FOULED NEST DRUG ADDICTS’ HAVEN WAS_ TURNED INTO A NIGHTMARE

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33665, 15 October 1974, Page 18

FOULED NEST DRUG ADDICTS’ HAVEN WAS_ TURNED INTO A NIGHTMARE

(By

SHUBHA SLEE,

E, in the "Sydney Morning Herald )

(Reprinted by arrangement)

A Danish social experiment to meet the problem of young drug addicts discharged from hospital has failed. In May. 1972. the DaniGovernment set aside old army barracks at Christiana, near Copenhagen, as a halfway house to keep the young addicts off the streets after their discharge from hospital. Arrangements were made for the people at Christiana to pay the City Council a small rent for water, electricity, and garbage collection. To date, the Government has paid $92,000 to maintain Christiana, and of this the residents have paid about $20,000. Now nobody pays rent, there is no heating or garbage collection, and most of the ransacked building, have no windows or doors. The Danish Minister of Defence (Mr Erlig Brondum) says that Christiana has been tried and has failed. In May next year the people there will have to leave.

The earnest message on the' cocktail circuit of Copenhagen was: You must see Christiania. “It’s a remarkable social experiment,” they said. “We have solved the problems of the young people of Denmark by giving them Christiania. That’s where drug addicts go when they are discharged from hospitals. They are helped by others who were addicts themselves ■ once. There are no drugs, no alcohol at Christiania. You 1 really must go and see it.” Well, no, they themselves: had not been there, and they! were not sure where iti was—but they assured me their friends went every week-end. “You must go.”

' So a Danish friend offered to take me to the Christiania barracks near Copenhagen that were handed over Ito young people when the Army, moved out in May, 1972. We stopped at a service station to ask the way. The; attendant gave us directions,; then spat on the ground.' “Those bums,” he muttered? “I pay taxes so they can live there and drink and! smoke themselves rotten." Salon Communists praise Christiania, garage attendants don’t. We reached Christiania before 9 a.m., climbed Ithrough a break in the wall, and approached a group of three men who looked like sailors, and a woman with a (flamboyantly painted face, i The woman's arms were (covered with needle pricks [and burns and bruises." The men were drinking cherry (brandy and beer for breakIfast, and seemed very 'happy. ' i We asked where we could: find Richard the Lionheart, who is the oldest of Christiania’s several hundred inhabitants and its unofficial spokesman. We did not get much response, but they did tell us a very good joke about a man with a glass eye. Somebody else told us the famous Richard was away, and directed us to a hut where we were told lived an American who might talk to us.

We waited in the sunshine for the American to emerge from his hut; we had woken him up. It was difficult to ignore the smells of excreta and rotting garbage.

No organisation We were asked for a light once, and offered a joint of marijuana, but, apart from that, ignored. The first small groups of tourists were beginning to trickle into Christiania, peering through dirty windows, cameras poised, noses held. Behind us, a . couple put planks on trestles and set out a pathetic display of handmade leather belts for the week-end flea market. Carl, the American, is a black who has lived in Christiania since 1972. He is 33, a hardened survivor. When he needs money, he goes out to a restaurant to play in a band and makes enough to buy food for a few days. When he is not playing in the band, he is practising his trumpet in Christiania.

He is contemptuous of the Danes: “They have no discipline, no organisation. They get 200 kroner (about S4O) a week social aid from the Government, and they live on that boozing and smoking.” He laughed. “If a Dane was planting a rose bush, he would forget to dig the hole." When Carl first came to Christiania, he was full of enthusiasm for it to be a successful “social experiment:” He went to committee meetings, and offered to help run the place. He said that if a person had education or a talent, he had a responsibility to pass it on to people who had neither. But two years and a half later he is bitter, has given up, can’t be bothered. His own army hut was spotlessly clean. The old army stove gave off warmth. There was a bed, a table with four chairs, some books and clean cups and saucers. He said he had scrounged the furniture from what the Army had left behind. We drank coffee and marvelled at the clean fresh room amid the squalor outside.

Nobody gives “I am young, black, and have a lot of friends,” Carl said. “That’s why I survive. The day they bring in the bulldozers I will move on. That’s life, man. “Christiania is not a ‘social experiment* because nobody gives anything. It has failed to function. We have this great space, and it has been humiliated. I am an American and I have seen a lot of waste, but never like this — and you call these the most productive people in the world?” Carl said one of the reasons why the Government would not do anything to help Christiania was probably that it had never really wanted it to succeed; failure

would make it easier to raze. In spite of what I was told on the cocktail circuit, (there was no evidence that the outside world had much contact with Christiania. My friend wanted to go to the lavatory. Carl laughed, and suggested she use the great outdoors. “You have no idea what that ‘toilet’ is like, man,” he said. "The | defecation of man is in that 'toilet. That’s where they are ; defecating on each other and ion the world.” My friend (braved it and returned lookling ill. She had walked (through piles of human excrement to reach what probably was once a lavatory. Later, she disappeared behind a bush. “There is no collective effort, no incentive for making an effort, either,” Carl said. “There is only mistrust and anarchy.” We walked through Christiania, across a stream. On weekends the stream j brings tourists in rowing boats coming to gape at the “social experiment.” We walked past heaps of refuse, discarded chairs, mattresses with stuffing hanging out, (past huts painted with ■ bright flowers. The trees were beautiful and green. People sat in the sun smoking, drinking, scratching themselves. One very pale, very naked lady walked across, shouting merrily at us, waving an empty bottle. Young inhabitants Christiania also has its very young inhabitants. As we walked past one of th< barracks, we saw a 12-year old run out with empty bee: bottles to be sold to a trucl that was making its rounds I asked my friend if shi would talk to the boy, am find out if any more child ren were inside. The boy had had a brief spirited exchange hagglinj with the truck driver, ther slumped against the wall looking worn out and de jected. My friends’s ques tions received monosyllabii answers, and the boy askei if I had any cigarettes. Afte a few puffs he agreed to le us come inside. The building was dark am airless, and stank most hor ribly. We stepped carefullj over what looked like drie< human excrement, an< shrank from the vomit streaked walls. On tne first floor was i door. The smell that cami from behind it was inde scribably appalling. Mi friend asked the little boy i’

iwe could go in there, and received a brisk "No.” He led us to the second floor, to a room about three metres square and a tiny alcove that was a kitchen. I He started to pick up filthy dishcloths off the 'floor and hang them on nails on the wall. He muttered and whined all the time, but my friend could make no sense of his words In the room were four very dirty mattresses on which four boys sat staring at the floor. They would not talk. I was beginning to feel slightly sick, and stumbled out into the fresh air. Outside, the little boy told my friend that he had not wanted me to go into the room on the first floor because I was a foreigner. He told her that he was hiding six boys there. They had arrived at Christiania a couple of days ago, having run away from home. They had been full of drugs, and could not stand up. He had locked them up in case the police came looking for them. They were, by now, probably very filthy. As we stood outside. I asked the boy. through my friend, how old fre was. He almost smiled, and said in a very old voice: "Age is only a figure.” He would not tell us his name. I asked him if he ever went to school. He answered simply: “This is my school.”

Where did Christiana go wrong? The Minister of Defence (Mr Erlig Brondum) says the reason is that the people of Christiana do not regard themselves as part of a social experiment: they only want to live in what amounts to a free State within the State of Denmark. Someone in Copenhagen has another opinion: "We give our children too much freedom, too many choices, turn them into social misfits, and then we expect them to organise their lives with order and discipline.”