The gold standard for pop-cultural references remains the mega-buster, Game of Thrones.
Pop cultural references are a writer’s currency saver, allowing the cited reference to save the spending of 200 words on setting the mood, context or visual drama. Just write “Game of Thrones”, allow a second or two for the reader’s imagination to sketch it out, and then, deliver what the writer hopes will be the killer blow.
Television’s next Game of Thrones can easily be the Aryan Khan drugs’ case. (Scriptwriters remember, you heard it here first).
As the plot unfolds and then folds again on top of all that is believed to have been revealed, only to unfold further – like a kind of never-ending rendition of a pasta dough – the promise of “solved!” “At last!” “Thank God!” “The End”, keeps TRPs buzzing, column centimetres filled and social media hashtags on a never-ending loop of funny punch lines and smarter counter-punch memes.
Amidst all the noise the real issues that the words “narcotics” and “addiction” might allow to surface are likely to be drowned out.
Narcotic addiction, like alcohol, or any other “definer” you might pick as the addiction factor destroying a human being’s life (sex, food, gambling), is a real-life, real-time social issue that can ill afford luxuries like politicisation, criminal intent, rule of law or bail pleas.
People die. Every day.
This is not to undermine or downplay the importance of law and order or the due legal process involved when the law is broken. By all means, let the hammer fall.
The fear is the hammer is banging away and drowning out what may be cries for help.
For an addict there is help. Today. Right now. Here in Pune. In whatever deadly or depraved situation s/he finds her/himself in. There is help. A solution and design for living that works.
Aryan Khan might now be the face of the “narcotics and youth” dinner-table discussion at least till the end of the year, but on the streets of Pune, or in one of the reopened nightclubs of Pune or at a hotel room rented for the party just for one night – an addict might have taken the “first hit” on the road to destruction, or possibly, “the toke” that could be his/her last.
Twelve-step programmes as the one-day-at-a-time solution to addictions have been around since 1935. By that measure the 12-step programme has met the scientific rigour of testing.It has worked for over 75 years, in different time zones, cultures, languages, peoples, and beliefs. As an experiment goes, it has run the gauntlet and proved, “it works!”
In no way, shape or form do the 12-step “de-addiction” programmes claim exclusivity or “being the only answer” to heal addiction.
Science continues to push for that boundary-defining breakthrough where physical addiction can be altered by popping a pill or tweaking a gene.
The 12-step programmes have more than their fair share of critiques; generally wherever a “higher power” is involved that is more than likely to happen.
The answer for an alcoholic, a drug addict, a sex addict, a gambling addict, a food addict, a shopping addict… the list goes on, is there is a programme that works and the only reason for the existence of these programmes is to help you.
Narcotics Anonymous (NA). The “anonymous” word is, as the textbook of the 12-step programmes, colloquially referred to as the “Big Book” explains it, the “spiritual foundation of all its principles”.
Anonymity is key to the recovery programme. Like a cloak of protection. Protection from? Pride to begin with. But also, in the case of many global superstars who are members of 12-step groups, protection from the vagaries of publicity and the distraction of fame.
Anonymity is not to be confused with secrecy or some sort of underground cult. Anonymity is a spiritual principle employed in all 12-step groups.
Addiction kills. The 12-step programme saves lives. What is at stake here is much, much more important than the self-indulgent coefficient of “serves them right”, that cases like Aryan Khan’s expose.
The arguments for decriminalising small quantities of possession deemed as “for personal use” are growing stronger. Holland and Portugal are the countries to google if you want a quick reference point in terms of the effect of decriminalising possession of narcotics for personal use.
Every day a new Game-of-Thrones-type twist in the Aryan Khan script emerges.
What must not be lost in all the “hungama” is that for the addict, there is a real help. A real answer. A programme for living that works, and has worked in Pune for hundreds of addicts and alcoholics, thousands across India and in the world, the numbers run into the millions.
Twelve steps. One step at a time. One day at a time.
At its core, the Narcotics Anonymous programme is one drug addict working with another drug addict each helping the other to stay clean and sober.
Are you an addict? Or an alcoholic?
If you have heard any person in your immediate circle – family or friends or at work – use the phrases, “drinking problem”, “substance abuse”, “always stoned”, “never there”… it is time to find out.
Even if it has, just for a fleeting moment, crossed your own mind, it is time to find out.
Aryan Khan found out the hard way. No matter who, where, or how big or cool (or small) you are, if addiction finds you or the other way around, it will destroy you.
As a recovered alcoholic and/or drug addict will testify, anonymously if it is in public, there is an answer.
In Pune to get in touch with
Narcotics Anonymous call – +919673606686
Alcoholics Anonymous call 1800 345 1500
