There’s been a really unpleasant murder here in the UK, London to be precise. Happy slapping as it’s become known is a craze amongst some young people involving running up behind strangers, slapping them around the back and filming the whole incident on a mobile (cell) phone. However, this one went far too far with a gang of youngsters killing a guy on London’s south bank and attacking 7 or 8 other people – and filming it all.

Sadly, it looks as if this was all too predictable in the light of what we know about drugs and alcohol use and people who go on to kill. One of the young perpetrators, a teenaged girl, had a history of family drug use – according to newspapers she had to watch her mum inject heroin when she was tiny. She was abandoned at age 3, ended up in care and so on. She went out on slapping expeditions from her care home. We know that people with her kind of history are at a greater risk of problematic drug and alcohol use themselves too and lo and behold the tabloids have been quick to pick up on her cannabis use. She seems to have had, according to the judge a chaotic and fragmented emotional life.

Much of the literature on drug-related deaths – suicides and murders as well as accident or illness suggests that some people who kill and use drugs or alcohol often show indicators like this girl’s in earlier life – which if there is effective intervention can be helped and thus reduce the risk to self or others.

Now I’m not saying she shouldn’t go to jail – her diaries and phone records show that she at least had an idea that what she was doing was wrong. However, the reality of it seems to be that our inability to intervene effectively and early with high risk youngsters can result in this kind of tragedy. One man’s life taken away and a young girl’s brought to a halt.

You aren't what you drink.

One of our more prominent political leaders, Charles Kennedy of the Liberal Democrats has been hounded out of his job as leader of his party – ostensibly because he has a drink problem.

This has not been an edifying sight although the man himself is receiving treatment and has been dignified throughout the whole sorry mess. What’s been unpleasant has been the sight of his parliamentary colleagues and the massed ranks of the media using his drink problem to lever him out of his job.

Now, whether or not he was unable to do his job isn’t for me to comment on – but what message does this send to the rest of us? That if you have trouble with drink, you’d better keep it quiet or you’ll get the sack? That your employer won’t give you a chance to straighten up and get treatment first? That a personal and intensely private problem can be splattered all over the media and your life messed up by colleagues and journos, plus what is it with this confessional stuff? Why if you have a drink problem must you be expected to fess up in public about it to all and sundry, whether you’re a public figure or not? If alcoholism is an illness, which I for one doubt but let’s for the sake of argument say it is – what other illness requires public humiliation in this way? Yes, by all means admit to yourself you have a problem and tell your nearest and dearest but why must so many people announce themselves as a ‘former alcoholic’ in print or in person? And then expect others to do so too. That’s taking over-identification with a substance to far too extreme a degree.

Did he really do that many drugs?

I've been a long-term fan of Hunter S Thompson's writings, especially 'Fear and Loathing' and his collected works in 'The Great Shark Hunt'. He was certainly abosolutely right about a lot of stuff, especially when it came to nailing Nixon, long before Watergate. But did he really take the industrial qualtities of drugs and alcohol he claims to have done? And still write? If he did maybe he had a tremendous and patient editor or editors, able to lash his ramblings in to somehting representing sense.

Anyone got any insight in to what he did and indeed how he did it for so long? Or was there a considerable amount of ahem, exaggeration?