Fear and Loathing in Wolverhampton

I don't and never have experimented with drugs but after that the lecture on them I can't but help feel tempted. I wonder why this is because I know that the reality is that drugs can destroy lives and can have some awful side effects.


In the music industry drug use if often blatantly referred to and the media seem to accept it without question when it is in the forms on lyrics. The Velvet Underground- Heroin, The Beatles- Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, Bob Dylan- Mr Tambourine Man and various others are played on radio and TV any time of the day and night regardless of the messages they promote. I was listening to Lucy in the Sky With Diamond when i was four, naming every bear i owned Lucy. When Dylan sings in Mr Tambourine man that he wants to 'dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free, silhouetted by the sea' it sounds really romantic but in reality its about asking his dealer for more drugs.


Some of my biggest icons are Keith Moon, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and Kurt Cobain and they all died squalid in drug related deaths and yet the media seems to glamorise their activities however their behaviour was every bit as sad as Pete Doherty and Amy Winehouse today and the media can't wait to do them down. In music it needs a song like The Verve's 'The Drugs don't work' to give a necessary reality check.


In film things are slightly different. The use of drugs in one movie can show the apparent coolness whilst having time to balance it out with the downside. In Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Johnny Depps crazy talk while driving across the desert seems really hip but hes crawling round the floor in his hotel room or freaking out when other guests have turned into lizards, it doesn't seem like such a good idea. For me the film that ensured that I will never take drugs is 'Requiem for a Dream.' In this film the audience are initially seduced by the glamour of drugs but as the film progresses we watch the characters disintegrate and in the explicit climax of the film the coolness has gone completely and even the most hard heartened viewer would want to cry at the depths of degradation and physical mutilation. If you are thinking of taking drugs watch this film because it does more in the last five minuites to diswade you than any government sponsered warning.


This link is at the end of the film, it may ruin it if you havent seen it plus it is intense and explicit.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXjXNsgBYAY

This is interesting

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMWi1S_NC4k