[Note: Wrote this a number of years ago when a few people I knew were using. My attitude today is a little more laid back, but at the time I found the situation frustrating; as you will probably be able to tell.]

“Pedestrian”, it can mean boring, conservative, or concerning the everyday. I guess that’s how I must look to the users, the Human Traffic, flashing past me in their little glitzy, pill-induced, Ferrari-style realities. The film Human Traffic dealt with many of the issues and experiences of those who choose to chemically alter their night-life. But it left out one thing (interestingly enough it’s predecessor Trainspotting did not leave this out), non-user friends.

The non-using friend is put in a difficult position, one they didn’t ask for and have very little control over. Your good friend, someone you’ve known for years, decides to do something illegal, unhealthy, and dangerous. What are you supposed to do?

Inside you an unresolvable battle between two different moralities starts. Both of them come down to the same basic principle; you want to do the right thing by your friend. Any time a friend does something you think is stupid you always have to make a choice between letting them do what they think is right or trying to stop them. In most situations it’s a pretty easy choice. If they’re going to commit suicide, you stop them. If they’re about to go out with the wrong person, you stand by to pick up the pieces.

But what do you do when they start popping E? If you try and stop them they’ll hate you, but if anything happens you’ll hate yourself. The retort from the Human Traffic, as they wizz by, is: “Nothing’s going to go wrong.” Then they spout some statistics (usually got from another user) about how there are no recorded OD’s on E, and how many accidents occur due to alcohol. These people, despite what some may say, are not stupid. They can mount a cogent argument.

The trouble is that there are many dangerous things that you would not stop them from doing: drinking, smoking, getting into a car. With road accident statistics being what they are it’s very difficult to prove that anything is more dangerous than driving. A further complication is that while the statistics they are quoting might be dodgy, yours may be as well. In the past, and thus possibly now, the authorities have falsified, or at least taken the most negative view from, the evidence. It is difficult to accept even a scientific journal article’s findings when there is such a clear anti-drug bias evident in the writing.

Besides all this, arguing with your Human Traffic friend is futile. The saying goes “Win an argument, lose a friend” it’s true, and they still won’t stop using the drugs. The only course of action that will actually make any impact is so extreme that it will almost certainly destroy the friendship, so few are prepared to use it. That is, dobbing them in to the police (their parents will usually be as powerless as you are to stop them so telling them is ineffective).

So, unless you are prepared to destroy the friendship, there is nothing you can do except worry. This worry can gradually turn to resentment and destroy the friendship anyway. Of course long before this happens the effects that the drugs are having on the person may turn them into someone you don’t really like anyway. No wonder Human Traffic didn’t deal with Pedestrian friends, it is unlikely that a user will be able to keep non-using friends. No, that’s going too far. A friendship can be maintained but it takes careful management on both sides, and the relationship is always fragile.

Now even if you are the sort of person who can take the attitude that if there’s nothing you can do there’s no point worrying, there still may be a moral difficulty. There is a significant minority, perhaps even a majority, of people who think that taking drugs is morally wrong. (This objection could be religious or could just stem from the belief that it is wrong to be a criminal no matter how much the law interferes with your enjoyment.)

Normally if a friend is behaving in a way that you have serious moral objections to they don’t stay your friend for long. But you may want to stay their friend. You’ve been friends for years and it is very hard to just throw all that away. Of course this is not the users problem, it’s the non-users problem, it’s their moral objection they should deal with it. And I think this is the point of what I’ve written. All the problems reside with the non-user, while the user blissfully dances the night away. The Human Pedestrian, through no action of their own, is saddled with a worry they can do nothing about and a moral dilemma they cannot resolve.

There is one further thing, the criminal aspect. In this jurisdiction (indeed in most) it is a crime not to report anyone who has been involved in the supply of even a non-commercial amount of drugs. I don’t think there are many users out there who haven’t sold a pill to a friend. Maybe it was for cost price or below but that still counts as supply of a non-commercial amount of drugs. As soon as the Traffic mentions to their Pedestrian friend that they have done this then the friend must choose between turning them in or committing a criminal offence. Of course the chances of actually being convicted of this are zero but I have mentioned above that many have a moral problem with being friends with a criminal, even more have a moral problem with being one.

As well as the moral problem, there are also situations where there may be practical consequences. The police will question those friends who are with the user at the time. And even if the legal consequences are unlikely there are other problems. One example is the career consequences if it is found out that you knew of a work-mate’s habits. There are many possible situations where your friend, just by being a user, puts you in trouble. Or, to put it another way, just by being the person’s friend you put yourself in trouble.

This is what it all comes down to; the difficulty of remaining friends with Traffic. If the Pedestrians try to stop them, they lose a friend, and if they don’t, they will probably lose a friend anyway and have to deal with difficult internal dilemmas while risking serious consequences. The Pedestrian’s disapproval of the drugs doesn’t come from intolerance, they are just desperately trying to stay friends.

So when the Pedestrian, doesn’t like to talk about the drugs, or tries to talk the Traffic out of taking drugs, or just seems upset about the whole situation, it’s not that, as most users claim, they don’t understand the effects of the drugs. On the contrary, they understand one effect of the drug very well: one way or another, chances are, they’re going to lose a good friend.