![]() The book, deservedly, became a bestseller and helped Hari rebuild his reputation, particularly in the United States. He travelled the world to look at the drugs trade from every angle imaginable and concluded, convincingly, that the ‘war on drugs’ was failing and a totally new approach was needed. My attitudes, formed over a lifetime spent viewing illegal drugs as bad, drug dealers as worse, and the issue as one best dealt with by harsh laws vigorously enforced (tough on crime, not the causes of crime, you might say), were fundamentally challenged by his reportage and analysis. Some books have changed my opinion on an issue slightly. It was his previous book on drugs, Chasing the Scream, that alerted me to the depth and breadth of his journalistic abilities. We have corresponded intermittently on our shared keenness to destigmatise mental illness ever since. As with most media frenzies, I assumed it to be overblown, and assumed also that it would eventually blow over, as indeed it did. ![]() Sure enough, in his reply he confided that he was prone to severe depression, something that was not exactly being helped by the onslaught on his reputation. ![]() ![]() Why else, when Johann Hari was at the centre of a furore over plagiarism that led to him losing his column on The Independent seven years ago, did I decide to drop him a line? I barely knew him and rarely read his paper, but something told me to offer a few words of encouragement that it is possible to survive media storms and emerge stronger. ![]() P erhaps depressives have an instinct for each other. ![]()
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