“Any person is susceptible to addiction of some form or another,” Alex Bird from Tortoise in a Nutshell tells The Herald.
His show, Concerned Others, is winning plaudits at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for sharing the stories of people that we don’t hear from enough: people who use drugs, people who have used drugs, those who care for them and those on the frontline trying to help.
READ MORE: Scotland drug deaths: Fatal overdose deaths fall in 2022
“It's a point a clinician made really well at the start of the process. He said, if everyone shares the same fundamental neurobiology, then this is something that we all share the same susceptibility to.
“It's just that that's a really scary thought, so it's actually it's almost a form of defence mechanism for us to distance people and convince ourselves in their own head that if this horrible thing is happening to someone else, it’s because they've done something to deserve it.
“It's much scarier to face the alternative that actually it's just a fundamental part of who we are, that we're susceptible to this.”
The only voices you hear during the piece - running at Summerhall for another five shows - are the people who spoke to Bird about their experience of substance addiction.
One common thread from those interviews was the stain of stigma.
“We learned quite a lot from a few different clinicians about the continuing prevalence of a moral model around substance addiction.
“It still influences a huge amount of public discourse around addictions policy. And the more we sort of interrogate that moral model and listen to people talking about that moral model the more confronting it became, that kind of idea that addiction to a substance is somehow a failing on the part of the individual or stems from that that person having made that choice to become addicted to a substance.
“The more people you speak to, the more you realise how difficult that model is and how much it plays into the kind of service that we're still left with today and the kind of service that clinicians really often feel like they're banging their heads against and that patients and service users still feel like it can be really difficult to navigate.”
READ MORE: The perfect comedian for the Fringe’s hectic atmosphere
While the soundtrack and the interviews play out, Bird positions 32mm figures on a tiny, intimate stage. The Stage described it as "a powerful piece of documentary theatre, full of craft, heart and quiet fury."
“It was a really amazing process to go and sit and just listen to people telling stories of their life and to hear the things that people have moved through in their life and how it shaped their beliefs and their family, their lives today.
“So in a large way, I guess what we're trying to do was just pass on stories in the way they have been passed to us, to take that kind of diligence and attention around them and then make it into something that other people could really engage with.”
Two or three years ago, Bird says he too would be someone “who had a whole bunch of unconscious biases” about drug users.
“Those kinds of narratives around what substance addiction is are so ingrained in different ways that we talk and discuss and maybe even educate young people around substance use that I think I had a lot of judgement in my hand about the type of person that conformed to addiction when really there isn't a type of person.”
“And that for a lot of people, it's just a way of coping with some really traumatic things that have happened at different stages of their life," he adds.
“And in a lot of cases, use of a substance might be actually the thing that's kept someone alive.”
Concerned Others Summerhall, Demonstration Room Time: 14:45, Until August 27
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here