British National Party Bands like Spanner. Blue Cheer, hailed by some as the first heavy metal band, claimed to be so heavy they could "churn the air into cottage cheese".
The music press hated heavy metal. When Uriah Heep released their album, Very 'Eavy, Very 'Umble, one music critic remarked, "If this group makes it, I'll have to commit suicide". But the heavy metal hooligans didn't care. On the contrary, they revelled in it. When ex-Amboy Dukes guitarist, Ted Nugent was criticised for turning up the volume, he retorted, "If it's too loud, you're too old" (Larkin, 1995).
Heavy metal bands tended to use black magic imagery; their songs were often peppered with anti-gay, sexist and anti-black imagery; they encouraged their audiences to imitate their use of alcohol and amphetamine; and the fans rolled in. In 1991, Metallica's album, Metallica went muti-platinum despite almost no airplay and only grudging acknowledgement from the mainstream music press. In Britain, heavy metal is a predominantly northern affair, closely linked to the amphetamine scenes of both Scotland and Northern England.
In Scandinavia, Belgium and Germany the amphetamine link is even stronger with much of the trade in amphetamines and, increasingly in other injected drugs controlled by heavy metal bikers. In the UK, throughout the 1970's the amphetamine trade was dominated by Scottish football casuals and most of the amphetamine sulphate was Scottish manufactured. This was increasingly undermined in the 1980's with the importation of cheaper, lower quality Dutch amphetamine. However, the Scottish football casuals link was rejuvenated in the 1980's as an important distribution network for ecstasy.
Interestingly both northern soul and heavy metal have become popular music genres in Scandinavian countries. The similarities between these apparently quite different music forms are telling. Both are built around an underground weekender tradition. Both have strong racist associations. Both are largely working class cultures despised or ignored by the music press. Both feature shared icons (Glitter, Quattro etc.) just as, earlier, both mods and rockers claimed the Shangrilla's and Dusty Springfield for their own. And, most important of all, both are fuelled by amphetamine.
Changes in Drug Treatment Priorities in the Seventies and Eighties
As with the period between 1930 and 1960, the drugs history student might assume that little happened in the drug treatment field during the 70's. Again, this would be far from the truth. Much new thinking emanated from the voluntary sector during this period. Release launched an extensive programme of treatment and advice for users of minor tranquillisers; both Lifeline Project and the Institute for the Study of Drug Dependence (ISDD) produced teaching packages for those working with users of volatile solvents; Lifeline Project targeted amphetamine users with the development of an outreach service; and a number of agencies, including Blenheim Project and Hungerford Project experimented with the use of minimum intervention approaches pioneered in the alcohol field (Yates, 1981).
This palpable widening of the focus to take in responses to other drugs and drug users was short-lived, however. The huge expansion in the availability of heroin across Europe from 1979 resulted, in the UK, in an enormous injection of government finance into the establishment of a national network of treatment services. This development came in response to a ground-breaking report from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs; the statutory body set up within the tenets of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 to advise the government (ACMD, 1982). Of the new money which was made available, most went into community-based services with almost 60% going to new community services (voluntary and statutory) and a further 10% going to existing voluntary agencies; most of which were also community-based. The extent to which the DDU's had been marginalised by the rapid expansion of the blackmarket and by a constricting remit which had always been more to do with social control than therapeutic intervention (Yates, 1981), can been seen by the fact that they secured less than 15% of the allocation.
However, this dramatic expansion of treatment provision had come about in response to the threat of a second 'heroin epidemic' and, almost overnight, those agencies which had been developing new work with users of other drugs, abandoned these experiments and returned to the mainstream of British drug policy priorities.
The process was further compounded by the emergence of HIV/AIDS. In 1988 the ACMD published it's report, AIDS & Drug Misuse Part 1 (ACMD, 1988). Once again, the ACMD had produced a highly significant and influential document. The report's conclusion that, "HIV is a greater threat to public and individual health than drug misuse" has become one of the most frequently quoted mantra's of the drugs field. Significantly, few practitioners and planners cite the full text of that advice.
AIDS & Drug Misuse Part 1 was not, as some have claimed, a u-turn in British drug policy legitimising 'low threshold' maintenance prescribing. It was in many respects, a restating of the central tenets of Rolleston for a modern era. The recommendation goes on to say:
".....The first goal of work with drug misusers must therefore be to prevent them from acquiring or transmitting the virus. In some cases this will be achieved through abstinence. In others, abstinence will not be achievable for the time being and efforts will have to focus on risk-reduction. Abstinence remains the ultimate goal but efforts to bring it about in individual cases must not jeopardise any reduction in HIV risk behaviour which has already been achieved."
(ACMD, op cit. - my italics)
The implication here is clear. There was no sanction for prescribing forever. (There was no such sanction in Rolleston either.) The goal is abstinence. Achieving this goal can legitimately be delayed in two circumstances: where circumstances dictate that it cannot be immediately achieved and where to attempt an abstinence intervention may undermine risk reduction initiatives already underway. These are significant caveats which have often since been lost or distorted in the retelling.
Prior to the emergence of HIV/AIDS, most agencies - certainly the vast majority of agencies in the voluntary sector - had seen their customer base consisting primarily of those who had decided to modify, or abandon altogether, their use of drugs with a smaller number who had not yet reached that decision being offered soup-kitchen, day shelter and detached work provision. Now the priority was to be making and maintaining contact with those drug users (often deeply suspicious of specialist drug services) who were at greatest risk of continuing to share needles. In other words, those who had no intention of stopping.
The significance of this development was to be profound. In the past decade drug services in the UK and across Europe, have changed their role from being an arm of the treatment services concerned with therapeutic interventions with people who have become dependent upon drugs to that of an infection control service adjacent to the services provided by health promotion/education, infectious disease monitoring centres and sexually transmitted diseases clinics. Thus, in recent years, outreach work with weight-lifters and gymnasts injecting anabolic steroids has come to be seen as a legitimate element of drug treatment service provision; despite the almost complete absence of any evidence of dependence or overdose potential associated with these drugs.
Moreover, with the election of a social democratic government in 1997, the focus has once again shifted to incorporate an aspect of drug use culture which appears to have dominated the new governments thinking about drug problems for some years. Thus, drug related crime such as house burglary, shoplifting, credit card fraud has been identified as being largely caused by the cravings associated with drug dependence and the moral decay which this causes in the individual. The UK Governments ten year strategy makes it quite clear that crime prevention is now a priority. The Government white paper which sets out the new strategy instructs all treatment services to "realign their priorities" in line with the strategy and sets out it's expectations of the UK's treatment services in the following statement:
"Treatment should enable people with drug problems to overcome them and live healthy and crime-free lives"
(HM Government, 1998 - my italics)
This further redirecting of treatment services will, I believe, result in the majority of drug users - those involved in the 'celebratory' use of non-opioid, non-injected drugs - to turn increasingly away from traditional drug treatment services.
The Coming of the 'Rave' Generation
In the summer of 1987, four British DJ's ( two of them stalwarts of the Northern Soul scene at the 100 Club) took a busman's holiday in Ibiza. Johnny Walker, Danny Rampling, Nicky Holloway and Paul Oakenfield partied 'till dawn; playing an eclectic mix of soul standards, Chicago house, hip-hop, British 'indie' music and even Beatles tracks. The whole was driven by liberal supplies of ecstasy. They brought back to the UK a new form of music they labelled 'acid house'.
Ecstasy itself was not new. It had enjoyed a brief moment of fame in the late 1960's when both Michael Hollinshead and R. D. Laing had tried it and remained unimpressed. In 1981, Marc Almond's Soft Cell had discovered it in New York's gay clubs and built their debut album Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret around it. They followed up with a remix collection, Non-Stop Ecstatic Dancing. This included the track Memorabillia, pop's first ecstasy anthem, but at that point, nobody noticed.
Significantly, because 'acid house' was essentially an electronic muse, the emphasis on the band as focal point almost disappeared. The early DJ's, mixing discs with the dexterity of a conjuror behind a bank of sound equipment were almost invisible leaving the audience to turn in towards itself. The dance itself and the dancer's became part of the spectacle; part of the experience.
By the summer of 1988, aficionados of rave culture were proclaiming the 'second summer of love'. Rave culture had developed it's own code and language to distinguish the cognicenti from the outsiders. Ravers were 'loved-up'. Experienced users emphasised the need to 'chill out' occasionally. In 1992, the hit single for the Shamen, Ebenezer Goode, included the refrain: "Eezer Goode, Eezer Goode, he's Ebeneezer Goode" (Whiteley, 1997).
Like some of the psychedelic music of Pink Floyd, Incredible String Band, Jefferson Airplane et al of the 1960's, 'acid house' was deliberately designed to reflect and enhance the drug experience. In two major respects,though, it differed markedly. Firstly, the emphasis of words and psychedelic imagery were eschewed for mantra-like chants and a basic 4/4 ('four to the floor') melodic structure designed to create a hypnotic background for the ecstasy experience.
Secondly, the rural idyll of 1960's psychedelic rock were not present in the early manifestations of 'acid house' though as rave culture began to be polluted by other cultures and genres, some of the early devotees have turned to the development of 'Goan trance' which does echo some of the 'back to nature', 'earth mother' preoccupations of the 1960's (Reynolds, 1997)
Where those early influences could be seen though, was in the emergence of ambient music - essentially music for the chill-out room - from bands like Porcupine Tree and The Orb. The Orb's Fluffy Little Clouds is an unmistakable homage to Pink Floyd's Astronomy Domine. Rickie Lee Jones' voice (she is heard in interview talking about the skies over her childhood Arizona) has a quality reminiscent of the breathless child's voice in Traffic's Hole in my Shoe, the archtypal hippy anthem. Porcupine Tree's Voyage 34 contains much that is redolent of the work of Steve Hillage's Gong.
The digital remixing of sound, too, is reminiscent of the early work of groups like Pink Floyd, who, inspired by the so-called 'musique concrete' work of John Cage, Iannis Xenakis and Stockhausen, experimented with simply cutting up chunks of tape and re-splicing them in a different order.
Implications for Treatment Services of the 'New' Drug Users
Rave music is dance music and stimulant-based drugs such as amphetamine and ecstasy are integral to it. Cannabis too has become ubiquitous amongst this group. Huge numbers of young people all across Europe are regularly consuming these drugs; predominantly at music/dance events on a weekly basis (Calafat, 1998).
Increasingly, these are young people who see little relationship between their behaviour and that of the 'junkies' and, therefore, see little benefit in approaching the drug treatment services which have effectively ignored their needs for so long (Yates, 1993). For drug treatment services to recapture this lost ground, a fundamental shift in our understanding of drug use and drug users will be required. Moreover, a refocussing of drug treatment services to respond to those drugs (and drug problems) most widely experienced by young people will call for a re-examination of existing drug policy priorities.
The 'rave drugs' phenomenon has provided ample evidence that young people's use of drugs is not necessarily integrally associated with acquisitive crime (Yates, 1998b). Indeed, their has long been significant evidence to question the far too readily assumed connection between drug use of all kinds and crime (Hammersley & Morrison, 1987; Bean & Wilkinson, 1988). Equally, observers have argued for some time for the recognition of a wider spectrum of drug use; specifically urging the establishment of treatment services to respond to drug use which is largely 'recreational' in aspect (Yates, 1979; Zinberg, 1984).
For treatment agencies to realign their services to meet the needs of this new generation of drug users, will require a serious reappraisal of many fundamental tenets of the treatment sector. Given the wide range of drugs (including alcohol) being consumed by these young people, services will be required to be more integrated in their response. This will mean more meaningful links between the drug and alcohol field and between specialist and non-specialist services. The use of minimum interventions is widespread in the alcohol field and has interesting possibilities for the treatment of problems arising out of the apparently 'recreational' use of other drugs.
Increasingly, as young people's taste in drugs becomes more and more catholic, treatment services predicated upon an assumption of first choice drug use (that is: one drug which is problematic to the user with an accompanying repertoire of other less important drug use behaviour) will become less relevant.
Finally, as the rate at which new drug preparations and combinations appear on the market accelerates, there will be a need for services - particularly specialist services - to become two-way information conduits. Drug treatment services have become adept in providing information on drugs which they understand. They now need to become better at hearing user experiences of drugs which they don't understand.
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