Mary KennyI felt very sad about the late Peaches Geldof (pictured) when her inquest was made public last week – her death having taken place in April. It was disclosed that 79 heroin syringes were found in her home in Kent, plus a large stash of high-quality heroin. Due to her death, her baby son Phaedra had been alone for about 17 hours.
The passing of any young person is wrenching – the daily news from Gaza is heart-scorching – but I suppose what I found especially melancholy about Peaches was that she had obviously tried so hard to quit her addiction. As recently as November last year, she had been free of the drug. But, having some experience of addiction problems in my family, I could understand and even identify with that relapse.
To the addict, drugs – including alcohol – have a desperate, seductive, beckoning quality. The first thing you learn in any remedial programme to break free of addiction is that the drug is more powerful than you are. Before its compelling, sometimes overweening force, you are powerless. Because the fatal moment in that ‘slip’ back into the arms of the opiate is the delusional idea that you can control it. The most dangerous words in the world, for any addict is, “just a little one won’t hurt”.
All drugs are addictive to the addict, but heroin is particularly alluring. I have interviewed over a score of heroin addicts – yes, people do recover, though it is no easy road – and all of them said the same thing. Heroin is the most comforting substance in the world. When you take heroin, you feel completely protected from pain, from suffering, from anxiety, from lack of confidence. The effect is like Browning’s poem: “God’s in his Heaven/All’s right with the world.”
A common feature of those who become drawn to heroin is that they have suffered bereavement, or the loss of a parent, in childhood or teenage years, as Peaches did. Heroin brings the sensation of consolation – at first. Afterwards, it becomes the master and the addict becomes the slave.
I can imagine every last moment of Peaches’ last ‘slip’. Just one little shot won’t hurt. Just for a special treat. Just to comfort me. And then, there is loss of tolerance after a period of abstention. And that one little shot too easily becomes an overdose.
Heroin users are often spiritual people. They are often looking for a mystical dimension to life. And for those who recover, faith can become the comfort they deeply, deeply need.
Peaches’ death has also elicited criticism of the police, who did not disclose, back in April, that there was anything unusual about her demise, although they had already found the needles and the drug stash.
There have also been criticisms of the social services: if she had been a poor mother on benefits living in a sink estate, it’s been pointed out, her children would have been on the ‘at risk’ register. Because she was famous she should not have been treated any differently, it’s being said. I do not know the answer to that: the social services cannot monitor every aspect of every life.
Peaches’ sons have survived, and for that, her family will be thankful.
A jolly fine game
Is golf a genuine sport? A veteran sports writer, Simon Barnes, has suggested that it is not, because ìsport should involve some riskî. Golf is way too comfortable to be a real sport, he suggests.
It's no more a sport than croquet ñ a mere pastime.
I've always had mixed feelings about golf, I must admit. It is incorrigibly class-ridden (except in Scotland, where it started and where it has always been open to all). In the 1960s, when I was fascinated by student revolutionary politics, it was the ultimate symbol of 'bourgeois complacency'.
Yet it does no harm, and Iíve known golfers to whom the game has brought much contentment, companionship and fitness.
Moreover, Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy have transformed its image in recent times. If golf is not wholly a sport, it surely is, for many, a jolly fine game.
Standing with t he ‘Nazarenes’
Bravo to France for taking the initiative in offering asylum and protection to beleagured Iraqi Christians from Mosul. The French press has followed these dreadful persecutions much more closely than the mainstream press in the English-speaking world.
Ironic that the French Republic, so affirmatively a secular state, has been the most responsive to afflicted Christians in the Middle East. And that Ireland, which still has God in the Constitution, has said or done so little.
Christians in Mosul have had the letter ëNí daubed on their homes, to mark them out for punishment, confiscation of property and goods, or exile. 'N' is for 'Nazarene' – meaning Jesus Christ. We should take up the letter 'N' in solidarity with those persecuted for their faith, and wear it with pride. I hope some imaginative manufacturer might distribute a lapel badge bearing the Nazareneís mark: 'N'.