The Truth of Crack Addiction

Radio Télévision Suisse | Postproduction script

00:00:01,137 Patrick: -Let's get ready. I'm going to open the gram of cocaine and put it all in the spoon.

00:00:08,481 VO: -We'll call him Patrick. Using water and baking soda, he will cook his cocaine and turn it into crack.

00:00:17,131 Patrick: -A lighter is important.

00:00:19,754 VO: -He can smoke that crack, thus getting an extremely powerful and extremely addictive high.

00:00:26,147 Reporter: -Do you remember the first time you took crack?

00:00:28,818 Patrick: -On my 14th birthday.

00:00:33,093 Reporter: -14 years old?

Patrick: -14 years old. The first time, it was euphoric.

00:00:38,133 Reporter: -How is that feeling now, 20 years later?

00:00:43,668 Patrick: -Still the same feeling. But it's much shorter. It's 1-2 seconds, the time it takes to spit out the smoke, 1-2 seconds of ecstasy. And then you come down and you say to yourself, "Why did I do that?"

0’49 Patrick

00:01:05,200 VO: -Patrick has been smoking crack for 20 years. But in Switzerland, it is only been a few months now that this drug is commonly found everywhere, ready to use for only 10 francs a pop.

00:01:14,269 Patrick: -Here is a gram of crack.

1’20 Title – The Truth of Crack Addiction

00:01:25,840 VO: -The Grottes district of Geneva, next to the train station. An addiction centre, Platform 9. Here, the staff have been dealing with drug addiction for more than 20 years. For a long time, heroin was the main substance of abuse. but in the last few months, crack has gone from being a marginal to a flagship product. And it's this product that 32 year-old former circus acrobat Narcise knows only too well.

00:01:51,000 Narcise: -That crack rock is a real problem. A real problem.

00:01:58,311 Reporter: -Why?

00:01:59,816 Narcise: -Because there is no end to it. You buy one. An then you buy another. Then another, and another... You lose everything. You lose your family, You lose your job, your friends, everything.

1’59 Narcise

00:02:12,908 VO: -We lose everything, but the point is not to lose any of it.

00:02:16,000 Jacques: -I get the deposit back inside the pipe. Which makes for extra consumption.

00:02:28,360 VO: -Jacques is a comedian. He loves the stage but has two other loves.

00:02:34,231 Jacques: -Crack and heroin, a little bit of everything that twists your head.

00:02:39,923 Reporter: -How did you get into crack?

00:02:42,281 Jacques: -It was a fad. I tried it and I liked the effect. And so, quite stupidly, I fell into it. But it's very powerful. For a few minutes, you are really on another planet. People change their faces, almost become animals, start searching on the ground. Desire prevails. And these people become slaves of that desire. They will do everything to get it. That's the big difference and the great danger of this product.

2’51 Jacques

00:03:29,337 VO: -At Platform 9, there are those who fall in the great dangers and those who are there to cushion the fall. Luviana is a nurse. She has been caring and helping for 5 years .

00:03:41,336 Reporter: - Is there a difference between now and a year ago in relation to crack use?

00:03:45,655 Luviana: -Absolutely, yeah. And the more important thing, is that it affects everyone. The ones that we usually know who used to smoke other products, and now everyone has also touched this and is in the middle of it. There are no new people that smoke that, it affected everyone.

3’52 Luviana Dufy, Platform 9 nurse

00:04:05,520 Reporter: -Nobody is spared?

Luviana: -That's rare. Sometimes they are praised when they only smoke heroin. That's a horrible thing to say, but it's true. It's rare to have people who only smoke heroin.

00:04:18,165 VO: -People who come here take a ticket to do drugs. And while waiting for their turn, they can leave the street for a while. Platform 9 obviously does not sell any substance but provides the sterilized material necessary for consumption.

00:04:35,173 Luviana: -What are you smoking?

Woman: -Coke-hero.

00:04:42,483 VO: -There's a smoking room to get a safe crack pipe. Vincent, 30 years old, regularly consumes a crack rock "for dessert", in his words.

00:05:01,996 Vincent: -It's a very fast and very strong high. See I don't have the same diction anymore, I don't have the same look. It's going to come up for 2-3 minutes and it will go down again. It's gotten worse in the last year, since there are the patties. Before, people used to buy their coke balls, they used to go home to cook and consume their crack rock there. Now these patties are sold ready to smoke in the street. People smoke anywhere. Problems at the Pâquis school, problems around here. It breeds violence, scams and unfortunately a lot of knife fights.

5’17 Vincent

00:05:39,455 Luviana: -There is still a lot of tension. What shocked me the most, was the connection with the people. They're there, but not there anymore. In general, we had a good connection with everybody. The ones that are really into this, we can't get in contact with them. They are in front of us but we can't talk anymore. They get angry very quickly. They are unreachable, that's what makes it difficult to work.

00:06:10,790 Reporter: -Wasn't this also the case with heroin?

00:06:12,636 Luviana: -No. Heroin is a hypo-stimulant, it puts them to sleep. It was our job to stimulate them. Now it's our job to calm them down, that's another job.

00:06:21,646 Man: -On my mother's grave I hurt you!

00:06:26,096 VO: -A new aggressiveness in the street. Security must also adapt. The problem is contained for the time being, but the situation is very worrying.

00:06:39,575 Michael: -The situation out in the street will not be able to continue. We'll have to find a solution with the associations, with partners, to tolerate other consumption spaces. In any case no deal. This is a problem that for the moment is unsolvable. We don't have a goal, except for to have no places to settle and that creates insecurity.

6’46 Michael Gex, Head of Judicial police, Geneva

00:07:07,260 VO: -What is lurking in the chief's head, is the spectre of Paris, its crack hill, its lawlessness and insecurity. And an extreme marginalization of the consumers, disconnected from any possibility of help. Therapeutic help is difficult to bring to these addicts. We are at the addiction center of the University Hospitals of Geneva.

00:07:32,666 Gerard: -The compulsive side of crack use, when we are in consumption, is that it's more difficult to be able to stop for a while to go and consult or ask for help. The very effect of the substance makes people very much aware of the addiction. It's hard to have the mental availability to go into care. The traditional care that is offered for addiction treatment, a consultation, we talk, it's not so hard to do because the difficulty is access to care. In this crack issue, the priority is to create moving teams. And especially field work. That's what would make a difference compared to traditional care.

7’36 Gerard Calzada Ribalta, Specialist addiction psychiatrist

00:08:27,496 VO: -A compulsive, unstable life that ends very often in the street. Narcise, our Spanish acrobat, lives there. For him, every night away from the cold away from the cold is a luxury.

00:08:38,450 Reporter: -How are you going?

00:08:39,495 Narcise: -Good morning, how are you?

Reporter: -Did you have a good night?

00:08:41,737 Narcise: -I was lucky, I slept in a parking lot. It was a heated parking lot, it was nice and warm.

00:08:56,360 Reporter: -So you had a good night?

00:08:58,524 Narcise: -Yes, but then I woke up and... The first thing that came up in my head was to take crack.

00:09:09,511 Reporter: -Have you consumed yet?

00:09:10,924 Narcise: -Not yet. But I can't wait to!

00:09:16,930 VO: -Consuming, consuming again. One can buy a rock for 10 francs, smoke it and come back down. And we'll beg for something to start over again and again. For four years, this downward spiral spiral has been sucking Arley in, a 21 year old woman, young mother and a crack addict.

00:09:38,140 Reporter: -How did you sleep?

00:09:40,120 Arley: -I beg to sleep at the youth hostel. And when there is no room, I sleep outside in a building with my sleeping bag.

9’47 Arley

00:09:53,280 Reporter: -But now it's cold.

Arley: -Yes, it is.

00:09:56,910 Reporter: -Where did you sleep last night?

Arley: -In the train station. We have a shitty life and we can't figure out how to change things. Even if we want to, we don't reach out enough.

00:10:16,553 VO: -They don't have the time to reach out. Crack is too compulsive, too accessible and too addictive. And there is no substitute product, like methadone for heroin.

00:10:29,312 Narcise: -There's help for people who smoke heroin. There's help for people smoking marijuana or for alcoholics too. But for people smoking this, there's no help.

00:10:40,970 Reporter: -Why?

00:10:42,635 Narcise: -There's no help to stop that because it's all in your head. Crack heads need human warmth, they need a real opportunity to stop that shit.

00:10:55,200 VO: -Narcise and the others all want to be cured of crack. Maybe one day.

11’04 Credits:

Michaël Borgognon
Alexandre Gross
Benedick Frutiger
Rolf Dietrich
Catherine Kala
Martial Girardin
Renée-Jeanne Acquaviva
Pierre Bader
Benoît Mayer