Shooting Up on the Subway

A culture without standards, claim the naysayers, is a culture without a future.

Woman Seated Beside a Vase of Flowers — Edgar Degas (1865)

Whilst riding the New York subway, I discovered a new and empowering alternate universe.

As one chunters toward Manhattan, painfully clear is the realisation of how bothersome and square one must appear to such advanced, forward-thinking people.

Ingesting the adverts plastered across the train is as self-revelatory as a brain-melting dose of ayahuasca. For New York is the city of progress.

Not only is weed legal, but mandatory. An ad campaign from Cannabis Conversations politely nudges smokers to ‘be mindful of your smoke in public.’ If you’ve spent any time in New York of late, you’ll accept that vomity weed haze is the only fragrance of which you’re mindful.

A recent offering from dating app, OkCupid, assured passengers that pansexuals (possessing a fanatical lust for crockery, I suppose,) are the hip new thing.

Another enlightening advert outlines, ‘Your New Parole Rights.’ Parolees, it says, get thirty days slashed off their sentence for each thirty days in which they ‘avoid a violation.’

The vertiginous crime rate suggests such forward-thinking is yet to permeate the criminal classes, or persons impacted by the justice system, as the correct term goes. Perhaps larger posters of greater prominence would help spread the message.

So far, so radical chic.

In honesty, I could not care less if someone smokes weed, the details of their criminal history, with whom they sleep, or as what they may identify. But I do care about minding my own business.

The brave new world of New York has consigned the dreaded stigma—singular cause of all of man’s torments—to the judgemental ash tip of history.

Curiously, some stigmas are good stigmas. Smoking a cigarette within four blocks of a warm-blooded being is tantamount to chewing a glass vial labelled, ‘Wuhan Institute of Virology.’

So too is suggesting masks discourage a virus as barbed wire discourages a mosquito. Breaking either taboo conjures the phosphoric ire of green-haired Millennials with steel dangling from their nostrils.

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In the spirit of ‘when in Rome,’ I’ve embarked upon an exciting hobby. Despite its illustrious history as faithful confidante of artists and of tortured souls everywhere, my new hobby, too, is stigmatised. But not so much here, not in forward-thinking New York.

My new hobby is Heroin.

Let me explain. My old brain thought Heroin a dangerous drug, and prolific author of social ruin. But the ‘Let’s Talk Fentanyl’ subway adverts washed away such backward notions.

A sprightly yet stern young woman named Florence soothed away my doubts:

“Don’t be ashamed you are using,” she says. “Be empowered that you are using safely.”

Florence then dispenses invaluable advice for those keen to shoot Heroin laced with fentanyl (some 80 percent of all New York product) into their veins.

“Avoid using alone, and take turns. Start with a small dose and go slowly. Have naloxone [an anti-overdose drug] on hand.”

Perhaps add the sublime second movement of Beethoven’s Seventh to the mix?       

My new sensual pursuit swells fat with life-affirming benefits. Firstly, one is always meeting new and interesting characters in new and interesting places. ‘Getting on the skag,’ as my new chums call it, is empowering.

Freed from the tedium of civilisation, each day we meet up at Parkside Avenue station before easing into the day’s work.

Our employment of sweeping shelves of liquor and steak pays a living wage of $25 an hour plus benefits. The store workers don’t mind us helping ourselves. Nor do the police.

Enlightened beings know our work is not ‘theft,’ nor is it morally questionable. To suggest otherwise  stigmatises those dependent on this humble, socially vibrant line of work.

On rare occasion, an outdated police officer infected with outdated notions that theft is bad, that crime should be punished, that things should be paid for, arrests one of the crew.

Mercifully, the higher-ups deplore such judgemental behaviour. Within the hour, we’re back out on the streets like smacked-up smurfs.

We are empowered. (The police are not.)

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Our culture of non-judgement frees everyone to do whatever they like as long as nobody suggests their behaviour damages them and those around them. That invites stigma and shame and harm and trauma.

You see, when sauntering around New York, one encounters many people who may appear to be struggling with their mental health. You must reject what your eyes and ears falsely conclude!

Those people, muttering to themselves and often caked in excrement, are empowered. The worst thing one could do is suggest medical professionals intervene and give such desperate people the psychiatric help and attention they habitually cry out for.

Such misguided notions would only harm them further.

That goes for shooting up Heroin, too.

An enlightened soul at the city’s Department of Health beautified the newthink of the pro-smack subway ads. The spokesman told the New York Post:

“Every four hours, a New Yorker dies of a drug overdose. Shame pushes people underground. Shame drives people away from those services. Shame puts people at even greater risk. And shame is life-threatening. We want to fight shame and stigma. We want people to live.”

In this brave new world, repeating the first words of a few sentences renders whatever one says infallible. This is empowerment. This is freedom. This is progress.

And yet, some are impervious to such rhetorical alchemy. Luke Nasta, head of a drug program on Staten Island, said the campaign, ‘demonstrates a society in decline.’

Then again, Mr. Nasta is not an anthropologist, so his opinion is neither welcome nor valid.

Yes, naysayers may claim overdose deaths in New York have spiked by a negligible 78 percent since the pandemic, claiming just 1,233 lives. And that fentanyl is now the nation’s the biggest killer of adults between 18 and 45.  

You cannot make a utopian omelette without cracking some stigmatised eggs.

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And there’s baskets and baskets of eggs to crack.

Our culture, which presents OnlyFans as an empowering career choice, is saturated with stigma, heaving with harm, and teeming with taboo.

Until we break each and every stigma, we shall never be truly empowered.

Just a cursory Google reveals the multi-headed hydra beneath which millions suffer in silence.

There’s stigma for thinness, a stigma for fatness, stigmas for the rich and stigmas for the poor. There’s a stigma for second-hand clothes, and a stigma for migraines.

The stigma of Long-Covid joins the stigma of genital herpes. There’s a stigma for polyamory relationships, and a stigma for fast food. There’s period stigma for ‘people who menstruate’.

One aging British rocker coined hip-replacement stigma. There’s even a stigma for mothers who leave their children. According to The Guardian, there’s a stigma for the word ‘stigma.’

Of course, there’s the stigma of mental health. So riven is this stigma that demand has outstripped supply, and the relentless minting of new isms and illities has inflated the currency.

Aside from the President of the United States, all world leaders, celebrities, religious figures, all major institutions, media, corporations, and everyone on social media, nobody talks about mental health.

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In a previous life, I’d often eavesdrop on the Tube, indulging the most penetrating snippets of what Theodore Dalrymple called Life at the Bottom.

The highest virtue amongst the British underclasses is that they’re ‘non-judgemental.’

To my memory, a conversation between two lads went something like this:

“Nah, I ain’t seen him yet, but I will, like.”

The lad in question referred to his son of six months, whom he ‘loved the bones of.’

(Yes. A fatherless child is four times more likely to be poor, nine times more likely to drop out of school, and twenty times more likely to end up in jail. Don’t judge!)

Generously, the two lads pumped out of a speaker some pulsating drill-rap for the enjoyment of all on the train. Then they settled upon the merits and demerits of another rascal who allegedly ‘taxed’ the crop of a fellow budding horticulturalist.

“I don’t really know him, bro. So I can’t judge.”

“Fair enough,” said his mate. “That’s what I like about you, bruv, you don’t judge!”

“Nothing worse, man,” he replied. “Nothing worse… Being judgemental can really mess people up.”

A culture without standards is a culture without a future. But it’s all right. Everything is all right. The struggle is finished. We’ve won the final victory over ourselves.