Human tragedy of Dundee lives blighted by addiction

Michael Alexander speaks to activist, rapper and prizewinning author Darren McGarvey about new BBC documentary featuring a ‘world defined by poverty’

All of the people that I spoke to are dealing with some kind of grief. DARREN MCGARVEY

Growing up amid a sea of poverty in Pollok, Glasgow, rapper and social commentator Loki told in his 2018 Orwell prize-winning book Poverty Safari how by the age of 18 he was “just another statistic – another angry, confused young man with alcohol and drug problems”.

But in an interview with

The Courier the former drug user, whose mum died of alcohol-related problems, revealed he was “shocked” by the scale of the drug crisis when he visited Dundee for a new documentary series which tackles the “biggest, ugliest issue facing society”.

The first episode of the series focuses on Dundee, which in 2018 celebrated the opening of the V&A as it also became Europe’s so-called drug death capital.

But while the statistics of 66 drug deaths in the city last year are shocking, it is the desperate human stories behind the numbers that really hit home as Loki – real name Darren McGarvey – immerses viewers in a “world defined by poverty”.

As well as exploring the human tragedy of drug deaths, he gains a heartbreaking insight into the grief of the families left behind, the fear of families who think their drug-using sons and daughters will be next – as well as acknowledging the often devastating impact on victims of drug crime.

The programme sees him find hope in a locally-driven project, with a support group of individuals helping each other towards recovery from their drug addiction.

Yet there are no easy answers, when treatments such as the substitute drug methadone have in turn created another tranche of addicts.

“There’s no question that the scale of the drug problem in Dundee in terms of how it’s impacting families and communities is not conveyed very effectively by statistics,” Darren, 35, told The Courier.

“All of the people that I spoke to, they are all dealing with some kind of grief.

“They are grieving for someone who’s died or they are grieving for someone who’s heavily addicted and beyond help.

“They are dealing also with the fear it’s going to happen to them next.

“Often drug users operate within quite tight-knit communities and take care of each other.

“When three of them are dying every week there’s a massive shadow of grief cast over people.

“And if they’ve been using drugs to cope with difficulties, with that shadow of grief hanging over them, everyone’s drug use will increase and that then increases the likelihood of overdose.”

Having been in a “bit of a bubble” while promoting his book, Darren said he had to “refocus” for the documentary and understands where negative attitudes by society towards addicts and poor people come from.

He thinks this “irritation and resentment” is a natural impulse “rooted in a feeling of helplessness” by the public who become “hardened” to seeing issues on the streets day in, day out. This can sometimes be supplemented by “ungenerous media coverage”, he said.

But behind every statistic there is a life. And there’s often the same mix of background factors behind addicts – social exclusion that began in a mainstream classroom, then a downward spiral of coming into contact with social workers, charities, police and criminal justice – perhaps being “misunderstood or misinterpreted by people who don’t have the insight into that experience by virtue of their own social class”.

Darren goes as far as to say that even people who are trying to help can sometimes hinder the process, and that’s a difficult topic to broach.

He says it is a combination of “middle-class sensibility and the vast public ignorance about the nature of addiction” that’s really creating the circumstances for the “political inaction” that leads to these deaths increasing.

“It’s interesting when you think about this issue of accountability,” he said.

“The status quo is that the drug users are accountable – for their drug taking, the social impact and for their own death.

“But a lot of the people who are talking the language of personal responsibility, actually they are not very accountable for much.

“Think of all the over-prescription of the opioids and benzodiazepines in the 1990s by middle-class doctors and middle-class people in pharmaceutical companies.

“There’s never any kind of reflection – did it not occur to anyone that introducing chemicals that reduce stress into our most challenged communities might create problems further down the line? Why were these drugs green lit in the first place?

“I’m not dismissing that self-efficacy is important.

“We’ve learned so many lessons about alcohol, tobacco, sugar, about gambling. It just strikes me as odd that we would flood the communities with these powerful stress-inducing medications.

“You can often trace where these epidemics come from: it’s companies looking to make a profit or its managerial middle-class people not always thinking it through.”

The documentary will be screened in the aftermath of the Dundee Drugs Commission’s report into services in the city.

The commission, which took evidence from people working in the field over the course of a year, found drug treatment centres were operating at over-capacity, with little work being done around prevention.

The authors have vowed that Dundee will shed its title of “drug death capital of Europe”.

Darren McGarvey’s Scotland starts on Tuesday September 3 at 10pm on BBC Scotland.