Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs by Johann Hari

Author:Johann Hari [Hari, Johann]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi, pdf
Publisher: BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING
Published: 2015-01-20T05:00:00+00:00

Part V

Peace

Chapter 14

The Drug Addicts’ Uprising

As I tried to find my way through the world of the Downtown Eastside, I kept being told—again and again—that it had changed radically in the past decade. This place, everyone said, has been transformed. It is not what it was. It is incalculably better now. I wanted to know how that happened, and when I asked for the explanation, I was told a story, and one name always featured in it: Bud Osborn. He’s a poet, people said. He was a homeless addict. He changed this place. They talked about him almost as a mythical figure. You’ll understand, they said, when you meet him.

When I called his number, he sounded unwell—and, to my surprise, a hailstorm of negative assumptions hit me. Another junkie, I thought. What change? Why am I bothering? And then I immediately asked myself—Where did that thought come from?

I went to Bud’s little apartment, a short walk from the Portland Hotel Society where Gabor had worked, to meet him. He was waiting in the corridor for me. He was a tall man in his sixties with a long mop of gray hair and an unlined, youthful face. He guided me into his lounge through huge piles of books—on poetry, history, jazz—and before long, he was telling me about a day nearly twenty years before, when he was very different, and the Downtown Eastside was very different, and everything seemed hopeless. This is his story1 as I learned it from him, his friends, and the people he led a rebellion against.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.