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Drug revention lubs i France

Jacques Ellul

France, a prevention club is a private organizawhich seeks, by a variety of means, to enter into

with so-called maladjusted young peojuvenile delinquents, blousons noirs,th e working class. The purpose is

enable these young people to nnd adult relationin a milieu which does not judge them. Theseare of two sorts, one which aims to adjust thepeople to society, th e other, in which we ar e

to provide 1he young person with th e meansexpressing hi s personality in a positive way in

to help him overcome his despair, stabilize,d discover his own personal road of development.Our observations of drug-takers were made in theclub at Pessac, of which I am the direc

During vacations and holidays our instructorsyoung people, 15 to 18, on th e beach, smokingThrough the year 1969 a group of about

of these hippies came to the club to pursue theirhabits there and through them we met young

on drugs. After our experience whh thesewe began to oppose the government's

and improperly oriented hygienic move-against drugs and we refused to be associated

campaign against drugs.There are three new characteristics of drug-takingFrance. First, drug-taking is no longer confinedthe traditional groups-artists, writers, film peo

and students. There have always been groupsused drugs-in 1930, mainly opium; after 1945,it was a very small circle, made

as much of adults as of youths, and oriented pritoward activities connected with illtellectual

They constituted a tiny fraction of theand were centered chiefly in Pads. The

fact now is the apparent spread of drugs in theamong members of the working

Of the young people we contacted, about nineEllul is (L pj'()fessor oj History and Law at the. Uni-BQrde.a/u,x in FraMe and director oj the "prevention

rzt Pesgrzc.

percent came from bourgeois backgrounds, studentsand the like, but the rest were apprentices, younglaborers, clerks, the sons of small shopkeepers orlow-ranking civil servants. Of th e total populationin our small city we estimate some two percent ofthe young people use drugs. A survey conducted inthe upper grades of a lycee gave a slightly higherfour percent.

The second new characteristic, which derives fromthe first, is that th e "classic" drugs {Lre hardly takenat all. Opium is completely unknown; heroin andcocaine are very rare (we encountered only twocases) ; hashish (and other derivatives of cannabis)are somewhat more frequent, bu t .are reserved, itseems, to communal meetings, at which "one smokes"

I in a kind of sacral relationship with one's fellowcommunicants. LSD is known but little used. Oneyoung man told us it was a "drug fo r intellectuals."The great obstacle to their use is thfit in France allthese drugs are expensive (these young people arepoor) and relatively hard to procure (you have tolook :::01' them, make an effort, whereas these young

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people all belong- in the category of those who don'twant to make any effort). Besides, the young people have realized that similar results can be obtainedfrom patent medicines or products made with drugswhich are inexpensive and sold without prescription.So they make their experiments, concoct their "cocktails," and multiply the means by utilizing whatcomes to hand. A great many of these products turnout to be toxic so that their mixtures are sometimesvery dangerous.

The third new drug-taking characteristic is thatthe objective sought is no longer, as it used to be,a liberation, a poetic trance, the "trip" so often saidto result from LSD. The phrase used in the groupswith which we are familiar is "caving in," meaning, to a very large extent, being shattered, makingoneself "explode," and, in extreme cases; destroyingoneself. Consequently, the motivation is no longerat all the same as the one which existed in bourgeois and intellectual circles. Instead, it has becomea motivation of despair, of internal collapse, of nervous breakdown. I t should not be supposed, as itoften is, that drugs are a means of escaping fromor forgetting reality; on the contrary, they plungethe user still deeper into a state of radical negativeness while simultaneously making him lose sight ofthe tragic concrete situation.

We were obliged to investigate the problem ofimitation. Had contagions occurred? Had studentgroups, for example, infected working-class groups,or young Americans traveling in France "turnedon" young' FI'ench people? A small factor of suchpropagation certainly exists. For example, we tracedthe spread of hashish to the beach and to contactwith some young Americans who had some hashishwith them. Likewise, many participate in the bighippie rallies (30 of our young hippies wellt to theIsle of Wight rally) where they find the drugs or

are con-frrmed in their use. But the problem issimply one of outward imitation, of a fad. Inity, the problem is if young people from these wing-class backgrounds adopt th e drug-using poas a model they have been bro'lght to it by motions more profound than the desire to imitate, Tis a previoLlsly existing craving, a dd'use, unspdesire: drugs correspond to a more profound psyreality, a-basic need. I t is, therefore, no use atting the question on its superficial level-by repsion, for example. One must try to understa:ld wthe young drug-user is searehing for and alsowhat he is trying to express by his act.

The basis of this desire for drugs seems to betendency to "evasion-communion," the constiparticulars of which are :related to the wayyoung person sees and feels the totaL society which he is being prepared to enter. This sofrightens him because it is too insensitive, too tal, too demanding, too efficient. He is afraid hnot up to what is going to be asked of him. Hafraid of the standardized type of man that sooffers, which he rejects as a modL He is afraicommitting himself to that society, of being "in it. I t seems to him that he is being asked totoo high a price to enter a society which promhim, in return, only minor g:ratificatioDs. On"instinctual" level the young person rejects the conditioning that society demanas. He wants tosert himself as an independent, unique person.cause this technicians' society appears to demeverything, the young person is forced to an eqradical position: he doesn't want to give upthing J yield up anything of himself; thereiorewill lead a life of total evasion, As this society mufactures depersonalized human relationships, mall-enveloping by organization, th e young pewho refuses them seeks to create fo r himself a rcally different type of relationship, the commrelationship that "connivance" in drugs provwhich is not integrated into society. I t is obvthat drugs are a religious substitute.

INTERPLAY/AUGUST

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:'1111il,l,11 '" ; I ' I ' .; '. .:1 t . ' .' t'j'/2 ;!iI {III

The use of drugs is an effort to arrive at comT 3 ~ e young person is more sensitive than

e adult to the contradictory situation we are in.the one hand, we live in a universe of multi

of communications and iniormation; on thehand, real communication seems impossible.

in modern linguistics bear witness to thisof sustaining friendships

ou r society is well-known. And young people allabout the impossibility of "getting close" adults. Students make the same complaint aboutchildren about parents, and so on. Drugs

e a means o,f resolving this contradiction. Theyone tolerably indifferent to the "universe ofand they facilitate a_ sense ofcommtmication and the most profound com

In addition, by taking drugs, the young person isto sa y something. Using drugs and leading"excessive" existence is a cry fo r help to the peo

around one, a way of attracting attention soat last, someone will enter into a relationshipyou. I t is not a matter of communicating pre-

else things, intellectually defined, but an appeal toother people to recognize that "I exist." Clearly, suchbehavior results from the lack of good emotional relationships with one's fellows, and, on a broaderscale, the absence of proper relationships with theentire society. That this double failure should bemost intensely felt by weaker, less balij.l1ced individuals is inevitable, for it is they who are most besetby their lack of connection with social realities andreal authority; it is they who lack the requisitemoral or ideological frameworks.

The young person beginning to take drugs is alsodemonstrating a suicidal urge. Not that he wishesexplicitly to kill himself, but he does want to destroy th e social personality within himself; he wantsto annihilate his social face, to destroy in himselfand for othe1'S the personality of that group towhich he belongs, which "the others" have madeand imposed on him like a mask, or held up to himas an idea], the personality which others imaginehe is, In this wishing to destroy this "social face"lies aggression against society', but against societyas embodied in oneself. One's aggression is, therefore, directed against oneself in order to violategroup symbols and taboos. This desire fo r destruction of th e social personality comes from the factthat adults of the group do not furnish atb'activemodels and are not good "objects fo r identification,"ano. the fact that society does not provide the promised satisfactions in encounters and exchanges. Consequently, this social personality is pure falsification and must be destroyed. Such destruction is thefirst stage in the evolutiol} of a suicidal course ofconduct which leads to annihilation of the entirepersonality, what some psychiatrists now cal1 subconscious suicide.

Such therapy as is available is a question of substituting another relationship fo r the communication :len ied by society and for the unacceptable social personality. This implies reconstruction of aframe of Teference in which the individual can orient and discover himself, thus becoming capable ofmaking sense of the nonsense he ha s heretofore experienced. I t is also necessary to provide adult models to whom the young can relate and who are desirable objects fo r identification. In short, only fruitful bterpersonal relations will suffice.But the effectiveness of such a method can onlywork with those who are slightly addicted and torelatively less habit-forming drugs. Hardened heroinaddicts, for example, must necessarily undergo medical treatment. Moreover, this method also leads to creating stabilized, privileged relationships withina micro-group and still shuts th e individual off, perhaps as firmly as before, from society as a whole.Yet the method does afford the young person theopportunity of accepting -some social personality, ofaccepting himself, and of creating a more balancedmode of relating to other people which will help himto adulthood.