More rubbish from those that 'care'

New afraid to acknowledge the existence of the discerning drug user answers!

Wow, that's quite a story. I hadn't heard of it before this, so I am not biased in any reaction I described.

As I read the story, I got a little angry with her parents. Her parents were saying things like they "had donated her life". They didn't donate anything. They are simply campaigning that their daughter was an addict, and don't let yours become one either.

The picture is a little upsetting simply because her parents are practically selling it to the newspapers. They want people to see their daughters corpse? To know that their daughter wasn't visited for three days and so her body wasn't found? It's disgusting and distasteful.

I understand the need for them to promote anti-drugs, but I am not sure this is the way I would go about it. I agree with you in that I don't think it'll influence anyone to stay off of drugs. It sounds like this girl had a pretty serious addiction before she overdosed.

I dunno, this is a little too much for the media I think. It doesn't promote good things, even anti-drug doesn't come across in this pic. It's not right.

i'm not so sure. it was shocking because we don't normally see those pics, normally its some smiling school pic (before blah blah). what was interesting was that the telegraph (we have it in our work reception okay?) didn't run that pic on the front but the smiling school 'before' type pic.

the hypocritical media in this country would have portrayed this girl as 'scum' when still alive, bleeding the state dry, clogging up the nhs with 'self inflicted' shit, a criminal, blah blah blah. when someone dies, they immediately become a victim. criminal when alive, victim when dead. perhaps if we started to see people in this girls position a little differently when they were alive, they might not have to die. we criminalise drug users in this country, blocking off escape routes left right and centre.

if nothing else, this pic may open another drug debate, although i don't see any change resulting from it, it can change a few peoples minds

I think that this will not help those who choose to self medicate and it is really evil of the parents to even consider.

Losing a child in this way must screw the parents up so badly that it's difficult to apply rational motives to their actions. Probably there's a massive and genuine urge to somehow 'make some good happen'. That seems a common reaction, e.g Leah Betts' parents. I doubt very much if publishing these pictures will help to stop it happening to other people. I really hope they didn't take money though, unless for some anti-drugs charity. Does anyone know?

The small bit of me which is attracted to junkies and their world is far more attracted to that picture than repelled: attracted to what it says about the bleakness of junkieworld, which is something like "actually this is all there is, the rest is illusion". OK I am not at all *ruled* by that part of me; in particular I had a good relationship with my parents, and have never been drawn to behaviours which hurt myself, in order to hurt them. If this were difft, that picture — and what these unhappy, ill-advised parents are doing — would push me toward heroin, not away.

Even ignoring that, there's this. Show 100 people an utterly horrible thing, and [x]% will be drawn towards it not turned away. In literature and art, this is called the Theory of the Sublime, it is nearly 300 years old, and leaderwriters on all the grown-up papers and some of the tabloids could expound it very precisely, possibly even intelligently. Unfortunately only in reference to literature and art.

I don't actually believe that [x]% is very different from the percentage of people who end up trying junk, but I couldn't prove that and wouldn't know how to.

Losing a child in this way must screw the parents up so badly that it's difficult to apply rational motives to their actions.

Cf. the Canadian parents whose son was killed by a Coke machine he was tipping over; they have devoted themselves to an awareness- campaign concerning the safety of unbolted vending machines, because to just leave it be would be to admit -- and I say this not with sarcasm but with understanding -- that their son was just being an idiot.

(On the other hand, were the son alive to have any say in it I'm sure he would rather not publicize the details of his death.)