Choose Life Choose Leith by Tim Bell sampler
By examining the book, the play and the film, Choose Life, Choose Leith both critically analyses the Trainspotting phenomenon in its various forms, and contextualises the importance of the location of Leith and the culture of 1980s Britain. Looking in detail at the history of Leith, the drug culture, the spread of HIV/AIDs, and how Trainspotting affected drug policy, Leith and the Scottish identity, the book highlights the importance of Trainspotting. Choose Life, Choose Leith acts as a reference book, a record of the times and a background as to the history that led to the real-life situation and the publication of the book.
By examining the book, the play and the film, Choose Life, Choose Leith both critically analyses the Trainspotting phenomenon in its various forms, and contextualises the importance of the location of Leith and the culture of 1980s Britain. Looking in detail at the history of Leith, the drug culture, the spread of HIV/AIDs, and how Trainspotting affected drug policy, Leith and the Scottish identity, the book highlights the importance of Trainspotting. Choose Life, Choose Leith acts as a reference book, a record of the times and a background as to the history that led to the real-life situation and the publication of the book.
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preface 19<br />
Try this mate –<br />
and seek his peace elsewhere.<br />
… She adjusts the picture on the nightstand<br />
of the wee angel she once knew<br />
who love wasn’t strong enough to save<br />
though Lord knows she tried to.<br />
BROTHER. UNCLE. SON. FRIEND. 3<br />
Why do people take mood- or mind- altering drugs? Because they are seductive<br />
and available. The starting circumstances vary widely from any combination<br />
of opportunity, experimentation, youthful delinquency, peer pressure<br />
and a search for the feel-good to self- medication against pain of whatever<br />
type. You might as well declare war on sex as prohibit these drugs. In the<br />
public policy arena sex is mostly a matter of education, health care and,<br />
where necessary, harm reduction. There can still be problems around sex –<br />
we are human – and we can’t dis- invent harmful addictive substances. The<br />
damage to personal and community relationships goes way beyond individual<br />
addicts. The aim is no more ambitious than to reduce the harm and<br />
the pain.<br />
Despite all I have seen here in <strong>Leith</strong> for 40- odd years, I wasn’t prepared<br />
for the pain when it recently became personal. A fellow my wife and I had<br />
known since he was a schoolboy in the 1980s had a habit for maybe 20<br />
years. Shooting up into his groin a few months ago, he hit an artery and<br />
the immediate cause of death was catastrophic loss of blood. It was a very<br />
sad funeral.<br />
All this primes the situation for the projected Trainspotting the musical.<br />
The cause of drug policy reform as part of a more equable social/economic<br />
society needs a broad crusading revolution. Like mind- altering drugs, music<br />
dodges the forces of geography, orthodoxy and censorship. Music can be<br />
the anthem, the rallying cry for a cause, a campaign, a revolution. You can’t<br />
derive a policy document from music, but music can find and generate creative<br />
spaces wherein lie insight, wisdom and truth.<br />
Music can also be helpful in the rehabilitative process from the complex<br />
condition that is addiction. Rhythms, balances and melodies move<br />
differently from addiction’s inexorable, unforgiving demands. Any words<br />
attached to music can have their meaning deepened and intensified. Music<br />
can bring solace and stiffen resolve. It can bond friendships and communities;<br />
it can help fetch the addict out of the depths of isolation.<br />
3 From Edinburgh ’86 <strong>by</strong> Sophie Leah, in The Darting Salamander: www.leithwritings.co.uk
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