The Man Who Swam Out The Harbour

Imagine a harbour. In the shelter of the harbour in the village where you’ve always lived there’s no currents, no expanse of sea and no dangerous marine life to contend with. It’s kinda cosy. On top of this harbour’s tend to be at least a little picturesque. Lobster pots, fishing nets scattered around the old place and, of course, an array of boats, some sparkly and new, some quaint with fading paint and perhaps even some decaying enigmatically in the corners of the harbour.

In The Man Who Swam Out The Harbour, the third story from my book The Monkey In The Tunnel: 10 Stories About Active Addiction, Nor is a wild swimmer who has a very serious addiction to ‘party drugs’ and super-strength ‘Weedflower’, which in the story is the word I use for THC.

Nor has decided to embark on a ‘new way’ and is considering, well more ‘planning’ and epic swim across The North Sea (in the story called The Vastern Sea) to Bergen (Borgen in the story).

He has consulted a sport’s psychologist called Elvira Cann who has given him a negative response, perhaps for his own good.

After researching whether it is possible to swim from Scotland to Norway I discovered that, although it has never been achieved – mainly due to the currents, as well as the perhaps ‘more obvious’ issue of the very cold water – the swim itself is theoretically possible.

In the book the Wet World, the land in which the story is set, is a fantastical world anyway and features many characters and events which take on an otherworldly theme. So, Nor’s own quest is no different and infused with romanticism and impossibility from the outset. In fact it is this very notion which ‘talks to’ the concept that, at some point nine out of ten addicts relapse and ultimately ‘fail’ at maintaining sobriety.

In this way recovery from addiction can seem an almost pointless endeavour.

After all we only live once, for a short while and ‘enjoying our life’ is surely a crucial aspect of ‘living one’s life’ is it not?

Obviously there are deep ironies to addiction even leaving out the scientific and medical aspects.

Philosophically, even if an addict is blessed with a robust physical ‘make-up’, life quality and healthy ageing are surely even more important than barely ‘hanging on’ forever whilst suffering poor health and the cruel ‘trap of active addiction’.

In our society the prevalence of addiction is generally underestimated.

Generally it is accepted that, in Western nations, 10% of all addicts may experience addiction to substances and behaviours such as gambling at some point in their lives.

Within the context of drug-taking itself it is often said that 10% of those who develop psychosis are said to have been affected by the ingestion of THC. A further 1 in 200 are thought to develop emergency-level psychotic symptoms due to THC ingestion. This 0.5% - 10% figure is largely the reasoning behind the ongoing prohibition of a drug like THC in a country such as the UK.

This in itself signals that 10% is a fairly high number of individuals who are affected in their lives by the curse of addiction.

For Nor the possibility of dying is not a reason for him failing to act. His entire ‘drug and lifestyle’ journey has been one long, epic and extreme sequence of events anyway and his plan is to manifest an even greater extremity - staring servere danger directly in the face whilst ‘acting on adrenaline only’ as his plan.

After all he is just as unware of any ‘other way’ to advance as he is of why he became addicted in the first place.

In the beginning of the story Nor sits in The Fluffy Bunny by the banks of The Nor Lake in the village of Dry Town which is based on Broughty Ferry a small suburb of Dundee the city which inspired Wet City in my series of books, Tales From The Fabrik Zone.

Claudia The Sad Junkie - now Claudia The Happy Ex-Junkie - is working as a bar tender in the bar and starts up a conversation with Nor.

After her own epic battle again the tiger-form Fabius The Fentanyl Dealer in the second story Claudia has a strong insight into the ‘life or death’ principle surrounding the abrupt ending (what is commonly referred to as ‘cold turkey’) approach to ending ative drug addiction and embarking on a cours eof absitinence.

Ultimately Claudia’s own journey involved a strong and purposeful manifesting of a version of what is referred to as ‘The Gift Of Desperation’ – her brain and body had become unable to sustain the effects of the drug any longer – and she was of the opinion that continuing her use of fentanyl was no more worthwhile than the decision to at least try quitting.

For any addict, or even anyone suffering from strongly compulsive behaviour, even a ‘soul’ struggling witg teh effcts of ongoing ‘very bad habits’ or simply ‘too many unwnated thoughts’ the self-pressure to chnage can becoime an over-powering, ongoing and extremy overwhelming process, comsuming every last iota of one;s energy and dominating each moment of every day.

This mental torture may be the seeds or the genesis of The Gift Of Desperation. Essentially the contuinuation of the compulsive journey has become unsustainable to the point of perhaps suicidal ideation.

Basically one has began to question whether it is worth continuing with life when so trapped in the vortex of the addiction storm. The weather has become too unpleasant to bear.

This is why Nor is unphased by the sea itself.

In another, perhaps more ‘tropical’ version of the analogy the sea outside the harbour could (actually ‘would’) contain multiple varieties of dengerous marine life as I previously mentioned.

If the harbour was in Australia - which I call New Sorsiden in Tales From The Fabrik Zone - there would likely be tiger sharks, great whites even and many other ‘nasties’.

However, generally speaking, the ‘open ocean’ itself, as any nature documentary will tell you, is mainly a ‘desert’.

If one is contemplating the fear and danger or ‘swimming out the harbour’ as an analogy about overcoming active addiction it’s posisble that we simply must envisage makin it past this initial stage of rather intense exposure to harm.

Sudden withdrawal itself of course presents it’s own risks.

In Tales From The Fabrik Zone, addiction, as the main theme (other themes include ‘consumerism,’ ‘environment’, ‘spirituality’ and ‘nature’), addicts are often regarded as ‘poltical casulties’ of a sytem where individuals who ‘take home the cream are branded as ‘glorious victors’ whilst those who suffer the worst effects of excess are labbled as ‘weak’ and ‘ill-disciplined’.

The irony of active addiction is that this apparent laziness and willfullness is simply in the conceptualisation of those who never become addicted (of course ‘the vast majority’) and the inevitablity of individuals becomming addicts is barely granted any tiem at all.

The entire world of The Fabrik Zone series is centred around this principle - consumerist collectivism and the basic ‘lie’ that all greed is sonehow good.

The character of Fredrick The Shark, Fabius The Tiger’s sidekick, is a ‘foot soldier’ for the Kontrollers (basically ‘The Powers that be’ in The Wet World) who deploys his energy to ensure the population are kept addicted to narcotics without any compassion whatsoever.

Fabius, on the other hand is a ‘Thinking Beast’ who, although a merciless drug peddler, thinks philosophically about themes such as equality, survival and nature itself.

In The Man Who Swam Out The Harbour Fabius discusses with Nor, who ends up swimming alongside his boat when he and Fredrick are dumping bodies in the middle of the night in the sea, how sharks are primed for violence before they are even born.

Sharks may have to fight their siblings literally in the womb in order to simply be born at all.

Fabius tells Nor of his own early survival instinct in terms of ‘First awareness’ rather than ‘First sight’.

‘First sight’ implies a sensory experience as opposed to acting on a basic instinct.

Basically much of human behaviour is based on ‘activity without thought attached’.

Perhaps this is because the opposite - reflection - often betrays living itself. We may become anxious the moment we stop to contemplate whether we should, say, ‘enjoy ourselves having a drink or two.’

After all how harmful can a couple of drink now and then be?

Well, as it turns out, for at least 5%, perhaps 10% of people the only answer is ‘Very’.

In the Man Who Swam Out The Harbour this question is posed in a dramatic, romanticised setting and Nor eventually faces a stark choice - give in and turn back or advance.

With recovery from addiction often, once we have ‘travelled’ so far the way back is more of a burden for us than continuing with our sober quest.

This is a the light at the end of the tunnel.

So, read the story to find out how Nor does and his thoughts on why he has decided to take on such an impossible challenge in the first place. After ‘Sobriety at first awareness’ isn’t an option for a lot of us.