One Last Smoke for the Road
Originally published in Tabula Rasa – the Swinburne Student magazine 2003
Following his dope smoking tour of Australia, John Birmingham spent May and June of this year touring to support the book of that adventure “Dopeland”. Tabula Rasa caught up with John over lunch to chat about drugs, the Office of Special Clearances and why Elmore Leonard won’t talk to him.
John Birmingham is a relaxed, average looking, middle-aged guy who enjoys a tale, not at all like the dope smoking character he portrays himself as in his books. It seemed like the John in the books may be more of a fictional character, and one that the flesh and blood John is having more and more trouble keeping up with. The real John is studious, and more likely to be found in the reference section of the library than at the bottom of a bucket bong.
“I do non-fiction. Even things like Tassie Babes and Falafel that look like novels are non-fiction in the sense that they’re all based on things that happened. I’m a nonfiction writer, so research is really important. Leviathan was four and a half years in the libraries, six days a week, usually from opening to closing time.
“If truth be known, I enjoy the research more that the writing. I don’t enjoy the writing much at all. Obviously for something like Dopeland, you are traveling around getting stoned, so why wouldn’t you love it?”
“I do non-fiction. Even things like Tassie Babes and Falafel that look like novels are non-fiction in the sense that they’re all based on things that happened.”
As for how much of the character he writes about is really him, John suggested that people that know him may be better placed to answer. “I wonder about it sometimes”. “There is an element of play acting and getting into character, it’s almost like pulling on an old coat. Those elements are very much a part of my character. The awful episode in Perth [from Dopeland], I have to admit is not the first time I found myself on my hands and knees projectile vomiting over somebody’s front yard because I’ve given it a bit of a nudge. I’ve lost count of the number of times that has happened. As I get older I behave like that a lot less because if I didn’t I’d be fucked.
For me Dopeland was almost like a last hurrah. When I got off Dopeland I was 15 kilos over weight. My doctor actually took me aside, showed me one of those grotesque models of a kilogram of human fat and said ‘you’ve got 15 of these hanging around the middle of your waste. If you don’t get rid of them you’re a dead mother-fucker by the age of 45.” With John’s love of research, it is not surprising that there is a descent going over of the history of the weed in the book. As one of the more public dope smokers, John has a clear view of how weed sits in Australian culture. “It comes and goes. The thing about dope is that it is so fucking resilient because it is not fashionable. It is so completely fucking mainstream now, it is hardly worth thinking about as an issue. It’s like, yeah you had a joint before you went out on Friday night – big fucking deal. You probably had a couple of cans of VB or something as well – you’re not going to talk about it because it is fundamentally uninteresting.
There was research out of Melbourne in the last two or three months [which found that] more high school students smoke dope than smoke nicotine, which is an amazing finding. “It really is a mainstream concern now, but the thing that is interesting about it, and the reason that I can write the book is because the politics of it haven’t caught up with reality.”
“Our [political] debate about these things proceeds at this moronic fucking level because people expect perfect world outcomes and you are just not going to get it. When you are dealing with stuff like drugs policy or prostitution or gambling or even fucking foreign policy you are not going to get a perfect world outcome. The best that you can hope for is a least-worst outcome. With dope policy I think the least-worst outcome is legalisation and controlled availability, basically the same way that we deal with alcohol.
“Governments, and Australia in particular have basically come to accept this over the past 10 to 15 years. They are dealing with a $6 billion industry and 2 million regular
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